Leareth thinks that Vanyel would enjoy seeing Tirion, and in an abstract sort of sense he would like being the one to show him around, but actually doing it now sounds exhausting and he isn't sure he could manage it. 

"That makes sense. It can wait until we have a sun, anyway. I bet it'll look nicer with a sun, especially to humans."

"Probably. We do not see as well in the dark." Leareth wonders if he could borrow Maitimo's eyes still, since he no longer has access to any Thoughtsensing. 

I think you should be able to - he tries pushing his senses towards Leareth so Leareth can see through his eyes. 

"Oh!" He's surprised it works. "...I want to look at the stars this way." It's probably a lot better than with human eyes. 

Maitimo can see about twenty times as many stars as he can. They have lots more variance in color, too.

It's beautiful. It gets a breath of awe and almost a smile from him. He looks at them for a long time. 

"...How is a sun going to work, given that your world is flat?" he thinks to ask finally. "Our world circles around a star. Though in the past many people thought that the sun circled us instead. I imagine neither would work here." 

"They're going to have a Maia tow it across the sky in a chariot."

Huh. "Will it be the same Maia all the time or will they have a chance to trade off and take breaks? I would get rather bored doing such a job, but perhaps there is a Maia out there who wishes nothing more than to be responsible for pulling the sun." 

"I don't know who they picked but I don't think Maiar get bored, really. There's one who makes sure all the rocks in an area are in heaps of the right size. It's some mathematical property that makes sizes allowed or disallowed, and it's one that's hard to calculate, and when the mathematicians in Valimar think they've discovered a new largest one they go ask her."

"That is - very cute, actually." Another faint smile. 

"Maiar are mostly lovely. - except Melkor's, which are mostly dead, now, we're pretty sure."

"Mmm." Leareth doesn't really want to think about Melkor right now. He was doing reasonably well so far thinking about all of the things in the world that aren't Melkor. 

"There are Maiar who care very much about one particular river running a particular way, and over time the lay of the land changes from the winds and the waters but if you're very very stubborn you can keep your river running just the way it used to, sometimes going uphill. There are Maiar who tend to herds of deer, making sure they don't get injured or have more children than they can feed."

"Were they - made to care that way, when the world was created? Or did they end up with a set of priorities at random–" 

- flicker of memory - standing in a stone room in front of a Vala's throne -

THE ELVES BELIEVE THAT ERU'S VISION FOR THE WORLD WAS THAT IT WAS PERFECT LIKE THEIR PARADISE, WITHOUT HARDSHIP OR LOSS OR TRAGEDY. 

THIS IS NOT WHAT ERU ENVISIONED. ERU ENVISIONED A GRAND WAR OF GOOD AGAINST EVIL, IN EVERY STEP OF WHICH GOOD WOULD LOSE FOR AS LONG AS IT WAS POSSIBLE. 

"Ack," Leareth says, and huddles up against Maitimo. As if that's going to do anything to help. 

- snuggle. "...I think they were made that way? So there'd be someone to appreciate every feature of the world. But for them it's like finding it...they wander through the world until they encounter something that's more interesting than anything else, and then they know."

"Oh. Interesting." Maybe Maiar are not the best topic of conversation right now. ...Actually, if he can find the courage to look at it again, maybe he should try to find out what the rest of that snippet of memory was about. It seemed like not-torture and maybe actually interesting, and if everything is going to remind him of Melkor anyway he might as well do something productive with that rumination. 

Hug. 

Does Maitimo have paper around? 

THE ELVES BELIEVE THAT ERU'S VISION FOR THE WORLD... 

...is this even the same memory? Leareth isn't totally sure. 

I AM NOT THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLES OF ARDA EXCEPT INCIDENTALLY. I AM THE ENEMY OF THEIR GOD. 

- gah there is a lot of speech here and it's really hard to stay focused on it for long, he keeps ending up in different rabbitholes of memory which are way less productive to dwell on. Also while it's definitely a lie, it's not that convincing of one; he really hopes he didn't fall for this, he would be very unimpressed with himself. 

I PROPOSE THAT WE ASSIST EACH OTHER IN SOLVING PROBLEMS THAT NEITHER OF US CAN SOLVE ALONE...

This is exhausting to wade through but Leareth is worried that if he lets go of it, it'll take him months to find it again in the mess of out-of-order memories over five years. 

...He remembers asking for a night to think. Remembers - some of those thoughts, that part is a lot less clear than the words, but he does remember being afraid. Afraid of what it would mean to give up - to risk dying forever...

Hug. 

Do you want, uh, fact-checking on the evil god, or just hugs, or ...

Maybe fact-checking at the end – he wants to see if he can figure out what he did in this one. 

He remembers being very unsure of almost everything. But - thinking that it wasn't under his control, anymore. That allying with a god he had solid reason to think was opposed to everything he cared about wasn't right, and here and now was a terrible place to let Melkor try to convince him otherwise, and–

–and deciding it was all right, if it turned out Melkor was telling the truth and could kill him and make sure he didn't come back, because Maitimo and Vanyel were out there, and there were other worlds, and somehow, someone else would make sure Velgarth and everywhere else got fixed in the end–

–and walking up to Melkor and - some sort of exchange about oaths - and then declining to help, at which point there's a very sharp discontinuity and he has to wrench himself back to the here-and-now to avoid ending up in the horribletorturepit again. 

- hug.

I'm really really glad you're not dead.

"So am I." 

He wants to do fact-checking on it now but - no it seems like the thing happening instead is that he's going to be really upset about it. Great, very helpful. 

You handled yourself really well, though.

He would have had to have been very stupid to have fallen for that, Leareth thinks. He's not sure what Maitimo can possibly think he did well, as opposed to 'not disastrously.'