"I mean, off Kib's description, I'm not sure what the difference -"

He slaps him.

"The conventional wisdom on - evil - is that Melkor introduced it. If that were meaningful, our world would have more evil because Melkor introduced it more effectively."

"Our world has less evil, though."

"I think the other mes would trade," he says, "the personal treatment, if it meant their yous had never gone through Angband. But the other mes can trust their yous, they want the same things in general, and I don't think they'd trade that - I don't think the other Maitimos would want to trade that -"

"I haven't met any of me who've been through Angband."

"Yes, I know that."

"Go downstairs and get us something to eat."

He does that.

Karen looks up from where she and Miranda are giving Cam and Ambela an overview on magic. "Whoa, time dilation," she says. "Or are you a different one -?"

"Nope, we met a couple days ago. Karen, right?"

"Yeah but your hair, are you sure it wasn't like a decade, it was so short!"

" - I suffered a serious head injury in a skirmish a few months before we found this place. I was growing it back out anyway - Elves really don't like short hair - but then we found Milliways and I summoned a demon to put it back for me."

"I would've done it, why summon one?"

"Preferred someone I'd never see again. Also Maitimo adores summoning demons and prefers it to walking a flight of stairs, this is far from the most trivial thing he's summoned someone out of some Hell linguistics department over."

"...so did you summon them or did he, it might matter if either of you has a freak accident and we have to check if you're a daeva."

"We've both summoned several but it would really surprise me if soul Elves can become daeva given that chip Elves can't even when they're dead with chips destroyed and no backups. We're strictly more immortal than that. I guess if the Killing Curse turns out to work on Melkors it can be presumed to work on us as well, and maybe that's dead enough the daeva thing kicks in?"

He crawls out from under the table, triumphantly clutching a small dragon.

He giggles. "Bar, dinner for two?"

Stew in bread bowls! Corn on the cob! Chocolate cake!

"Thank you!" He goes upstairs.

"If something is not good for us to know because we're little you should just say that instead of making up stories," he announces to his dragon.

He continues upstairs.

Was he making up a story?