"Maitimo asked Aydanci for something to get around the illusions and he came up with this clever little thing that prints pictures, you should ask him to tell you how he did it, I bet he'll be delighted. Fëanáro came up with an idea to use Arda magic for intelligent artifacts which could instantaneously direct servants and he and Aydanci were working on it. They were maybe ten years out? We were looking into ways to get you sooner. Arda humans have babies for some reason, everyone except Maitimo was horrified and we still haven't figured out a good solution."

"Huh, I was expecting something more creative, did all the creative writers take the day off?"

"Believe it or not this is an improvement over how he was when he came in."

Sigh. "I love you, Kib. Do you want to die or -"

"I feel like it would be really unhealthy for me to adopt an expectation that I have any control over whether I actually in reality live or die, and in the meantime this is really cozy. The food's good and everything. The sapient magical bar does recommendations. Do you want a hug, I do hugs, I'm downright snuggly when that seems to be the done thing."

Hug. "Don't do this to Aydanci when he wakes up, he will derive less comfort than me from the thought that in a thousand years you'll be all right."

Hug. "Sure, he won't talk to me for more than five minutes anyway, that's as long as Thuringwethil can ever string me along without restarts and they're really committed to the character study thing and I think they're avoiding restarts. Did you know I come in six year old girl with accompanying dubiously magical bloodsport-pet? She's adorable. There's also a tiny him." Point at Maitimo. "Also adorable."

"They were in the files, yeah."

"All these people to get invested in, and all these obvious avenues for something randomly terrible to happen to them."

"And absolutely no commitment to realism! I told them when I came in if you want that you at least open with Findekáno on a pterodactyl, but no! Oh, in keeping with the talking to you like you're actually mine thing I'm doing, watch out for magic truth drugs, those things scared the fuck out of me."

"What does watching out for them supposedly entail."

"I haven't the foggiest but they make a lousy surprise."

Cam sighs. "When he came in as soon as he had some dreams -"

"No no, I can do this part. I dream back deleted memories! It's tons of fun! So I showed up here mid-unrelated-hallucination that started out with the resulting typical 'Macalaurë invented a new improved sleep skipping song' opener and crashed when no longer being magically forced awake and when I woke up I knew where I was but they didn't like that I shut down my thought processes to avoid being spied on so they drugged me! Now I make sarcastic comments instead of lying around atrophying."

" - is there a protective measure, can the Valar make those not work -"

Sigh. "The Valar have not tried pitting themselves directly against the potion. We have no reason to drug any of you, Kib was excruciatingly bored with the not thinking thing and couldn't stop doing it until convinced of its strategic irrelevance and before that we had no idea what was even wrong with him and couldn't convince him to say. If you would like to be extra safe against truth potions and things in their class there is a nonmagical skill called Occlumency that you can learn which does the trick."

"It involves doing prescribed mental exercises, which, fuck that."

"Oh, I'm not worried. It seems like Maitimo might want to learn it, so truth potions are off the table without breaking the internal logic -"

"I'm not planning for the handoff to take that long but if you invent ways to protract it, sure."

"We're fast with it but it took Timothy longer."

"Can Lórien give my alts my memories, do you know?"

"I do not know. You could ask one."

"I will. Thank you."

"You're welcome."