"It's a pretty great magic system."

...and Raika-seren's wings are still the prettiest. But Maitimo's are absolutely lovely and Raika-seren adores them.

"Yours really wouldn't suit me."

"They really wouldn't," he agrees. "Yours suit you perfectly." Hug. "You're so beautiful and I love you so much."

"I am so very glad I have you."

"I'm glad too."

Hug.

"You're my favourite Maitimo. In which assessment I am unapologetically biased."

"Yes, well, you're my favorite Taliar and that's not biased unless you count my general bias towards people I can count on."

He beams.

(Being made for someone the way he was leaves him very aware of how he could just as easily have been aimed at someone else if things were a little different - but he'd be a different person, a different Taliar with a different soulname and different wings. He, Raika-seren Taliar with his glorious dawn-edged feathers, belongs to this Maitimo in particular, and he wouldn't have it any other way.)

"And if we find more of me we have more data points on the success of throwing a you at them."

"Yeah. I'm wondering if it's possible to throw a me at someone without him noticing he's a present - almost certainly not, honestly, we're a very perceptive bunch - what would your advice be, if we found another you? Or would it depend too much on what else was going on with him?"

"Too much on what else was going on, but - end the war, obviously - I'd want to be told that I needed to transition the situation with Findekáno to something more sustainable but I don't know if that's - possible -"

"Oh, yeah, regardless of what else happens, the very moment anyone finds another Melkor, Elaneth-imire is smashing him flat... and I guess that depends, but I know we're not handing out any Taliars who would have to coexist with the sort of thing that was going on with you during the war, that would just be a disaster. Other people getting hurt is sort of the one thing we can't handle. Well - on second thought, I'm not saying we definitely wouldn't do that, but we'd need a really, really good reason because it would really, really fuck him up. And I'm having a hard time seeing what could make that worth it."

"No, I don't think there's any point in hurting one of you, just - kidnapping Findekáno out will really upset the me -"

"I can imagine, yeah. We'd all be quietly miserable about it but - I don't think we'd go for kidnapping because that would fuck up the optimal solution - on the other hand, we wouldn't be able to stop any Findekáno who wanted to go rescue their alt, and there's a bunch of them and many are capable of doing that..."

"I don't think they'd do that. The peal ones maybe."

"Yeah, I was thinking of the peal ones. We wouldn't let the Maitimo get hurt if we could help it, but we really can't step in to keep someone a prisoner like that."

"Yes, I know, that's why I said 'if it's possible' - we don't need to tell the peal we've found another Arda anyway -"

Hug.

"This is kind of miserable to think about but it's probably a good idea to have thought about it in advance..."

"I think there really is a solution where everyone's happy and I don't lose anyone but I recognize that the interim would be really hard on you."

"It really would."

Taliars fundamentally do not operate on an Elven timescale. A transition that would be slow enough for a Maitimo seems like it would almost certainly be a very long time of being very miserable for every Taliar in reach of the news. And they really deeply believe in not fucking up the optimal solution, so they'd do their best, but - it would hurt them a lot.

"Well, there are apparently several time dilation solutions in the works."

"...who gets time-dilated in this situation?"

"..speed them up so you lot spend less time being miserable?"

"If they'd agree to it that... works really well, I think..."

Of course, Taliars being Taliars, it's not completely satisfactory to him because it doesn't involve everything instantly being okay for everyone. But everything instantly being okay for everyone is probably not actually achievable.

"No, it's not. And I doubt they'd object."

"Well - until everything is instantly okay for everyone, we're always going to wish for better solutions. But we're not going to let wishing for better solutions get in the way of doing the best we can."