"I have a list..." He looks at his list.

It's a long list and nothing on it is obviously named 'prevents distraction by attractive people' or something. 

"Nothing obviously that."

"Maybe I'll ask him. I probably won't ask his mother, that'd be weird. - I should probably figure out how to braid my hair before I have her over - wonder if there's a spell for it -"

"Miranda presumably knows, she has a lot of braids. I actually have no idea if Elves find microbraids decent."

"Are they all white? Or, well, if-you-were-to-round-to-an-Earth-ethnicity -"

"The ones I met did not have the sort of hair that encourages microbraiding but they came in a variety of colors."

"I was telling Miranda I'm really looking forward to meeting my alt, he has - resources I am very envious of, he's surrounded by competent people he can delegate things to -"

"That kept coming in handy," nods Cam.

"Not counting immediate family I can count on one hand the number of people I can just - trust to do something ethically and logistically complicated and do it the way I'd have done it. Even counting immediate family there're exactly two who might think of an ethical or logistical consideration I didn't."

"Which ones?"

"You've met most of them and I take it shouldn't meet Fredrick."

"That being your version of Findekáno? Yeah I don't think Findekáno likes me."

"Wasn't in the letters, should I know -"

"...several reasons, perhaps most easily summarized is that he invented the chipwriting procedure that lets me resurrect and fork Elves and was not thrilled with what I did with it."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

"Would you - not have done it otherwise, no matter how bad things got -"

"I would not have been able to convince myself that I would definitely follow through if I made a considered decision in favor. I might have come to the considered decision but it wouldn't have mattered if I couldn't pull the trigger. It's possible I could've anyway but if I couldn't guarantee it in advance - ten days there and back of my time on-planet actually mattered."

"Is it the - numbers, or - or what -"

"It's - if something about the oath had been wrong or my verification procedure hadn't been adequate or if there'd been some other contingency we didn't think of then it would be a mistake, in addition to getting fifty-five million people killed. If something has the potential to be a mistake it's easier to do if I can make it be a smaller one after the fact. The absolute numbers ought to matter but honestly mostly didn't enter into it, I didn't have exact figures on how many instances Melkor was running or how fast and definitely didn't want to hint that I was even guessing at it lest he notice I was responsive to that information..."

"Thank you. I 

- yeah. Thank you."

"...what about that entitles me to thanks?"

"I am really good at putting myself in peoples' heads and am still struggling to fathom what it must have been like and I do not know if I could have done it and I am so, so grateful that you could and that you did."

"Well. You're welcome."