"Yes, but the girls sat through the whole thing and they're not."

"They were probably trying to impress me."

"Did they?"

"Well, yes. Everyone knows my great weakness is people who are good at trade negotiations."

Giggle.

"They're good kids. They'll be exceptional women."

"Yeah."

"Elves consider it awful to separate children from their parents. Which - I mean, we didn't, he jumped, but they've sure turned out all right..."

"Adopted humans turn out fine all the time."

"All the precedent for adopted Elves is rather - confounded."

"Yeah, I bet it would be."

"And this mess is hardly an exception. But they love us and they'll be great and good and happy, so." Shrug. Nuzzle.

Eeee nuzzles.

She is getting so functional at physical intimacy!

It's lovely!

The ground shakes. It does that. They've gotten used to it. The Valar have by now mostly laid off with the world-spanning trumpets.

Annie is getting kind of tired of the trumpets. According to osanwëd memories they aren't even that great if you can hear them and don't collapse in pain.

There is really nothing great about them except that they herald that someone with the means to fight Melkor is doing it, and also they are causing Annie pain and so she hates those trumpets.

Annie is very grateful to be kept unconscious during the trumpetings. It's possible to do by just tying something tightly enough around her neck, Rirosseth doesn't have to stand over her strangling her the whole time.

Well it's not as if Rirosseth is going to be anywhere other than hovering anxiously over her unconscious beloved, but she's happy to not be strangling her.

Yes, it seems like an improvement. Although honestly Annie does have weirdly fond memories of waking up after the week of singing way back when and being as close to snuggled as one can be by a fully armored passed out person who has been strangling one for a week.

"Awww. Is that just because after that I didn't snuggle you for months and months?"

"No, it was weirdly nice at the time too, it was - simple? Compared to the suddenly appearing a place and everything being chaos, anyway. You were asleep and I could just process and lie there."

"I think I'd really enjoy knowing how your internal processing works. Especially in a situation like that."

"...I could let you read some notes?"