"Sorry."

"Would have been hard to anticipate the need."

"I really think Aulë'd set everything right for you."

"With the future of this many people involved we really need more clarity on the Doom and the summoning ban, and turns out a lot of their other conduct is really upsetting to 22nd century sensibilities, which doesn't inspire confidence."

"It could easily be that Aulë would in fact set everything right but however exemplary a deity he is in other respects he hasn't managed sufficient clarity to be predictable and I don't want more total people to die just so I won't have personally killed them," murmurs Cam.

"When will you know about the summoning afterlife thing?"

"When someone from Endorë who's summoned a daeva dies, and then someone tries to summon them."

"I mean, when do you expect that to be."

"The humans are all young because the species is, Dwarves live a long time, it probably depends on whether any of them have dangerous hobbies, I cannot be confident to within a decade but probably less than a year or two."

"That's no problem, then, Maitimo shouldn't start missing his friends that fast."

"I know this is important, don't worry about me."

"Thanks."

He beams at him.

"Let's go do some more reading."

Cam nods obligingly and follows Timothy back into the bar.

"I did not have that much of a - complex - at that age, which means he must have picked up that it's what his society wants from him, which - fuck Elves, really. I know that's not very fair, but - "

Sigh.

He hands Cam a book he got from Bar. It is titled "THE KINSLAYERS: an account of Doriath, Sirion, and the end of the Age" and the cover has fake blood splattered across it. 

"Aesthetic," remarks Cam. "Isn't that a charming word, 'kinslayers'."

"Oh, it's infuriating. Assuming that one matches the one I'm reading - hopefully with more detail on why the Valar decided to let them off - it is the account of the kingdom of Doriath committing an ethnic cleansing, this sparking a war with the Dwarven kingdom of Tumunzahar, and several hundred thousand incidental deaths in fighting with orcs. And then another Elf kingdom comes in to fight over the ruins and that, you see, is a Kinslaying, which is a very serious crime.

Not that the second sack of Menegroth didn't also kill horrifying numbers of people, just -"

"At least I wasn't related to anyone on Valinor, that makes it so much better." He sighs and sits down and puts a wing around Timothy and reads.

Every chapter of this book is focused on a different civilian massacre, but the Kinslayings definitely get the most detail! Gory pictures and time-stamped accounts of events and preserved letters between Maedhros, ruler of this one faction, and Dior, ruler of the other one, and so on. Maedhros is very eloquent and convincing for someone gearing up for mass slaughter over a shiny rock. The second sack of Menegroth took eighty-one hours and killed three hundred thousand people. The destruction of the refugee camp at the mouth of the Sirion took only six hours, and killed even more. And then, after the War of Wrath, Maedhros and Maglor wrote the Valar asking for the Silmarils recovered in the destruction of Angband - the Valar refused, of course, on the grounds that by their crimes they'd lost their claim to them -

Did he have claim to them to begin with? Where'd he get that?

Cam flips to the index.

Finds the family tree.

"I found where your alts were during all this."

"Mmmmm?"

Cam shows him the tree.

The wing over Timothy's shoulders squeezes.