"All right!" She clasps her hands in front of her. "Do you want a hug goodbye?"  

"That sounds lovely." He has no idea what he wants and isn't going to think about it for at least a week.

Kalira hugs him, sort of carefully and gingerly, and then bounces and smiles and then heads out. 

Maitimo lies back down and sings to himself for a very long time.

Vanyel Gates back from Velvar two days later, as soon as the Healers in the small outlying Healing house that he found in Ashuel think Telumë is recovered enough from backlash to be moved. Vanyel isn't exactly feeling great himself, but he didn't get hit nearly as hard in the final battle, and it seems better to be back in home territory sooner rather than later. It hasn't been a very restful few days, given how anxious he's been about ensuring Telumë's safety while he's basically completely helpless and in a place where his god has very little power. 

He stumbles into the Gate-terminus room with Telumë in his arms, hands him off to some Healers as soon as he can, and then exhaustedly makes his way to find Melody. 

Ten minutes after that he's at the door of Maitimo's room. Which is open, he notices. "Hey," he says, putting in substantial effort to keep his mouth from slurring the word, he's so tired but it seems important to have this conversation before rather than after he flops somewhere and sleeps for the next day. 

"Hey. - you look dead on your feet."

"Kind of. It's been - a wild ride. I, er, came to tell you," he leans on the doorframe, "that - Telumë isn't very up for seeing you, although if you really wanted to he thinks he could manage. He thought you probably didn't want to." 

"I don't. I'm leaving. Foundation said I could."

Vanyel nods. "Melody told me. It seems like a pretty good idea to me. She was waiting for Telumë to get back, but - I don't actually think this should be Telumë's decision. Telumë doesn't think it should be his decision. So, um, it seems to have ended up on me instead, and I'm fine with it? As long as you have a plan that's safe for you. The north would be safe, it's Foundation's core territory, but we're less sure of Valdemar and Rethwellan, and Vkandis seems to have decided to lock down the borders to Karse and Iftel." 

"If you wanted to give me a shield-talisman that'd be neat but I expect I can make do. And I also expect if I die now it won't be such a mess, without an oath Mandos doesn't know how to work with and what with being dead apparently being in fashion among the Noldor."

Vanyel nods. Looks down. "I'm really sorry." He looks like maybe he wants to say more, but doesn't. 

He can infer from the things that people in the research center were thinking about what must have happened to almost every single person still in Velgarth who Vanyel knows. "A lot of people paid a lot for this. Let's just - use it, to rest and recover, and eventually - uh the best thing for a Quendi in your situation would be thousands of years of wandering around singing but probably that's not actually best for you - 

- Kalira has decided she's going to figure out how to resurrect birds, since some of them are probably smart enough they don't want to die. We can - hand things off to her generation, for a while. Wait for the dead to come back. And then I bet there'll be a way forward, even if I don't see it right now, and it won't take thousands of years."

Vanyel nods. "You know. I really didn't think I'd be coming here and having you reassure me, but - in hindsight I'm not actually surprised, and - thank you."

He massages the palm of one hand with the other. "I still have Stef. The Valdemaran government-in-exile is still alive - Trev wondered about, er, whether he ought to include them in the sacrifice like your family did, but it's sort of different, right - the Noldor have enough left for someone to be in charge in the interim, and also Arda isn't the world where the war was happening. Valdemar is in really bad shape, what with...everything... They've left already, to try to pick up the pieces." 

His eyes are burning. "Karis is dead. And Arven. They were - in Sunhame - Vkandis... She must've known it was happening. I - we had so little time, I wanted to Gate in and pull her out but we couldn't even spare a minute to do that... I think probably they're coming back? But I don't actually know, we - didn't have Mandos at that point to negotiate with Vkandis about the souls of the dead. I should probably collect him at some point, actually, as far as I know he's still sitting in the middle of a giant crater in Jkatha. Long story." 

Hug?

If Maitimo's offering a hug then Vanyel will super accept it. He's - pretty unsure where Maitimo is at, emotionally, but it didn't feel right to pester Melody about that, and it seems unlikely it'll help to ask him. 

"We'll give you a shield-amulet," he says. "You should ask Foundation for the instruction on how to talk to them anywhere - it's not too complicated, apparently, you might even be able to consecrate a portable shrine and take that with you. And, er, I'm not in great shape for Gating again right now, but I could do it later today if you want. Most of Telumë's mages are stuck out in the Pelagirs near k'Treva for, um, reasons. Do you have thoughts on where exactly you want to be dropped off? I can do just about anywhere in Valdemar - I can't do Rethwellan but Jisa could, if you wanted to do two hops..." 

Hug. "Valdemar sounds good. I can tell people what happened, sing to fields of crops and so on. And I'm not in that much of a hurry, you can get some sleep and take some time and do it in a couple of days."

"All right." Vanyel considers whether there's anything else useful to say, and decides there isn't, so he nods to Maitimo. "I'll tell Melody." 

"And then lie down and get Stef to sing to you."
 

"I think he's been waiting to do that for days." 

And Melody is in about ten minutes. She's smiling. "So you're headed out in a few days? Here - I got you one of the shield-talismans that does Thoughtsensing too." 

(It doesn't shield Mindhealing Sight, because that sort of shield is very hard to do. She'll be able to see his tapestry just fine.)

"Thank you. Yes, I don't think Van should be doing any more Gates right now but I think it'd be good for me to leave soon."

"For the sake of all the gods, did he offer to do one for you right now? Vanyel. Why is he still like this." Sigh. "Usually Nayoki could do it, but even if you bounce her your sense-memories of Haven, I don't think Haven is going to be very recognizable at this point. Anyway. The thing I want to do right now, if you'd like, is to bounce you my Sight of your mind? It'll be just the structure, not any thought-content, but - I would feel better about all of this if you had that context." 

"Sure, go for it."

"Jisa's Sight-metaphor would work better for this, I think, but this'll do." She Looks, then makes it public to him. 

Quendi minds show up as more structurally complex and multilayered than human ones, but Melody is pretty used to that at this point, and can give him 'views' that are the easiest to interpret, and commentary as needed. The most noticeable part is that the overall tapestry has been wrenched into a very weird shape; the places where the oath touched, which is almost all of the places actually, are still visible as a sort of negative space, and the tapestry is kind of pinned into that shape still by various bits and pieces of Melody's work, both the scaffolding maintained in advance and some later patches where the scaffolding wasn't quite sufficient. 

The shape is roughly what it was two days ago - Melody can bounce him a blurrier memory of that - but the patterns of strain are shifting, redistributing, ending up more uneven and concentrated in some places more than others, where different areas are clearly in tension with each other. It looks very fragile, actually. The kind of structural support Melody can put in is much, much weaker than what the oath was doing. 

There are hints around the edges of patterns woven fresh in the last few days, which aren't really part of the oath-enforced configuration or especially related to it, but they're very thin edges so far. A lot of regions in the tapestry are mostly folded-up and dark, not being accessed.

"I wanted to show you this because, as you can see, this is not very stable," Melody says calmly. "I can't tell where exactly it'll break first, I think that'll depend on - what thoughts you end up deciding to have, in what order, maybe what experiences you run into - but something is going to break, probably pretty soon, and it'll be very noticeable. I find myself wanting to offer you some way to contact me, if you're somewhere in the middle of nowhere and feel like you can't cope - I'm not sure messages with that kind of specificity are the sort of think Foundation can bounce around between people, and it's not really what they're for, anyway - but I would also understand if you really prefer not that." 

"I prefer not that." It will probably hurt, a lot, when he gives himself time to think, when he figures out which pieces of himself he's going to give up in order to continue to get to do things in the world, it will probably leave him in pieces, but he doesn't want any of them to get any part in it.