"We don't have any way to predict them, do we, even interviewing their alts who might be better."

"Nope. We would be letting arbitrarily powerful very dubiously benevolent entities into Milliways and hoping they just put their planet back and don't, like, deliberate for a hundred years and then lead a retaliatory war against Hell."

"...ah-huh."

"We'll find something better."

Nod.

He is being very quiet.

"You okay, Maitimo?"

" - no?"

"What's the matter?"

"It sounds like kind of a lot of things."

"...well, can we help you feel better about any of them?"

"I don't think how I feel about them is the problem."

"...well, when that happens to me I write about it but that won't work for you."

"I'm trying to learn but it's hard because we don't speak the same languages."

"The other Elves speak Quenya."

"Yeah, I could go ask them. But I can't take Timothy's computer, right?"

"I need my computer but I can get you another one."

"Okay."

And off he goes.

"If you happen to have ideas on what might be helpful to Cam -"

"Inspiring a four year old to solve all the multiverse's problems isn't it."

"Yes, I know. Coaching him to say 'that conversation went completely over my head and I have no idea what's going on but demons are cool!' wouldn't have been the right thing to do either though."

"Yeah."

"You do know that Cam's thing is making a point of not obliging other people to manage his emotions."

"Yes, I do. Which is why I can't just ask him. The evil idiot gods who caused this entire nightmare in the first place are possibly going to murder him over it and I am not going to have him spend the interim fleeing from small children and looking only marginally better than he did with a Dementor around."