Uh, I could get - some thread of comparable fineness, I guess - and show you. 

:All right. Thank you: Leareth can go find some food while Maitimo finds comparable-to-hair thread. 

It is the most difficult logistics task of the entire war but he can disassemble some clothes and mock up something they can use to practice children's braids. 

Leareth is not completely oblivious to the fact that Maitimo probably finds this less a boring subject than he does, and he is slightly amused by it, not that he shows this at all. 

This is the sort of first braid you would teach a toddler, not that he explains that, and here is how you do it and make sure it stays. It is much less complicated than the braid Maitimo has on his own head and takes only a few minutes.

Leareth is not very good at braiding his own hair but he can cheat by using magic to see what he's doing or temporarily hold bits of it still, and he manages to get it to a state that is both less constantly getting in his eyes and also presumably less inappropriate by Quendi standards.

Then they can talk about Vanyel, if it's still a good time for Maitimo. 

Sure, sounds good.

Leareth puts up a privacy-barrier for it just on general principle. 

:The first part is - well, a number of things, all stemming from the fact that I am not a very scrupulous person and that initially I had planned to invade his kingdom and he was, very blatantly, the result of the gods' intervention to stop me. I put a bounty on his head as soon as I learned of his existence, for example – I did not wish to kill him, only to find out more. I did arrange some assassination plots as contingencies. One of them accidentally happened, long after the point when I thought I had cancelled all of them; I suppose there was a miscommunication. It was rather embarrassing: he isn't embarrassed per se, embarrassment is mostly not an emotion Leareth actually feels, but it's the sort of thing that would be, :and I was quite apologetic to him about it the next time we spoke. He will probably tell you of it if you ask him about me, though, so you ought to know it from me first: 

- wow. All right. And you think he'll want to come help us? - are you going to ask him?

:I am going to try. He is more powerful than I am – it would be stupid to end up in a position where he was in the same room and also very angry. Though we are much closer to friends in recent years; it is more complicated than that, of course: and he's not sure how complicated it's gotten in the year since he informed Vanyel of his actual plan and Vanyel promptly blocked the dreams with him, though he did unblock them long enough to warn that he intended to take a year to think about it and learn more. :I think he will want to help. He cares a great deal about people – about all people, everywhere, not simply his own: 

All right.  - is having people assassinated a pretty routine thing to do in your world or are you very unusual.

:It is not something that virtuous, good people would do. It is - not that uncommon, particularly for governments. Politics in my world is often very nasty: 

They don't even - come back -

:No. Or - not in a recognizable form, except for certain ways that the gods intervene sometimes. But that would be true anyway, remember. An average human lifetime is well under ten Years: He shakes his head. :I do not like it. I avoid it when possible. I - am not an especially good person, and I am very paranoid, and so I would have done it if I judged that Vanyel would prevent my fixing the situation more permanently. I am glad I did not, in the end: 

Leareth - you landed in a foreign world and immediately decided to put yourself at substantial risk to try to fight our evil god for us. Would everyone in your world have done that?

:Probably not: he admits. :Vanyel would have - he would have taken substantially more risk to himself, in fact, though partly that is because he is less troubled by the idea of dying than I am. Some of his colleagues - might have, but their loyalties tend to lie mainly with their particular kingdom: 

Well. I think that matters a lot more to me. 

Leareth doesn't have an answer for that, so he's silent for a bit.

:Next: he says finally. :Vanyel knows my actual plan, back home: He closes his eyes. :I told him after fifteen years of speaking regularly. It - goes against all of my instincts, telling you, but Vanyel would certainly do it anyway, and arguably this is a fact about me that you deserve to know: 

- all right.

:I intended to make a new god. One that would be powerful enough to have substantial influence against the others, and also have goals more in line with people flourishing. The power required to do this is vast, and the only tenable solution I had found was a very large quantity of blood-magic. Somewhere between five and ten million lives. I would have tried to bring them back, afterward. I...am also deeply relieved that this is no longer something I am likely to end up needing to do: 

- why not?

:Because there are other worlds, there are almost certainly more than two, and if yours does not have a magical solution to the power requirement, I am going to keep looking elsewhere until I find one. Or find a more guaranteed way of bringing people back with their full selves and memories intact. I do not actually prefer murdering people: 

Vanyel plans to - help you with this?

:At the time we last spoke, he had not decided. He wanted a year to consider the matter. I think he went seeking more information about my past, from an independent source – which was eminently reasonable on his part and I approve: 

- nod. 

How were you planning to -