Oh, I'm going too. Obviously we can't do the time travel part anyway, but I'm pretty sure at this point that Endórë isn't any more dangerous than here, and I want to see what they've been up to.

(She has been, during Fëanor's conversations with the Valdemarans and the time travel trial, checking their math. It looks pretty good, but she's definitely going to poke some fun at Calanáro for using literally all of Formenos' computers to brute-force a problem whose solution she'd been taught when she was thirty.)

(Tony and Bruce are, obviously, going back.)

Vanyel spends the entire five minute wait pacing frantically, and then feels like an idiot about this once Leareth turns out to be, obviously, fine. 

"...I guess we should ask about going back, if it's possible we can." 

Randi squeezes Shavri's hand again. He's...sort of finding himself hoping it won't turn out to be possible? Which is weird, and also obviously something he's going to ignore, but - well, it's not like he ever liked being King. 

"- I would like to see the god-domain that would allow me to see what is happening on Velgarth, if it is not too much of a delay." 

"It's—somewhat on the way."

He starts packing up their equipment to be loaded onto the ship, and as he does so—

Maitimo?

Maitimo is sitting in the library with Macalaurë, reading a horribly polemical Elvish-written history of Endórë in the Fifth Age, and comparing it with his brother's memories of the same time.

Father?

We are getting ready to go back. What did you learn from Leareth?

He is very difficult to read; I would doubt that I got anything from him that he didn't want me to have. I have seen no indication he isn't one of the Secondborn, but I suspect him to be much older than he looks. I would doubt that he is overly fond of gods. I would not assume he had any reason for coming here other than to undo Thanos' mass murder, but if he ends up with a chance to get the Infinity Stones I doubt he will go home quietly either. He is—intensely loyal—to someone or something, to the point of continuing to work at his goals through great suffering, but I cannot tell to whom or what.

Is he someone we can work with?

Yes.

But I would not recommend it if you mean to betray him afterwards.

I want you to come with us. Our inability to travel through time complicates things. We will need allies, and he—seems like the best option, at the moment.

When they board the ship to fly to Taniquetil, and from there to Earth, Maitimo sits next to Leareth. He doesn't say anything.

Leareth is quiet as well. He's thinking. 

Mostly, right now, he feels - hopeful? Which is a little like exercising a muscle he hasn't used in months. It's tiring. 

He has allies. He has Vanyel. They have time travel - for a limited number of people, but no longer a limited number or distance of trips, if Fëanor is right. He's not sure to what extent they have a plan, other than that, but - 

- but the familiar bedrock trust-in-himself that he's built over centuries, that the Snap shook so badly, is creeping back. He'll figure something out. 

Vanyel snuggles up against Yfandes and watches Leareth. 

At this point Maitimo is pretty sure the best thing to do with Leareth is just tell him their plan. Possibly as let's-not-resurrect-the-gods rather than let's-kill-them-outright, but probably Leareth would not take too much issue with the idea that they should not cause the world to contain more incomprehensible alien entities with the power to utterly destroy people's lives.

He doesn't do that, yet, because his father would have a fit.

They land at the top of a mountain that is, in terms of relief above the surrounding land, more than twice as high as any on Earth or Velgarth. The air up here is so thin that, even though it's still daytime, the sky is almost black.

The mansion of Manwë and Varda looks more like a space station built with Elven architectural sensibilities than it does a house. They are, in fact, almost in space. The ship docks directly to it, to keep the air inside from being sucked out.

They get off the ship and walk down a long, empty hallway whose floor is a cold, hard material that's neither metal nor stone nor glass, and emerge beneath a huge transparent dome.

There's a goddess there waiting for them. Those of Velgarth might confuse her for the Star-Eyed; she definitely has stars in her eyes. Her color scheme is reversed, though: black hair and white robes instead of the opposite. She's supernaturally beautiful in a way that's almost painful to look at and yet nearly impossible to look away from.

HELLO, she says. WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE?

Leareth walks into the dome and - stops. Stands rooted to the spot, captivated by the glittering velvety depth of that sky. It feels...three-dimensional, in a way that the stars as seen from Earth never do; not just a dome dotted with lights, but a vast universe. 

It's the first time that he's really LOOKED at the stars, since he learned that there were millions of inhabited worlds out there. Trillions of people. 

Half of them dead, now. 

He freezes in a completely different way when the goddess speaks to them. 

"- My lady?" King Randale says uncertainly. He's not sure of the correct form of address for a god. "I - we heard we could...see our world, from here?" 

:Is she the one who might be able to send us home?: Shavri adds to Fëanor. 

Vanyel rests his cheek against Yfandes mane and looks at the sky. Then at Leareth. He has a sudden, random and pointless urge to offer him a hug. Leareth is probably not the sort of person who likes hugs. 

Eleniel steps forward and bows so briefly that she might as well not have bothered. She spent twenty years at Ilmarin, once, and is well-acquainted with the goddess. Protocol is protocol, but nothing more.

"M'lady," she says, "these are Men of Velgarth, who would like to look upon their home."

Silmarië. I thought you dead.