Telumë prefers to avoid thinking about Maitimo at all when he's in war-related meetings, to the extent he can, so this suits him fine. 

"Our logistics for the very rapid version are as solid as they are going to get," he says. "If Sauron forces our hand then we will be able to accomplish all of it in - seventy-two hours, if we do all of it in one go. Closer to thirty-six hours if we do the first stage now and it survives transit, since the most important checkpoints are after that stage. We have rapidly assemble-able components for a number of permanent Gates within Arda, which can be assembled by Quendi and will not require a mage to activate. The permanent terminus for the inter-world Gate will require one of us, but there is only one so that ought to be more feasible. All of the plans for transportation are in writing and I can distribute them so that the relevant people can prepare in advance." 

He glances around. "With the artifacts, I ought to have enough mages for the plan, although barely." If Sauron had moved sooner than this, they could have done it anyway, but with somewhat reduced chances of even succeeding at the last stage, and with - a lot of mages dying of backlash, probably. "If the Star-Eyed decides to approve this, we will have a number of Tayledras mages as well, who can do energy-channeling if not the parts that require more specialized training. This would offer more margin of error so I hope She does agree to it. Also I have some actual plans for how to feed a network of Heartstones into either the second stage or the last one - it would be better for the second stage but we might not have a decision from Her in time, if we end up needing to do the fast version."

Telumë hesitates for a moment before going on. "I am not fully confident on any of the god-specifications, but much more so than I was. If it were my choice alone, I think I would approve doing the first stage now, in Arda - have we checked that the Valar will not interfere? - and for going ahead with all of it if it were to become urgent." 

"I have not checked whether the Valar will interfere."

"They wouldn't promise not to but our estimation is that it's unlikely."

"Vanyel, what do you think?" 

"I mean, what's our backup plan if they do decide to interfere? Gate it out? Hope they're too squeamish to kill something that's around as sapient as a Maia?"

"A Gate would also risk making it obvious to Sauron, but significantly less so. We do frequent Gates. This one would have a larger power-flare but we could partly conceal that by using a permanent threshold with an Arda artifact powering it, and doing it behind very thorough shielding." 

"Is there, er, an upper limit on how long we can keep the first stage godlet in your basement? Will it get bored or something?" 

Telumë chuckles despite himself. "No. It will require some much lower level of ongoing power input to keep it 'alive', if we are talking months, but the Silmarils and a handful of mages to channel them every so often ought to suffice." 

"If it were my choice, I'd set up the transit plan for it just in case the Valar do object, and then do the first stage now, and hope we can do the tests in Arda because that's a lot simpler. But it's up to more people than just me." 

"I agree that we should do it now. Buying thirty six hours later is worth some risk of annoying the Valar and having to leave early."

"I do not have very much stake in this exact part, but I agree with your considerations." 

Telumë glances around the room. "Then...I suppose we get ready for that. I will need to arrange to Gate over the people on my side who will be doing most of the casting." 

"And you need thirty volunteers?"

"Yes. Or a hundred humans, but if we know we have thirty volunteers then I would prefer that for obvious reasons." 

"We think we'll have three hundred thousand, we definitely have thirty."

He nods. "Thank you." 

"Of course. We're all busy," he says, and stands to leave.

Dara exchanges a smile with Treven. Fëanáro is so cute when he does that. 

Telumë hangs back to speak to the Valdemarans. "Unless you need me for any preparations here, I will head back to Velgarth and collect my people." Which ought to take about twelve hours, they're at separate compounds and he'll only want to do one inter-world Gate.

(Which means he might be able to fit in a couple of hours in a particular beautifully-decorated room tucked away in the basement of his command centre...) 

They're moving on something, he suspects as soon as he sees him. Not in a panic, or Telumë wouldn't be here - so moving on it at their own pace, because they're ready. 

It's terrifying. Not just because his side might lose- he has no idea what'll happen there, he still suspects that if Sauron manages to summon Melkor then it won't matter how friendly the Velgarth gods are to Telumë and his allies - but because it is, in its own right, terrifying the thing they're trying to do. It could go horribly wrong. Telumë is very conscious of it. 

And if he wanted to spend the next several hours thinking about it he'd have gone somewhere else, that's not what Maitimo's for.  He casts around for other threads of thought. "Did you write so many books because they were a useful way to catch yourself up, or to convince other people? Because I feel like you-these-days could've been much more convincing about the merits of banking."

Telumë sits down beside him, rests his hand on Maitimo's knee. "I think both, though informing more than convincing. I have sometimes written a book where the intent was to be very persuasive, but - that would be much more your strength, really. Usually I would simply describe a field to the best of my knowledge at the time, and other scholars could build on that if they wished. I think many did." 

He leans over and kisses him. He wonders whether Telumë will kill him to build his god. He hasn't yet, obviously, but now he's in the situation of planning to kill lots of people to do it, and that makes not killing Maitimo far more marked, it's saying that some other people deserve to die instead and that's unmistakably false. "I guess it's kind of friendlier to future scholars to not set them the task of un-filtering the evidence you sent them. The way I would do it would be to have the book be very persuasive and the appendices shaped more to be accurate, so that people who want to make progress can but people who are putting less than an hour of effort into this will just get shoved in the more useful direction."

"Also friendlier to my future self, I think, who has likely forgotten all about that obscure field, but who might know enough to end up being more correct about it than my past self who wrote the treatise was." Telumë leans against him. He's grown a little in the year that he's had possession of his current body; in particular, his hair is now long enough to braid, though it's wavy enough to not be entirely cooperative with this. He still undeniably looks like a teenager, though, just a somewhat less tiny one. 

"I missed you," he adds. 

"Missed you more. You should let me have a calendar, that says 'days since Telumë came over', and reset it when you visit, so I know whether or not I am being unreasonable missing you."

"I will take that idea under consideration." Telumë is still a bit distracted, but - no, there's no point doing this if his mind is still on other things. He shifts his full attention to his husband. Considers what he wants, today, here and now. 

(To be held, reassured, to be told he's doing the right thing–)

(To talk through everything on his mind, all the considerations, get one final opinion–)

He can't have either of those things, and his mind won't quite settle on what else he wants. "So?" he says lightly. "What have you been getting up to - any new art pieces to show me?"