"He's gay."

"I'm a shapeshifter, sweetheart."

"We also haven't discussed nonmonogamy and I'd rather not do anything I can't defend to my alts and for that matter I don't see a compelling reason to be interested, but I'm very flattered by the offer."

"Betcha I could solve at least one problem you currently have. I'm good at magic, and people have easy problems. But sure." She arches her back and extends the wings. "I'm getting bored. One more question, then shoo."

"Easy problems, huh. Can you tell me how to kill a Melkor plus a Sauron from the flat variety of Arda without undesirable collateral damage in case the thing I haven't tested yet doesn't work?"

"I could probably take Sauron if I had, like, a reason. Melian could definitely take Sauron if someone'd babysit her boy toy while she was gone. Melkor you gotta make the Valar do it or tell me what you have to play with."

"Daeva. A magic system involving aiming sticks at things and doing spells, which includes the one I haven't tested yet. Limited and highly costly time manipulation. Valar, since the ones from here are kindly teaching some of their alts the secrets of not sucking and we're hoping that exponentiates, but they think they'll take a while to get it done."

"Why haven't you tested the thing you haven't tested?"

"The Valar haven't held a Melkor still for me to aim a stick at yet and I'm not very good at the spell yet."

"I'm holding still."

"I don't want to kill you."

"Honey, I straight-up don't give a fuck. Especially if there are four hundred million of me."

"Okay, sure, good for you, that doesn't inspire in me a desire to kill you, the test result would not even be valid with respect to an outright Vala from a different Arda design, and think of the poor orcs."

"Daeva might solve most of the problems they come to me for. I bet you the same stuff kills us as Valar, they're us just - bigger. No idea on the different Ardas."

"Pass."

"Then I think you're outta questions. Take care."

And she dissolves into bats again. The bats fly off.

Cam swoops down to Timothy again. "That was weird."

"Oh?"

"She hit on me, I said I had a boyfriend, she suggested a threesome, I said you were gay, she said she was a shapeshifter, I said I - here, do you want my transcript, the Quenya to English isn't bad -" Cam runs it through the translation program.

He reads it. "Uh. Okay. Why not kill her -"

"I don't like killing people."

Squeeze. "Anything else you wanted to check out here?"

"I guess we could go meet Dwarves. The last time I met Dwarves I got shot at too much to really take in the scenery."

"Sure, let's go meet Dwarves."

Dwarfward!