"They don't, but that's how you could know what it was like without a bluemage being able to think of telling you, if you can read little kids," says the redmage. "Or you could have one of us tell you, we have a pretty good idea if we know a bluemage."

"Reading little kids is sort of frowned upon until they understand how to keep things private if they want. Asking a redmage who knows a bluemage is a good idea."

"I only know the one," says the redmage. "And she'd have to be right here for me to be sure I remembered right."

"And humans can't send. We looked into giving you the chips we have - it means you can be resurrected without becoming a daeva, some people might prefer that, and it lets you get all kinds of memory enhancements and so on which are harder to give humans - but the chips don't seem to work if the brain hasn't been wired around them from the beginning."

Wistful sigh from the redmage.

"The memory blessings do work for redmages, we just have to do them by magic instead of technology and that means they're slower and more expensive. I'll let you know when we have some on hand."

"Thanks!"

In the evening the Elves return them portalswards.

"Thank you so much for the tour, everything was magnificent," says Liatsi.

"No, you can't have Elf art literally everywhere, you'll look compromised," says the Minister of Culture teasingly.

Liatsi smiles at him. "Oh well."

"It was our pleasure hosting you! Everyone has seen the bulletins but I think found it much more satisfying to meet you firsthand!"

"I was delighted to make their acquaintance," says Liatsi. "If the people of your world should ever wish to visit Cefax they may certainly consider themselves welcome."

"We will certainly aim to eventually enable that."

The redmage's attendant says, "Maybe warn them redmages exist first."

" - yeah. I'm sorry about that. It's not that they'd take issue with the redmages."

"Just with all our loved ones," murmurs the redmage, holding his attendant's hand.

"With the potential for coercion. Not that I expect that makes it comfortable for you to experience. It's definitely one of the things I'd expect our people to be informed about and capable of handling gracefully before they came over to visit."

"Thank you," says the attendant.

"I guess you'd understand," says the redmage, "you have one, right -?"

"Yes, and I was very obnoxiously worried about coercion until he rather patiently set me straight but it took a while and we probably can't convince the whole population of Valinor that way. There are not enough redmages and most of them probably wouldn't want to be around people who are convinced they require rescuing."

"It would get tiring," the redmage agrees.

"We'll make sure people are informed. Thank you for coming."

"Thank you for having us," says the bluemage's attendant, and the humans go home.

And the lightleaper arrives.

"AK doesn't work on Melkor," Cam reports. "Sauron had a biowarfare deadman switch to boot but other ones probably don't."

"Ugh. Okay. What else do we have?"

"The only thing we have is black holes and they are not super deployable in most places where Melkors hang out."