"Are you okay."

"Never better," Raika-seren assures him. "So, here's the deal. There are other worlds! Strange worlds full of strange people! A year or so ago, at exactly the moment you're forked from in fact, we were minding our own business using our healing aura and suddenly we were in a different world in the throne room of a foreign king. We fell in love with him. He's honestly amazing, you should see his kingdom, it's - it's so obvious that he cares? But don't fall in love with him, because we need you not to be, because there are complications."

He taps his soul.

"This is because I found out he was a rapist and didn't take it well. And that's the moment I'm forked from, out of Dawn-shining's past, because an entire other version of Dawn-shining's husband from an entire other version of his world showed up in our neighbourhood dragging his entire planet behind him, fleeing from some well-intentioned people who treated him very badly because of how he was handling his personal life, and he didn't have a Taliar and Dawn-shining wanted him to and - it wouldn't have worked, if the fork had been a sun-bright god-killer like Dawn-shining, it would've been too... intimidating. So he made me and he said 'this is my beautiful glorious husband, who has an alt in need of a me, and you can either stay with us and be uncomplicatedly happy forever, or go hand yourself over to the sad alt and probably suffer a lot but eventually you'll both be this happy'."

"Is my job by any chance to mediate between the well-intentioned people and your beloveds."

"That's about the size of it, yeah."

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asks, mostly to Raika-seren but somewhat to both of them.

"I swear on my soul, I have never been happier and I don't regret a thing. And this," he gestures to his brightly glowing soul, "is him. This is being married to Maitimo."

"I swear on my soul that I love him and it's worth it and I am genuinely delighted to be with him and would fight to stay if anyone tried to take me away. I knew what I was getting into and I regret nothing and never will."

"...all right," says the new fork. "I'll hear the full explanation and then I'll do what you made me to do."

Unspoken: and if they ever need rescuing, he's there.

Elaneth-imire sends memories. Not everything, and in particular not anything he thinks will lead to the new fork falling in love, but enough to give him a solid picture.

He doesn't need to address the part about ever needing rescuing. That just sort of gets straightened out incidentally in the course of explaining the rest.

Raika-seren contributes the memories of his conversation with the peal.

"...Well," he says. "This is going to be fun, isn't it."

His soul shines blue, deep and clear and beautiful, like a summer sky. And it doesn't stop, it doesn't fade like normal soul reactions, it just keeps right on shining. He looks down at it, touches it, looks up at his alts.

"Liran-alore," he says. 'Summer-blue'.

"Nice to meet you. Get some clothes on. And this," says Dawn-shining, handing him the eidetic memory necklace. "I need to give you the teleporting magic."

"I'm redundant to this endeavour at this point, I think," says Sun-dark. "Enjoy your impossible task."

"Oh, you bet I will."

He pops home to Midnight's palace.

...it occurs to him to wonder - well. Midnight did Yeerk him, so presumably he won't be that surprised by how wildly out of control this simple task has gotten. And the Internet is definitely on its way, and more good things are coming after it.

What happened?

I, um, had a bit of a Taliar moment, and 'get you the Internet' turned into 'have Dawn-shining make an extra fork devoted to convincing the peal to stop being so stupid about you'.

He organizes the memories and sends them all.

You can see why I had to get my people out.

They need a change in perspective very badly. But there's a Taliar on the job now, so it's only a matter of time.

I hope you're right.

I hope so too, he says, and his soul shines blue for a moment.

Speaking of which - Do you want my soul back while I'm at home, or would it be more convenient if I kept it until I'm done bouncing between worlds?

Go ahead and keep it. Are there ways short of dramatic declarations from me to get it up to strength -

I don't know about dramatic declarations, I don't actually know what got Elaneth-imire's soul to acknowledge Tivarante except in the vaguest possible terms, but if you want my soul stronger you can introduce me to lots of people I'll get along with, it's slow but it works - oh, and I think Elaneth-imire's soul took another significant jump when Tivarante married him, but that still required his soul to acknowledge Tivarante in the first place... I suppose you could find someone else as amazing as you for me to fall in love with, but I can't imagine where you'd get such a person...

Yeah.

I love you. I'm sorry my soul is so inconveniently conflicted about that. If I could argue it into godhood for you I would, but I'm sure Elaneth-imire tried that and given that it took him months instead of days for him to win the war after my point of departure, I'm going to assume it didn't work. You could go ask Tivarante for advice...?