"Makes sense. I won't poke that any more, then. ...I will note for some future occasion that I've got plenty of thoughts on the topic of Telumë and his you-related decisions in the last year, but we definitely shouldn't talk about that for a nice long while. and I won't be the one to bring that conversation up first." 

"That sounds good. I - I'm glad Vanyel's okay and I hope everyone else Telumë's been relying on is okay and I wouldn't leave, if I thought he needed me. But I think it might actually be better for him to not have me, for a while."

"...Most people aren't very okay right now," Melody says after a beat or two. "Depends how you define it, I guess. We'll manage." 

"I ...can wait? It won't be great for me but - if it is actually somehow an improvement to the overall amount of post-war support network to have me sit in my cage telling Telumë about books he wrote and fucking him once he feels like we've had enough interaction to pretend it's a relationship, I - uh, maybe I'll have more trouble with it than I estimated at the start of this sentence -"

"Oh gods please don't do that?" Melody says, blinking and raising her eyebrows, which is about as horrified as she ever looks. "That won't help at all and even if it did, I - we're not putting that on you."

She folds her hands across her lap. "I guess what I wanted to say is - if it's somehow loadbearing to you feeling like you can leave, believing that Telumë is fine, then - we need to figure something else out. Because I don't feel comfortable lying to you about the state of reality, and Telumë is extremely not fine - the last few months were really bad, the last forty-eight hours were awful..." She trails off. "I don't know. Like I said earlier, I think having some space will make things better rather than worse, although also I want to figure out what's best for you without it being mostly about him. To the extent that's possible." 

"Okay. I think - 

- maybe I'll just ask Foundation? Whether to say anything before I leave, I mean, I'm definitely leaving. Presuming that Telumë doesn't decide I'm staying."

"Telumë isn't going to decide that. Honestly I think he'd let you leave even if it were the wrong strategic call, which I'm confident in saying it isn't given that Foundation is on board with it." She frowns, thoughtful. "Given that, I should grab Nayoki now and get her to give you back the ability to think about this. Do you want osanwë too? We agreed in advance that'd be fine." 

"Yes, I would."

Melody can undo the block right now, then, it'll take less than five minutes. "We've got osanwë shielding on the larger facility but I think it ought to be fine for you to talk to anyone who's around, actually. It's not like you're going to sabotage any of the god-researchers' work at this point." 

"Never actually had any angles on that. It's too technical for me and getting it wrong would be genuinely awful. ...I would've tried seeding doubts in people about their perfectly good math, so they delayed when they didn't have to."

"Heh. I suppose a god that decided to pursue some completely random and arbitrary goal wouldn't be great for Sauron's values either." She stands up. "Need anything else right now?" 

"I don't think so. Thank you. 

Is anyone I know dead?"

"...About that. I wasn't sure when to tell you, it never feels like a good time, right, but - yes, pretty much all of them. There were just over three hundred thousand Noldor volunteers. Your family...didn't think it was right, to ask them to step up and die for this and not join them. I'm really sorry." She bows her head. "That's - part of what I mean, that nobody is very okay right now. It'll be all right, though, Mandos has them." 

"Oh."

Melody looks up at him, waits to see if he's going to say anything else, and then tugs the collar of her gown straight and heads for the door. "Osanwë me if you need anything, all right?" 

"Sure."

He's left alone for about five minutes and then Nayoki is back. She gives him an appraising look, presumably with several kinds of sight other than her ordinary eyes. 

"I am just going to take everything off," she says decisively. "I think you are not in the mood to hurt people right now, so I am trusting you with that. Also there are not very many people here anyway and we all have shield-tokens so it would be quite difficult."

"Also the god! I have been sort of assuming that the god is going to make it hard for people to hurt each other. Are you doing all right? I heard it was a very bad two days."

"It was. I am doing reasonably well. ...I am not sure what Foundation would do, actually, it has not exactly come up yet. They are very strong here in the north and might just be able to shield people directly, which is not normally something gods can do. More likely all of us would get warnings if the Foresight showed you were going to do something. I make a strong prediction it does not." 

"I don't think so either. I want to come up with a reasonable non-worrying plan to leave and then go wander around. Sing to peoples' crops, maybe. Are there still, uh, people, living in villages and cities and so on..."

Nayoki actually kind of lights up. "That would be very good! There are still many people in Valdemar and Rethwellan especially living in smaller towns and villages that were not worth evacuating when Sauron started attacking, and...for the same reason, were not worth - using for our work. I have not heard much yet, but one assumes they will have many problems soon, given that less than half of the population remains and everything must be very chaotic." 

"It sounds very difficult. I would sooner help my people, but - I can't, so I will do what I can here."

"You know, I feel it would be polite of the Valar to end the banishment once you are obviously not evil anymore, but - I am not sure if that is the sort of thing they do, and also we are not exactly there yet." 

"They said twelve thousand years. I think probably they meant twelve thousand years and I would be pretty surprised if they reconsidered it in less than half that."

"Twelve thousand years! Are they always like that?"