Yep. Wonder if that's related to how we all die...

Let's plan on having you not die.

And stay dead, apparently. I don't think I'd take to it.

I could still talk to you, but it would still be a pretty impoverished existence.

And I don't think the prophecies account for you.

Yeah - like, why would we not have immortality generally available by then -

Well, it's also possible my whole family dying occurs in some catastrophe much sooner than that which sets back immortality - but still - is invading Valinor something Earth might do under sufficiently catastrophic conditions -

"Earth" per se probably not, some country of Earth it's not inconceivable but it would be very weird - especially over immortality, like, currently you have that and we don't have it scaled but we're the ones who could scale it with resources we currently have -

Over anything, we can expect Eru to react the same way -

Humans are not a peaceful species but do mostly respond to incentives, there would have to be something somebody wanted that they thought they could get that way...

Well, maybe we should publicize that what they probably get is genocidal retaliation.

...don't think so. Sounds kind of empty and Eru's not going to turn up and verify her proclivities.

It'd be a pretty ugly thing to find out by trial and error, though. Maybe we need to be very very careful with the portals.

And collect more lousy local prophecies.

How do I go about doing that systematically?

Not sure. I can ask people to tell you but it'd either have to be limited to very discreet people or we'd have to expect the Valar to find out eventually.

Would the Valar be less likely to find out if people were telling me that they would tell me in forty-five minutes...

I don't think so, the challenge here is that I can't call everyone in one by one and ask them to keep a secret without word getting out that I was doing that, if not of the content of the secret - though I guess we could check, for every single person, what they'd say if I did corner them -

It'd get kind of intractable...

Yeah.

Do some people get more of these things than others in a way that narrows it down -

Yes, no one I know well gets any because if you'd act on it you won't get it and I tend to surround myself with people who'd act on things. We just need to find very passive people who wouldn't be moved to action by anything they might get a vision about. Fancy a trip to Valimar?

You make it sound so appealing.

And I can't just give secrecy orders left and right, there. We can at least ask some people here - I have a baby cousin who gets terrible nightmares, which is almost always prophecy among Elves -

Poor baby cousin. - I wonder if they'll stop if the contents are averted.

Good question. ...should we be more emphatic to my mother about not making them gems?