"Thanks."

He is frowning. 

The owl swivels his head to look at Fingon.

"I don't actually know any Bells personally," he says to the owl. "All I can do is extrapolate from how my alts get along with them, and that, ah, seems to vary, but - it doesn't seem like things get easier over time through drifting values or emotional revelation?"

"What do you mean?"

"There are some people whose - grief, discomfort, disappointment - I would expect to get better with time, even absent reasons, because their initial reaction was colored by unendorsed emotions, or because they change what they want and what they care about to make something work better, or because griefs generally fade, for them. There are people who - more or less endorse their initial reactions to things, or at least their reactions after very brief consideration, and who might make a conscious effort to maintain a relationship but who won't drift into more the sort of person who can, and those people seem less likely to be able to forgive something like this."

The owl's feathers puff up.

"It's come up a lot in my life but nothing that's an especially close analogy."

Sigh.

Yeah.

"What should I think about before I get a daemon?"

"They're a big vulnerability - if somebody touches somebody else's daemon it hurts - and outside Alethia and Bell parties people won't know what your daemon is and won't know to be careful about that. By default you won't be able to get farther than about across the room from each other. You can separate, but that hurts too, although doing it by teleporting makes it quick - but they don't settle into one shape until approximately puberty and even witches like me who all separate don't do it until then, there's not a lot of information about what it'd do to a kid. And you might not get a cool or convenient shape. Witches all get birds, and a square can tell what an adult would have, but it can't predict you before you get to the right age for settling. And maintaining a good relationship with your daemon has substantial implications for your mental health."

He nods solemnly. 

"I was born with mine, and a few other Bells got them because they have to be instantiated and separated to enter Alethia's original afterlife and we wanted several people on that. A bunch of Jokers have them and theirs can consistently still shapeshift when they're adults. Mostly nobody else non-native has actually gone and gotten one but it's pretty common for people to check what they'd have if they did."

"I'd wait to check but Elves grow up really slowly."

"You will have to wait to find out anyway, but in the one case you're stuck with actually having whatever it is even if it's a herring and in the other you're not. But it's possible your template has a theme, some do. Bells don't, we've got lots of birds but a couple flying squirrels and mini dragons and a tiger and a firefly and stuff. You could ask your alts to check."

"I'll do that but something might've gotten thrown off by me having a good life. I got found thousands of years earlier than any of them."

"Yeah - Glass might be able to tell, but you don't want to count on that a hundred percent."

"Which one's Glass?"

"Robes and pointy hat."

Bounce bounce bounce over to Glass.

"Hello there."

"Hi! I was wondering if not-Arda Fëanáros - that's Hex's over there - have different attractors than Arda ones and also whether I'm different because of getting found earlier and also if Iobel hasn't asked you already are Maitimos in fact doomed to have something horrible happen to them or are they just really unlucky."

"...this is easier if the whole template lines up."

So he osanwës all his alts who are present and they all come over. (The Andalites are not present. They can't morph and without morphing human parties are not very much fun. Also it has not yet been widely clarified that Firayar did not feed a bunch of people into a black hole in a fit of pique.)