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.

It takes her half a second to remember that that's her name. No one calls her by her mother-name except her actual mother, Varda, and most of the others who'd lived or studied on Taniquetil; there are a lot of Eleniels among families with hereditary devotions to Manwë and Varda, but while her mother-name technically has a star-related etymology as well, few self-respecting Vanyar would name their child anything that sounded so close to "Silmaril". Mother-names are prophetic, people say, and a lot of them blame hers for everything they think is wrong with her.

"Námo sent me back to explain to Fëanáro why he shouldn't attempt to travel through time."

If Varda is confused by this, she doesn't show it.

She looks directly at Randi, and he briefly loses the ability to form anything resembling a coherent thought.

YES. LIGHT IS MY CREATION, AND I AM AWARE OF ALL OF IT, THOUGH DISTANCE OR SHADOW MAY OBSCURE IT FROM NATURAL SIGHT. THOSE WHO STAND HERE MAY BORROW MY VISION.

She points at Velgarth's star amid the millions overhead. If Randi, or Leareth, looks, they will be able to see things with impossible, dizzying resolution—see Velgarth itself, orbiting the star, and its continents and oceans and mountains and forests, and if they look closer still they will be able to see people, though they won't be able to hear them.

Then she looks at Leareth.

WHY DO YOU FEAR ME, CHILD OF ILLÚVATAR?

Yes, he tells Shavri.

He looks out on Valdemar from above. 

It's...upsetting. But not as bad as he had vaguely been fearing. Maybe Leareth's aid really did make a difference, there. 

Shavri doesn't interrupt. It seems like not the best time to ask Varda about transport back to Velgarth. 

Leareth forces himself to lift his head, meet the goddess' eyes. His pulse is racing, pointlessly. 

"You...remind me of a goddess of my own world, who - did not look kindly on me. Most of the gods of Velgarth do not. ...If it is even true that I am a 'child of Illuvátar', I cannot say that I bear Them any fondness either." 

Varda regards Leareth curiously. She can tell, immediately, that he's already far outlived his appointed span of years, and in more normal times this would cause her—not to dislike him, but certainly to be concerned by him. But these are not normal times, and he seems to come from a place where the usual rules don't apply anyway.

I AM NOT ACTUALLY SURE THAT YOU ARE A CHILD OF ILLÚVATAR, she tells Leareth. NONETHELESS, WHILE YOU ARE HERE, YOUR UNFONDNESS FOR HIM WILL HARM NONE BUT YOURSELF.

She turns back to Randi and Shavri. DID YOU COME ONLY TO LOOK? she asks. I CAN, IF YOU WOULD LIKE, SEND YOU HOME.

He glances at Shavri. 

She sighs, and nods. 

Randi slips an arm around her shoulders. 

"Yes. I think we'd better go back. If you're willing to send us there, I - would be deeply grateful."