"Not yet!"

"Oh good. It'd be so disappointing if there were nowhere in the city left to show off - this way -"

Follow follow. At a brisk careless walk!

He will not trip! The gardens are dense and three stories tall with stairways winding through them and waterfalls winding along the stairways and flowers and ferns and soft grass everywhere. Some of the plants are edible; the King picks them for him.

"We just had dinner."

"Just to taste! They're more like dessert, anyway."

"Okay." Nibble.

They are sweet and light and sometimes tart. There's a great tree with a little staircase winding around it; Maitimo climbs it and pauses at the top, staring out on Angband.

Cor experiments with trotting briskly up the stairs.

He can do this safely! Maitimo beams at him.

"Nice ring."

"Thank you! I'm excited about what our magic can do with more breathing room and even more excited about what it can do in combination with other magics. There are some engineers busying themselves with something that'll let people survive arbitrary conditions for a couple minutes, make scouting safer. Regrettably it'll be years, but once they have it we can find worlds at less terrible a cost. And Curufin has started bothering me to pay his team to figure out human immortality."

"That's nice of him."

"I didn't take much persuading. We're so tired of losing people, so tired of - compromising -"

Nod. "It'd be nice to live forever."

"It would be nice to have you forever. I think we'll get there."

He takes his hand and look at the ring. "Does it work all right for you?"

"I haven't tried ice skating or ballroom dancing yet but it does seem to help a lot!"

"Oh good." He squeezes his hand and lets go. "We are so delighted you fell on us."

"I feel very appreciated."

"Even without any royal titles yet?"

"I'll live. Forever, even."

"I shudder to think how many titles I will have to invent for an immortal you with lots of worlds to go adventure in."

"Oh, I'm sure there are finite titleworthy classes of things I can get up to."