Iobel grins and says, "Ninety percent confidence."

He kisses her forehead and leaves.

And Iobel sits back down, unaware of how good Elven hearing is, and Cam cannot alert her because he doesn't know the extent to which she might not have wanted Elves to overhear.

The Elves will look a little dazed for a few minutes, but that's okay. Then everyone can get back into logistics.

Logistics! Whee! It's so convenient that Cam can put all her notes in electronic format so she doesn't have to haul boxes of notebooks in and rummage through them for reference on this and that fact about Marlatia.

They work well into the night and the Elves are perfectly prepared to work right through it.

Iobel, unfortunately, needs sleep - "Lucky bastard," she tells Cam, who does not - and leaves them with a map and budget reports and similar items to keep them occupied while she goes and does that.

And Fannar also needs sleep - the Elves' eyes pop - and Finankar needs sleep, and soon it's just the new arrivals.

Maitimo buries his face in his hands and sighs and Findekáno reaches out and pats his shoulder.

"I'm fine," Maitimo says. "Let's get some work done."

Gosh. Shoulderpats. Is that an improvement? Well. Work to be done.

(It's been seven years; they talked it all out afterwards and are on perfectly civil terms. Shoulder pats are not an improvement because there is nothing to improve upon.)

They get lots of work done.

"At some point I want to get summoned by both of Fëanor just for the cheating at languages."

Maitimo laughs. "That's a good idea. I think my father's picked up a few dozen of Earth's over the last few years. Whenever he gets too gloomy to work - languages.

Was your counterpart also oddly blasé about the whole thing."

"About what, being a me? Or me being a her? It took some adjusting but on reflection we both like having there be more of us and are looking forward to turning up more."

"No, no, it's obviously good for there to be more of you. I meant about the war. Mitros had something to say about every one of my life decisions except what we did, and there he was just like "and that ended it? Thank goodness."

Maybe it's just the benefit of hindsight."

"Ah. I told her about it and she said 'sounds like you won' and I said 'but it sucked' and she said 'but you won'."

Maitimo nods tightly.

"I don't think I'd describe her as blasé so much as supportive?" Cam volunteers after a moment.

"I have been thinking this whole trip - 'well, if we'd known we were seven years from interdimensional travel' - but of course under the relevant conditions we might not have been -"

"I think I actually agree with your counterpart that you're being unhelpfully hard on yourself," Findekáno says. "...my counterpart said 'oh, hell, of course they did' and then gave me a hug and then asked what Maiar were like, which ones I'd known personally..."

Sigh.

He also said he'd definitely still love you, Findekáno says. 

Isn't he, so to speak, definitionally wrong?

I think so. I am a little confused about how that works. 

Cam has a cup of coffee. "Wonder what time they usually wake up."

"Do we have progress on all of the action items we could make progress on without them? We could go for a walk or something while we wait on them."

"I'm unsure of my ability to handle a commotion effectively with computer translation if some innocent morning person makes a fuss, and while you could probably pass for human without cutting off any extremities if nobody was expecting any differently you do bear a strong resemblance to members of the royal family," Cam says.

Maitimo sighs. "Well, we will have no choice but to ask the King's permission to spend some time in the gardens or somewhere at some point, but I suppose it needn't be right now." If you think we self-flagellate too much you could stop making comments like that.

Comments like that my counterpart asked me to tell him about the dead? The problem with you is that all your grief is manipulative so you assume everyone's is.

"You should really have a formalized prettiness dosing schedule, it'd be easier to keep track of. I think this is a perfectly nice palace myself."