"Am I keeping you up?"

"No, Valinor makes me need sleep less. It's handy."

"That is useful! I'll stop stealing your time anyway, we both have suddenly lots more to do."

"- okay."

"...need anything before I go apprise everyone of our Vala choreography?"

"Do you want to try setting things up so I can knock the ring off the desk? It might be meaningfully different from your sister finding taking over Earth intractable."

"Okay. I don't- know how long it'll take someone to find what we'll need - I'll ask -"

Nod.

And after a while a confused servant will bring them the sort of twine Tirion uses for transporting marble, what do they need it for. (Maitimë does not explain herself.)

Isabella doesn't explain either.

Looking ahead -

Once the ring is moved she's not obliged to do anything in particular.

Isabella passes this on and spares Maitimë the actual use of the twine.

What convenient power. "Thanks. And thanks for thinking of this, fixing orcs would be really good."

"You're welcome."

And she gets back to work.

Alex later wakes up and shops for psions and brings through a load of miscellaneous stuff down the portal hole and hey is this thing on. She guessed? She's not sure but she guessed.

If I'm going to crush on girls I should probably get better at lying. Uh. Well. All the material facts are still the same.

Her guessing is not a material fact?

Should I be considering it one?

I dunno what does material fact even mean.

We shouldn't actually try to have a relationship for various reasons all of which are still true.

Okay but if she gets more confident in the guess she might try to have a conversation about it, heads up. She asked me if I thought you might have a crush on her and I said 'do I look like Dear Abby' but like now she's paying attention.

I appreciate being alerted to this.

I am just the agent of Shoulder Bella here.

Huh?