Great.

Takes a couple hours and then he gets sent on his way.

He goes back to the public ballroom. He spends another several hours reading about how the Internet works until he's satisfied he can make it happen if someone hands him the materials.

He returns to Nuime, passes the relevant parts of the conversation on to Esarkan with very little commentary, hops into Dawn, and says to his alt, You busy?

Not at present, what's up?

You need to fork again. And the peal wants you to spy on your husband for them.

He transmits the relevant memories.

...he starts giggling helplessly. Raika-seren is just - such a Taliar.

What charming people. My poor alt. ...also, there's absolutely no way we're handing over my father for supervision.

No kidding. I am absolutely forking for this, though, Sun-dark is right, we can get it done but we need one of me who's - unattached. How do you feel about having me spy on you to win favour with the peal? It seems like a pretty reasonable trade considering they're apparently spying on you already.

Not very effectively, demons can just get written records. I'm doing nothing they should object to but I think I loathe them and can't think of anything I want from them badly enough to justify helping them at all. You can hide us. Why don't we just cut off contact entirely. 

Aww. Elaneth-imire cuddles his husband.

I mean, that would be satisfying, but Esarkan will prefer to be in contact with them, and they'd still be spying on us, and they have Midnight's father, and - Raika-seren got into this on behalf of Taliars-as-a-group and now we have to see it through.

And he can see the same lurking specter of an interdimensional Soul War that his fork can. He can hide them, but he doesn't want to rely on his hiding power against all possible methods of finding, and he feels like the peal would find their disappearance provocative, and in conclusion this situation desperately needs a Taliar thrown at it. Maybe his father, too. He bets his father would have something to contribute.

I'm going to tell all of my people that there are demons spying on them and how to avoid being spied on. Right now. I will not tolerate engagement with them taking the form of 'we're good enough to deserve not to be murdered or captured or conquered, look at us, look how deserving of continued freedom we are, we're so virtuous, there's nothing you'd even want to fix.' You tell them nothing. They are loathsome and disgusting and worse than the Valar.

Well, that'll make the new fork's life difficult, but he's a Taliar, he'll handle it.

—also, it's not just written records, he bets they can conjure scale models of planets and so forth, that seems within their described capacity, so eliminating written records won't even solve the entire problem. The new fork has his work cut out for him.

Yes, I know that, but the more time they waste doing that the fewer people they can harm. And there's only so much you can learn from models. 

His soul flares and his osanwë range - is extended, good. He warns his people that they should stop writing anything down, as hostile aliens are reading them looking for evidence the planet needs conquering.

And this is itself probably going to be taken as evidence that the planet needs conquering, but dealing with that is the new fork's job, and he's going to come through, because he is a Taliar.

I think I'll pop over to Nuime and make that fork now.

Okay. While you're there, can you get my father some information about modern technology? If the aliens are scared of him, I want him to have all the resources he needs.

Sure.

(And again, this is escalatory, this is exactly the wrong direction - but he's not going to try to convince Tivarante not to go down this road, because they shouldn't have to placate the peal in order to maintain their independence.)

(—and Midnight's Findekano is out there somewhere too, he'll need a way home eventually - and what if the peal finds another Arda like Dawn and Independence, the Taliars will need to be there to offer its Maitimo sanctuary and a fork - no, they can't cut off contact. The Taliars will just have to fix it.)

It should not be escalatory to seek out textbooks. It should not be escalatory to warn my people their privacy is being invaded. If those things are escalatory it is their fault. We have not proposed or even considered spying on or working against them.

They're making stupid assumptions about you. It's inconceivable to them that you could make the choices you've made in your personal life and not be - malevolent in a way that makes it frightening to not know what you're doing. And I will make a new fork and the new fork will fix it and you don't have to go out of your way in the slightest.

Kiss.

And he pops over to Nuime.

Raika-seren meets him there. On a cliff overlooking Lake Kalas, with their family home just visible in the distance.

They hug.

"Wonder what this one will name himself," he says.

"Let's find out."

Elaneth-imire pops into the palace briefly to grab some clothes for the new fork. He makes an eidetic memory necklace. He uses his landshaping power to make a nice comfortable grassy hollow, in case the new fork needs to sit down suddenly.

He closes his eyes and casts his mind back to that moment, just before he opened his eyes and saw a new world. His soul shines brightly.

And the new fork appears, eyes closed, healing aura outstretched—

—notices that he is suddenly naked and his soul is falling without its chain, opens his eyes, catches it—

—stares at the other two.

"What the fuck happened to you?" he asks Raika-seren.

"It's, uh, it's a long story." He touches his soul. "Raika-seren Taliar."

"And I'm Elaneth-imire, and you're to-be-determined."

He pulls a necklace chain out of the ground, holds it out, attaches it to the newcomer's soul. "There you go."

"...thanks." He gestures at Dawn-shining's soul as he moves to put his new necklace back on. "And, uh, congratulations? What'd you need three of us for? Is the world ending? If you need three of us because the world's ending why aren't you making three like you - is there some sort of collector who wants Taliars at all available levels of exaltation - and seriously, what the fuck did you do," he says to Raika-seren.

"Don't you love making new forks?" he says to Elaneth-imire, smiling.

"No, the world is not ending. As for what I did... I fell in love."