"I rather think more memory tampering from this world's only-sort-of-Good gods is not to my taste."

Sigh.

"It took me another three years to even notice that I was missing anything. And...

"I'm sorry. I'm torn between telling you this as a - as a friend, someone who I can trust, and. Asking. 'Why would you do this to me?'

"I think. Rationally it's more likely than not that you're real, that you're my friend Lúthien who I met after strange interplanar travel but... Emotionally, you're still Her and I'm. Scared -"

"It's okay. You saved Beren. I don't care if you think that's real, it is, and it matters."

They smile. It doesn't look strained.

I am terrified that you are going to... to take it all away, make me forget this, make me forget Istiell and then. Give me another goal that I think is my own, put me in a place where I will be useful to you.

I want to die so that you can never use me again but. Lúthien is probably real. She should. You should. Stop. me. if I try.

If you only want to die because you think this is fake I can try to stop you but I thought you had a very reliable method that was why you didn't need to worry about capture by Sauron? And I'm probably worse at keeping unwilling people alive than Sauron.

I don't really. want. to. Rationally. I will probably warn you. There was a calming song. When we first met. Curufin. It will probably work.

That I can do. 

...why do you now think I'm probably Lúthien, you didn't think that before -

...Not. Not a good time. Sorry. So sorry.

They are crying. And they no longer look like an elf. They do not seem to have noticed either of these things.

Unfortunately, other people nearby probably have.

Yeah.

She starts singing something calming.

Malak stops crying. Wipes their face.

Sorry. Sorry.

Keeps singing.

Calm.

They are not particularly focused right now, but that's OK. They're aware that they fucked something up just now, but when they try to think about that it slips away. It's not important. They can worry about it later. Now is not a time to be worrying, now is a time to be relaxing, the fuckup will still be there later (Yes! Exactly. That's the... problem...) it can wait.

(They don't want to die. They don't exactly want to live either, just...accept...things...as...they...are...)

You should look like an Elf again.

They can do that. It's not hard, if Lúthien reminds them it's important. They can be a calm elf.

And downstream.

Calm Malak doesn't think very well. They keep being a calm not-thinking-much elf until Lúthien stops singing, then

I'm OK. Sort of. Thank you. I built too much of my stability on... not thinking of her as a person. And, I don't talk about it much so it didn't come up before... I think talking through some of it might help, but it doesn't have to be now, and in private would be better. And it doesn't have to be you, I can find someone else. I, uh, probably need to explain things to everyone else here... I think we should probably go with 'friendly Maia' I'd rather not blow my cover completely...

Yeah. 

So they explain - They recently decided that they should do something about the terrible war here. They came to Endórë (No need to specify the order on those two) and took a human form when they got here so that they wouldn't scare people. There aren't any humans in Valinor to base it off of, though, when one of the elves who found them saw what they looked like he said it looked like they'd tried for human and messed up pretty badly. After that, they decided to look like an elf, because they'd heard that Endórë had humans but they hadn't seen any yet, but they were still very accustomed to that first shape, they spent a lot of time on it and it was the first one they ever did. So after Malak helped Lúthien save people from Tol-in-Gaurhoth they were kind of overwhelmed by how terrible everything was and forgot to keep looking like an elf and wound up looking like a weird human instead and they are so sorry for scaring everybody. And they swear that they're not a servant of the Enemy and all of that was true.

This reassures everyone.

And nobody who might have overheard the spoken conversation looks confused by how all this talk of mothers and sword-people and body-stealing and genocide fits in with the "I am a slightly clueless maia" story?

The people who are suspicious seem all suspicious in the 'this hallucination of escape is unconvincing' direction.

Well, trying to be a more convincing escape hallucination would probably be unhelpful.

Thank you. For listening, for stopping me.

You rescued Beren.

...You don't owe me anything for that.

Uh. Yeah, I do.