...huh.

He takes the necklace off.

The loop is so burned into his mind by now that the next repetition is almost unchanged, but there's definitely a loss of clarity - a slight blurring of the details - it's not quite so immediate, quite so vivid - and the next one after that starts to fragment a little, overlap with itself, lose a few pieces - he might come out of it on his own, eventually.

He takes hold of his soul.

His mind floods with - terror, definitely terror, but also profound adoration and profound relief. He has absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on but he knows Maitimo is holding his soul and that's one good thing in his experience of the world, which is more than he had a second ago. The sense of overwhelming unbearable intimacy is actively welcome, because it means right now nothing can touch him but Maitimo.

Well that's -

- fuck. 

He starts singing something for calm and relaxation, lets go of his soul when the magic should be well in effect.

And he drops from the intensity of soul contact directly into a lovely calm state that is definitely the result of mind control - considers, calmly, whether he should therefore be panicking - concludes that this is Maitimo doing him a favour and there is no cause for alarm and he is very grateful and he loves Maitimo very much -

- wonders what even happened...

Apparently with the eidetic memory you can just - loop on flashbacks - 

Oh.

He thinks about this. A hazy memory surfaces. A path. Flowers.

And I went for a walk with it on, like an idiot. I'm sorry. Thanks for pulling me out of it. I love you.

Do you know how long -

He doesn't, but after he thinks for a second he remembers who he spoke to when he went out, and if Maitimo asked them when they last saw him that would at least give an upper bound...

He asks. 

They last saw him yesterday when he went off for lunch and mentioned that he'd be going for a walk afterward and might not be back until the evening!

(Meanwhile, Raika-seren is trying to figure out how fucked up he's going to be when this song wears off. The answer is looking like 'very'. If he weren't being mind-controlled he'd be furious at himself for being careless enough to end up in this mess.)

"Sounds like you left after lunch yesterday."

And he wouldn't have wanted to be gone more than a few hours, so that's... definitely all night but not necessarily much longer... of course he doesn't know what time it is now...

"Midafternoon. I was on the southern continent, I didn't realize you needed supervision -"

He is really sorry about that! He shouldn't have needed supervision, he should've thought ahead and either not gone out or not worn his necklace - if this is a thing that can happen he should get in the habit of only putting on his necklace when he specifically needs it for something, he'll do that -

"The teleport's useful if you're ever in danger, though. Maybe you could go ask the subtle artists for help, they're not useless -"

The what...?

"Therapy magic. They undid what the Valar did to my people, anyone who was interested."

Oh. That does sound useful. On the other hand, Tivarante and Elaneth-imire seem to have been having tremendous fun with their 'rescuing', and Raika-seren doesn't have thirty hours under a rockslide to fall back on if his reaction to daffodils goes away, so the convenience of eliminating it would not be completely without costs... on the other other hand, it's not like thirty hours under a rockslide would be prohibitively difficult to arrange... he'll go ask the subtle artists for help if Maitimo wants him to, and not if he doesn't.

I prefer you functional. If I find myself with some urgent desire to torture you I'm sure I'll find a way.

All right. I love you. Sorry I fucked myself up like this.

He feels like he's making kind of a terrible present so far, if Maitimo can't even leave him alone for a day without him immediately stumbling into a disaster that needs Maitimo's intervention to solve. But the effect of the calming song stops himself from being too actively upset with himself over it.

I am not angry with you.

That's good, he's glad. Making Maitimo angry is the opposite of what he wants. He still feels like he's failed to live up to his own standards, but at least he hasn't failed as badly as he could have.

He lets the song wear off.