They are only a little heartbreaking to talk about, considering how few of the people who feature in them are still alive. Eliel is solemn and takes extraordinarily detailed notes.

A girl after Annie's own heart. Annie takes notes too and compliments Eliel on her organization and thoroughness.

"If the world doesn't end I want people someday to know what really happened. And what they were really like, because the stories in Sirion -"

"People say lots of exaggerated things about each other when they're in the middle of a war."

"Yeah. But I don't want to spend the rest of eternity pretending that we never loved them so that people are able to trust us."

Nod.

"I didn't even think about that," she says to Annie later, "that we were perhaps doing them a disservice even if we could give them a happy childhood -"

"Well - I don't think you were, compared to any realistic options -"

"Put them on a boat and give it a shove towards Balar? We didn't have good options, but it's no fun to think of new drawbacks to the one we went with. ...they are happy, I think."

"I think so too."

"I love you and I'm so glad you love me."

"I love you so much," sighs Annie.

"It happens I know exactly how much!" 

Giggle.

She wears more grooves into her brain. There are three different ways a session of kissing Annie can go, now, without a panic attack. She's hoping the variety will conceal some of her dependence on predictability there. Eliel interviews everyone else who'll stay still. There's enough money to pay for printings of her book, once it's finished, though she says solemnly that'll be a few years.

If Annie notices things being predictable she doesn't comment. She moves where she is told and makes noises that are carefully not laughter and carelessly arbitrary in volume. She translates things and remembers more and more obscure and vague shreds of technology and hands out powers.

And one day there's the sound of trumpets echoing on the air, not diminished in volume by all the stone insulation in the world.

everyone was being so careful and polite about the thing Annie doesn't even have a guess she just collapses.

She tries taking her farther underground, she tries finding a more insulated room, and when she realizes neither of those are going to cut it she strangles her again, only this time she's sobbing and screaming and kissing her while she does.

Annie goes limp and calm in her arms.

That is not good enough this is not okay nothing is okay Annie Annie -

She doesn't calm down enough to listen to the trumpets so it's Lírnith who tells her -

Well, if it isn't our old friends, five hundred thirty years too late.

Huh - 

That's the Valar. They're here.

Well they need to stop.

The trumpets do, eventually, stop. She lets go.