"We'd have to ask Bar. Assuming Ardaness is even well defined. ...Angband is after the oath."

"So yelling at the small one isn't completely useless, just mostly - I want Maitimo's answer -"

"I can hold the door to Hell for it."

Cling. "It's not actually in any concrete sense important -"

"Holding the door isn't difficult and time needs to pass there sooner or later."

Hug. "Okay."

So they can figure out how to snuggle in such a way that the door thinks it's Cam who's holding it. Cam conjures for mail periodically and pets Timothy.

He manages to resist asking Bar for another book with names. And he snuggles. And he waits.

Couple different considerations. Most important was that my father had a fairly terrifying emotional breakdown at his father's death/capture and demanded it of us as proof that we weren't going to back out and abandon him, and I felt like, given that 'he invents something amazing' was our only real prospect of defeating Melkor and he was going to be surrounded by people who'd taken it, I'd rather be one of those. Secondary consideration was that we thought it might incentivize the Enemy to hand out the Silmarils to start civil wars - it was the sort of thing he'd find amusing to do - and even the worst conceivable outcome there was a lot better than the outcome if he figured out how to use them to redirect all the backups. Why?

Cam hands over the letter.

"You read it?"

"It didn't say to pass on without reading and it was short, so yes."

Nod. Cling. 

The worst conceivable outcome when he hands them out to cause civil wars is still really bad, he writes back, and it happens if you don't get Cam by some fluke. You - well, whatever of you they rescued from Angband - kill around a million innocent people. All your people are dead, by the end. It doesn't look like they ever disobey you. 

Snuggle.

I had in fact been assuming I surround myself by at least some people smart enough to notice that at that point I'd rather they stab me in my sleep. 

Tell Cam.

"Tell me - what?"

"He means 'fall on you crying and babbling 'thank you' except obviously I would have already done that so maybe he just means 'communicate that he would like to do that, adjusted for your level of emotional closeness'?"

...more hug. "Ah."

"Seriously, though."

"You're welcome."

"Knowing it would have lasted five hundred years must help -"

"It does. Maybe not as much as it should - I didn't really think it wouldn't be the right tradeoff if it did work, just - that it might not work and the stakes I was using weren't really mine, and the alternate universe version doesn't change that part."

Nod. Shudder.

"Okay. I think I'm going - to take a break. Do something completely different. Daeva/potion interactions, maybe."

"The only one I've tried is dreamless sleep, got anything that won't knock me out for eight hours if I can't decline the effects?"

"Polyjuice?"