Well now he is definitely blushing.

"Where did that come from?"

"I don't know!" says Dawn-shining. "I needed someone to talk to about - everything - when I got home after the war, and she volunteered, very emphatically, and now she's - whatever this is. It's amazing."

Kelora smiles.

"She's whatever you need because you were busy being whatever I needed. It's lovely."

"Yes," says Kelora. "When you've accumulated some horrifying stories of your time with the other Maitimo and you need someone to understand how much you don't regret any of it, come and talk to me."

"I will definitely do that."

He hugs her again.

"So the other thing I wanted was to learn about what's happened since I've, uh, I suppose 'been gone' isn't quite right..."

There follows a discussion of politics in both worlds, the war against Melkor, thirty hours under a rockslide, the Yeerk invasion, and so on. Occasionally Kelora sends Sun-dark a moment of Dawn-shining's sex life, always when he least expects it. He's so cute when he blushes.

Awwwww.

And then Nezhefena is ready to take Tivarante Maitimo and Raika-seren Taliar to Independence.

And for some reason Dawn-shining Taliar is nervous. This makes no sense at all. He's not the one going off to do deeply ill-advised things.

But someone you care about is.

...yeah, he says.

I love you. I - want your alt to be happy. I want that very much.

I know.

He hugs his husband. He hugs his alt.

And then they go to Independence.

Independence has been moved. He's not satisfied the peal won't look for him so with the help of the daeva Yeerks Independence has been moved a lot, six hops over and with some false trails spiraling off in different directions. He should notice if anyone's coming for them. He notices their arrival and sends someone to greet them.

It's so convenient having the eidetic-memory teleport. No more engulfing her passengers in shadows. Much tidier this way.

Sun-dark Taliar looks around and smiles slightly. He can see the... Maitimo-ness of the kingdom everywhere he looks.

It was the same kingdom, when Elspeth dropped modernity on them. He has them escorted in. "Hello," he says.

Wow he is really nervous.

"Hi. Raika-seren Taliar," he says. "Nice to meet you."

And in his thoughts, the full context of the soulname:

In Atialemain when he manifested his soul and went to war with Seofar, the first soulname he thought of was Raika-linsi, 'Sun-bright'. He decided against it, because the context made it too aggressive; by itself, it could mean anything in the range between 'the light that brings life to the world' and 'the fire that scours my enemies from the earth', but his mother Linsi-kelen ('bright flame') Aeleva is well-known for the destructive power of her fiery soul, and he was at that very moment preparing to go kill a bunch of people, and destructive wrath is not an aspect of himself he wants to advertise or encourage in the slightest. So he went with Elaneth-imire, 'Dawn-shining'; softer, prettier, more hopeful, evoking the kind of strength that lifts people up rather than the kind that burns them down.

And then he won the war and went around healing people and solving problems for a while, and he was transported to Arda and met Maitimo and agreed to fight his Enemy and got to know him and fell in love with him and found out the soul-shattering truth about him—

—and woke up the next morning in the imperial palace in Nuime, where his alt told him that the war with Melkor was over and he'd won and married Maitimo and everything was going to be great forever and oh by the way the reason you exist is as a present for Maitimo's alt who hates me, which is why you come from the moment in our life when our soul was at its weakest.

The obvious way to differentiate was to pick different soulnames. The obvious person to pick a different soulname was him. His soul does not shine like the dawn, and it won't for a while, it might not ever; in choosing to be this Maitimo's present, he is choosing to take that risk. So he is Raika-seren, Sun-dark. Eclipsed. The exact opposite of aggressive or powerful.

He raises an eyebrow. "Can you explain - why you'd do that? Instead of staying home, I mean."

He considers how best to explain. This Maitimo doesn't know him - that might be the weirdest part of the whole thing - and therefore he can't just say 'because I am very hopelessly myself' and be understood, he has to actually start from the beginning...

"It's relevant that there's another one of me," he says. "Elaneth-imire is all set for soul power, he can - fulfill all the functions of my existence that rely on it. I'm not abdicating any responsibilities. There are no evil gods nearby that I need to fight and if there were, my alt could handle them. And he and his husband are rather magnificently happy together, so - in a sense I have a share in that, he's fulfilling that function of my existence too. I don't need to be powerful or happy or safe because Elaneth-imire has those angles covered. But what he can't do is make you happy the way he makes his husband happy. That's my niche, I'm the only Taliar who's got a chance at it."

He pauses, trying to articulate the next part in a way that sounds remotely sane. There does not appear to be such a way. He shrugs and says it anyway.

"And they told me that I could either stay with them and be powerful and happy and safe forever, or come here and be your present and be probably ignored and maybe tortured if I'm lucky, and - when you put it like that, there's no way I could've done anything but this. Because staying with them would be nice but being your present is - hard work toward a meaningful goal that I care very much about and that almost nobody else could conceivably accomplish as well as I can. I have a thing about challenges. I find them almost impossible to pass up." He smiles wryly. "And I love you and I want to make you happy. You're not the Maitimo I know, but you're a lot like him, you're - you're all the things I fell in love with. So. Does that explain it?"

"Maybe." He looks at him consideringly. He looks at his alt. "Leave."

"Okay."

So Nezhefena takes Tivarante Maitimo back to Nuime.

And Sun-dark Taliar walks up to Maitimo and takes off his soul necklace and holds it out to him.