"Hi. Enjoying yourself? The city's still in progress."

"I couldn't tell the difference, it looks gorgeous."

"Thank you. How's my father? Your version, that is, mine I can go see anytime."

"Tiny, brilliant, and planning on making four Silmarils just because your father said it couldn't be done."

"That sounds like the healthiest psychological state my father gets in. It - can be done, if he wants to spend a few centuries on it."

"I don't know whether he'd want to invest that kind of time; there's lots of things to do."

"I very much doubt it's the best use of it. I shudder to think what you could accomplish with four, though. Two sets of three won't achieve nearly as much."

"What's the salient difference?"

"Keeping in mind that I'm a poet not an engineer and knew their capabilities only because during the war it was necessary that we understand why Father needed them - they compound each other. Whatever you can do with one, cube it and that's what you can do with two - in terms of range, stopping power, whatever you like - and then cube it again with a third. Two sets of three wouldn't play together like that."

"Why shouldn't they?"

"We're now at the limits of my knowledge, but - a lot of the challenge of making them was making them work together like that. Copying them would be amazing if we can figure out how to do it, but it wouldn't give us a four-Silmaril set, the connections wouldn't be there."

"Huh. ...So you're a poet?"

"Lately I'm whatever's needed from me. But before there were billions of people dying if we didn't use our time well enough, yes."

"If I'm taking up your time and you needed to be doing something else..."

"No, no, that's not what I meant at all, I can only compose so many hours of the day and I need inspiration and I was insatiably curious anyway."

"What do you want to know?"

"How'd you meet my father? How'd you two end up fugitives together?"

"I had a magical accident in my original world which shunted me to Arda; he was the only other person in the room where I landed. I had books with me and he thought they were the most beautiful things in the world."

"Awwww."

"It was really cute!"

"I bet!! It's hard to imagine my father ever being a child."

"Well, he's around, you can meet him if you want." This one does not seem especially troubled and has mastered concepts like the inability to work constantly.

"Oooh, love to. How long are you all staying?"

"Undecided how long exactly but I told Rúmil not to worry for a week."

"Then I'll track him down but perhaps not this second."