"It means he has been very busy lately. And Fredrick is not obviously going around feeling ignored so someone's been working pretty closely with him."

"Findekáno maybe. I can ask her if it matters."

" -oh, yeah, that is possible. It doesn't really matter. I can spend more time with him. He's been maintaining the list of possible interactions between magic systems to test, it'll be fun."

"That does sound fun."

"You can come too if you want, are you in the middle of anything other than murder practice from which you need frequent breaks anyway?"

"I am not!"

So they go knock on Fredrick's door.

He has Transfigured a textbook from Bar into a tortoise.

He is petting it and giggling.

"Oh, Timothy, Cam! Hey!"

"Hey! What's up? What's the tortoise for?"

"Hmm? Oh, checking if osanwë can read off Transfigured animals. While you're here, one of the items on the to-check list is whether Transfiguring a demonic animal into a teapot and back is harder or easier than doing a real one, gets you a demonic animal on the other end - off chance that turning things into a teapot and back works like the read-write trick for the Elves -"

"Are you partial to tortoises specifically?"

"Not in particular? They're a standard assignment because you can pattern the shells if you're paying enough attention and they don't inconveniently bite or run off. You are welcome to do something whose demonic behavior is more obviously distinct from its non-demonic behavior."

Cam makes a guinea pig.

He concentrates on the guinea pig. "So, how was Endorë?"

"Lots of fun! Orcs seem pretty likable, even the Melkor-worshipping ones."

"Didn't check how they would have gotten if we'd contested their opinion of their deity."

"At least the flat Arda ones have a sufficiently acute sense of self-preservation that I wouldn't expect argument."

"I mean, I do hope I wasn't coming off as likely to threaten them if they persisted in disagreeing with me."

"Maybe after a lot of peacetime it's different but - when Sauron's around to have any actual influence on them they default to assume anyone who can hurt them will if annoyed."

"These ones were annoyed that Sauron had been taken away from them."

"I guess that's good in a way."

"Sauron got taken away from them? How'd that go?"

"He was arrested when the Sanity Valar went around being Sane at things. Thuringwethil talked her way out of lockup, I met her."