'Might work better.'

Head out, then? 

Back home.

Everything's moving right along.

(They've started getting a few relayed - and currently politely worded - requests from assorted people who knew Luthien's father to meet here, especially his brother Olwe and his old friend Finwe, though Mygwainor thinks they can ignore those for a while... And of course there's a bit more settling into their home to do, Finrod to re-befriend...)

(They can keep themselves as busy as they'd like, really.)

One new person every two weeks or so seems like a good pace for making acquaintances, at least to begin. Still leaves lots of time for just Luthien and Mygwainor, and they can adjust for friends as warranted.

Fair.

Plenty of time with her wife is no small thing.

(She does warn Luthien about some of the people she's introducing, explaining her connection to them - Mygwainor wasn't the first Melkor, nor even the tenth. Presumably whoever was the first Melkor figured out that every person in the tapestry of Arda represents a 'role' played by an 'actor,' and that in the space between Songs - after one loop ends and before the next begins - the current Melkor can shuffle actors into new roles. They can do this to their own role, too, but they'll stop remembering loops once they're no longer Melkor. The Melkor eight before her was, as far as she can tell, the first to start taking the idea of breaking the loops seriously, and the first to go through more than a handful of loops. He started a tradition of handing the role to someone you've chosen to continue the fight once you grow weary or realize you can't go any farther, and of passing down information - and eventually they discovered that the actors who were once Melkors of their line, regardless of which role they're placed in, tend to be unusually inclined to cooperate with future Melkors, even though they weren't prior to their tenure. She's set four of the previous eight Melkors in Aman this loop - as Aredhel, Celegorm, Huan, and Maglor - and the Melkor before her is Sauron right now. Celegorm, Huan, and Sauron all are the same actors as last loop, though, of those Luthien's already met.)

Should they prioritize those people?

Hm... This is a throwaway loop. No one but them will remember it (unless they change their minds on pushing forward with the loop past the Darkening), so - it's not necessary, unless Luthien wants to try and get a sense of people's personalities.

It's just -

Luthien should spend this loop around people she likes.

Kiss.

She does want to meet them this loop, even if they don't end up clicking. She wants Mygwainor to be able to be free.

Kiss.

"Best wife."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"We should ever discuss what we're doing next loop, but... We have so, so long. - I want to say centuries, it's funny how counting in sun years has stuck with me for all it's been millions of years since I was mortal... But even by the count of the Noldor, we have decades before this loop's likely to collapse."

"Then we'll take it slow."

"Alright." Small nuzzle. 

Cuddle.

A nice break. 

The years and decades slide by. Mygwainor loves the time spent by her wife's side, loves the taste of - peace, of just being Luthien's wife so openly, of no shadow hanging over their heads. She makes friends. Taunts the Valar some, but... Not a lot, really, in the grand scheme of things. Feanor gets the printing press and typewriter perfected and in production fairly quickly, and the writing output of the Noldor explodes after a short lag. (Feanor is responsible directly or indirectly for a lot of that.) The elves relax around Mygwainor over time, and she settles more fully into their house than she has...

Anywhere, really.

She takes her wife on trips too, of course, travels Aman alongside her. Tells her stories about all the wondrous things she's seen over the course of the loops - she tells Luthien the strategic parts, obviously, the default arc of history and at what points it can bend, where does it break, but most of her stories are about things Luthien's never experienced. The time before the Awakening of the Elves. The millennia of history of the Years of the Sun. The rise and fall of empires, the tragedies and triumphs, the advances and discoveries. (It's pretty clear over time that Mygwainor fundamentally considers herself aligned with humanity, finds their stories the most interesting, but of course she knows plenty about the other peoples of Arda.)

She mentions here and there whenever someone familiar to Luthien was in a different role in any given story.

It becomes apparent over the course of these that she's dancing around some things. She's never spoken more than in passing about her zeroth life, of course, except that she was a mortal and that she hated the Melkor before her, but more than that...

Sauron is on the edges of a tremendous number of her stories in some capacity or another. It's clear that a different actor, a woman, filled that role before Ares.

It's clear, also, that a different actor filled Luthien's role until recently.

Mygwainor avoids talking directly about either of those facts. She speaks in distant tones about the usual script Luthien's life follows. Avoids discussing the Sauron before Ares directly, something sad and pained in her voice when she does come up.

"What was your first life as Melkor like?" she asks, many years after they've settled.

She pauses what she's doing and shrugs, glancing away.

"I was unhappy. Melkor - Ares, the one before me - I loathed him, more than I've ever loathed anyone else. I hadn't wanted to listen to him, during the silence between Songs, but... He told me everything I needed to know and it engraved itself in my head anyways, and then he dumped me into the role."

Quiet pause. "I hated it. I raged against everything. I felt like he was manipulating me. I felt the chains of fate far more keenly than I had even in my zeroth life. I - nearly went insane, at being forced through the actions that'd destroyed me."

"...Especially since he successfully manipulated me to keep going with the loops and not just - hand off immediately at the end of my first one."

"I'm sorry."

"How did he do that?"

Longer pause.

She seems unhappy.

"One of the things he told me was how to preserve people's memories from each loop, accumulating across all loops. You can't hand them off to the next Melkor. You can't reinstate them in someone's head in the next loop - the Melkor before Ares, Ouroboros, guessed this was for the same reason we can't tell people about the loops. You can't give the next Melkor all their memories of the loops under you. You can't even preserve the memories of the Melkor before you."

"But we're - "

"Ares and Ouroboros both thought it'd really only be useful to whoever's in the last loop. That after the loops end, the rules around them - the rails on the world - will end too, and we could transfer the memories to someone."

"And Ares thought none of us had been motivated enough. That we all gave up after a few hundred or a few thousand loops. That we played it safe too much for immortals in a time loop that will only end when we surrender. That we needed to be desperate."

"He recognized he didn't care that much. He couldn't even bring himself to throw fights or lose wars on purpose. So he - picked me up, full of pain and grief and loneliness, full of loathing for the tapestry that had dictated my life, and he dropped me down next to someone he knew I wouldn't let die."

"I could've handed off to her the end of that first loop, obviously, which was where the real trap closed, because - she couldn't let me die, either. And I couldn't do that to her."

"Oh, my poor love." Tight hug.

She leans into Luthien, hugging back, and starts crying.

Pat pat.

"...Was it me? Before I was Luthien?"

Softly: "Yes."

Hug hug.