"Once you are deliriously happy you can apologize to her but then it might just seem like gloating."

"Inconveniently for future Findekané there aren't spare girl Maitimos for her to hook up with the way Finankar was able to snag an extra Space."

"Perhaps we'll find another genderswapped Arda and that Maitimë will delightedly acquire two."

"Aww."

"Though given the tendency of mes to be suicidal we should probably expect a surplus of Findekános as we find more Ardas."

"I am really hoping Ardas-left-alone-that-long are a minority."

"You don't say." To Isabella - "did you get a chance to read the standard trajectory -"

"Read the outline, yeah."

"When you tell her about it she will hug you a lot."

"...that'll be nice."

"...highly recommend asking your me to stop hurting her loved ones, it will work and she will not mind being asked to do it."

"Well, you said it'll be compatible with the not lying thing when Boots is done."

"Yes but she still might not default to it rather than to 'maximally annoy Sauron if this is Sauron'."

"I'll bear that in mind. Saurons are annoyed about having successfully made their victims averse to physical affection, really? -"

"No, not at all, but they love it when we go to them willingly."

"Ah."

"...I don't know how determined to navigate that in particular you are, but - every time she'll expect it to turn into something else halfway through, that's the whole point - and you can tell yourself that you'd rather just know, but it's still hard to make yourself seek it out -"

"I'm not in a hurry." Ruefully: "I can lucid dream. But - hugs would be nice."

"I do not expect hugs to be a problem at all."

Nod. "Boots is useful. I've got more oomph but she doesn't have to meditate on a skill she wants for five to ten years before it comes in and she's got actual training, I was expecting to have to spend ages on collecting whatever dubious this-and-that and turning it into some kind of regimen and half-guessing on whether she'd even want me to go through with it..."

"Honestly? She could have put herself back together, she just didn't need to and it's horribly unpleasant. If the war'd still been ongoing she'd have done it."

"Well. Instead she got to spend a while in a coma and now I can put Elves in comas. She didn't even need to eat, the soul-controlling-the-body thing stretches that way under the right push apparently."

"That's useful. ...it wasn't you, it's that - the first time we put ourselves together and it's so awful but there's the promise that you'll have forever once you just get it together, and then it's a lie, and the second time and the third time you push just as hard because in principle you should act like it's real except insofar as it helps the Enemy and this doesn't, and then eventually it becomes harder and harder to do it just on the off chance it were real and mattered and didn't just open you up to hurt even more when it turns out to be a lie -"

"- what will it have done to have gone in knowing that it was definitely feasible for Isabella to kill the Enemy, though?"

"I have no idea - she's probably going to be significantly psychologically healthier than in the standard trajectory, because of that and also the averted horrors, but in addition to everything else Sauron had psionics to play around again -"