Sigh.

Pat pat. "But I am quite sure I remember you getting rescued via pterodactyl and now it's going to bug me, did they leave you out for really long periods or could they have been gambling that a rescue wouldn't come during some particular narrow window...?"

"No, no, we were decoration, they didn't cycle us out. Maybe they were trying to tempt rescuers but thought they'd fail, but the Security orc was sneaking out to meet a girl?"

"Awwww. Good for the security orc."

Sigh.

"You didn't have this complaint before Milliways."

"Before Kib was captured I was thinking this run might be real, nothing awful had happened and the people were all done very nicely. Once Kib got captured I started noticing all the things that had been careless that I'd been overlooking out of optimism."

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't have Charp clobber me in the face, believe you me, I just have this self-preservation instinct and it is emphatically hard to get rid of."

"It's not that I'd blame Kib if he'd really gotten captured!"

"Maitimo."

"I'd be how old now? You could've had Charps track me down and scoop me out of a creche and I could play with Bella, I bet she'd share her critter."

"I suppose it'd be awkward if I was a girl again."

"If you were okay nothing else would matter, I assure you."

"Well, I'd think it was awkward."

"Maybe the nice Valar could fix us halfway."

"I think they only know how to work on chip Elves also eegh."

"I love you, Kib. I still can't be touched without screaming internally and you have very good reasons not to let Aydanci out of your sight but if you died for us and were a girl now and going to be one for the rest of forever-"

"You always did say Aydanci has the most sensible orientation. Maybe they could give it out."

"Very sensible," agrees Kib, "but he's just sort of like that, you aren't."

"And you aren't a girl." Sigh. "And probably won't be - I wonder how it interacts with summoning -"

"Don't know, haven't tried it."

"Summoning seems like obviously a contrived way to make suicide in-hallucination not kill you, I bet Melkor couldn't fake your actual reset mechanism."

"That's the hope! Eventually it'll be pointless or too difficult to keep me alive and you can all go pick me up in -"

Pause, glance at Aydanci.

"- guess that goes for him too -"