I wouldn't have exactly suggested in precisely this frame that if you wanted to borrow my ability to do telepathy stuff to anybody in five worlds as though at touch range just by knowing who they are you could let me read your mind but since you already did it I can acknowledge it really didn't hurt.

:Fair enough. I had not even considered that axis, to be clear - I mostly was thinking that it matters a great deal to me if you can help my alt be okay again, and showing you my mind seemed to be a prerequisite. Anyway, yes, I would like to borrow the earcuff and speak with Vanyel: 

She confirms the time and comes up and offers it to him.

Leareth thanks her and takes it and tries to find the Vanyel from his alt's world.

:...Leareth?: 

:I hear you wished to speak with me: 

:I did, er, I do. I had some clarifying questions about the shielding work you sent over. Also, um. I heard you let Bella read your mind and I'm really surprised: 

:It makes sense that you are surprised. She has demonstrated significant trustworthiness, and I find myself in a situation where the upside to trusting her is high. Also her powers mean that if I am to work with her at all, which I am kind of committed to since she rescued my alt from Angband and possesses the only means of contact with you, she could read my mind with or without my consent, so there is hardly much protection in refusing. Also, I expected that her having true information on me would lead her to cooperate more rather than less, which it did: 

:Hmm:

(That really does convincingly sound like Leareth. Then again, Leareth is the one they should most expect that Melkor could pull off... He's not sure.) 

He asks some questions about magic. Leareth continues to convincingly sound like himself. At one point, he says he needs thirty seconds to look something up.

Vanyel takes a deep breath. :Maitimo?: 

Yes?

:Talking to the 'Leareth' over there. He - sounds like him, a lot, but I had the thought you might be able to tell better. Or learn more from it in general. Want to talk with him after? It's direct, not relaying through her: 

Sure. 

Then Vanyel will suggest it to the local Leareth, who's a bit confused but agreeable to it. 

And Leareth takes Vanyel's careful instructions for trying to reach Maitimo, who he hasn't met any version of, and gives it a go. :Are you hearing this?: 

Leareth. I can hear you. Thank you for talking Vanyel through your magic research; I can imagine that the position your world is in with respect to this war must be very frustrating.

Leareth starts taking notes. 

:You are welcome. I can only be grateful that you have Vanyel there - more, a Vanyel with whom my alt had an additional almost fifteen years to speak. He seems very clever and competent: 

He's wonderful. I have been reminding myself that I have a deeply unusual sample of humans and probably they are not all like the two of you but if they are we are quite outmatched. 

...Wow. 

:Most people are not like Vanyel, tragically. The Vanyel in my world is eighteen years old, and it is already quite apparent that he is exceptional. I can see why the other Leareth invested so many years and so much effort - and costly signs of good faith - in attempting to build trust with him. You met another me, you must have noticed that trust is not something I do easily: 

Sigh. :Most people are not like me either, and - that might be a good thing, I am not sure: 

I cannot think of anyone with your resources it would have been better to have land on us. Melkor had driven the factions of the Noldor to the brink of a civil war despite our repeated best efforts to mend bridges and it hadn't even occurred to us, that that was the sort of thing that might be enemy action, enough bad luck in the wrong places - 

:...That is something I would be well placed to notice: 

It took you about five minutes. 

I think you are probably also well-placed to be sympathetic to our dilemma, here, with using the resources your world has to offer in our war. We are not so confident that Melkor could not imitate or listen in on your communications, and that you're not working for him, as to want to say anything about whether we expect to win the war without help, on what timeframe we expect to do that, how much or what kind of help we think we'd benefit from, and how badly we want it. Those are conditions under which I'd find it pretty annoying to be dedicating a lot of effort to those things we have asked about.

The thing Leareth is thinking is that he can absolutely see why his alt got along well with this person - enough that Maitimo was one of only two people he specified by name ought to receive updates, even though they hadn't known each other long at all. 

:I understand perfectly and I would not wish you to be sharing any more than you have been. Also, Vanyel has said enough, in his requests, that I can make some guesses. You have a plan for which Vanyel's magic alone would suffice, and would be safer in a sense than asking our aid, which requires you to gamble on our trustworthiness. I would be very reluctant to take such a gamble, in your place! That being said, you also know that Melkor is aware of Velgarth magic, and can both detect and cancel it, and this downside would not be present with Bella's arcane magic. But you are, quite appropriately, still not willing to share any information that Melkor could use to win, if he had it, even if us having that information would allow us to help more, in the scenario where we were indeed on your side: 

Yes. But if there are additional resources and effort that might usefully be pointed at the demonstration of your capabilities we asked for, I think they'd be well spent.

:I agree. It is unclear if resources that I command directly can be usefully pointed at that, but I will see what I can do: 

He's silent for a moment. 

:I see why you were so memorable to my alt: he sends finally. :We - think alike, in some ways: 

He had some useful styles of thinking to learn from.