"I have no idea if he thinks whoever's supposedly orchestrating this is operating someone in it."

"Well, obviously if it's a hallucination somebody is operating everyone in it, but most of them are people he'd have known or known of before he was captured and anyone who didn't appear near the beginning of the hallucination doesn't have as obvious 'hello, I'm probably an evil Maia or something' sign painted on them."

"Unless he thinks it's me I really don't think there's much I can do besides start mucking with the fabric of reality."

"Yeah. I mean, I suppose he might, but I can't confidently assume so. You may feel free to dump this entire conversation on him if you think it'll help."

"Minus the part about how soft his brother's hair is."

"Well, you could include that I mentioned it, it will make me a more three-dimensional figure in the story, but yeah, leave the sense-memory out."

"I'm really not sure I want to actually tell him I have a giant crush on his brother, I'm sure he's psychicked it out but actively bringing it up might be a bad idea so soon after the Estolad thing."

"Redact as you see fit. Estolad thing?"

"Remember how I said it had been empirically demonstrated that elves could accidentally have children with non-elves?"

"Oh dear."

"It didn't occur to them until it occurred to me to check if there were adorable half-elf children in the area where it was discovered that humans didn't automatically trigger the soul thing."

"Uh, potential infohazard, you want it or not?"

"Sure."

"According to Lúthien it's expectation-based. The Valar told everybody how it worked, so that's the going story, but it doesn't fundamentally work that way, it kicks in when the participants think they've done something that would cause it to do so."

She laughs. "That makes so much more sense than 'straight marriage is metaphysically supported but gay marriage isn't.'"

"Mind, I haven't actually seen any examples of metaphysical gay marriage because my Elves can't do oaths anymore and I didn't go around shouting this from the rooftops, especially to all the nice lesbians Maedhros located for me, but yes, it does."

"Tyelcormo brought up the possibility of introducing my sister to lesbian elves at one point but it was decided against for various reasons."

"It is not completely without complications, but I think he was concerned I might otherwise go sleep with Thuringwethil or something - have you met her, is she still alive?"

"I have not met her! I don't know if she's alive or not, I can look her up if you tell me where to look?"

"She lives" here "but I'm not sure you want to meet her, she's sort of dubiously neutral and sometimes does the Enemy favors - did me a few favors, too, there's a few things I needed a Maia for and Huan was not always suited and the friendly river Maia with no spoken name was a little too one-track-mind."

"Huh."

"I met her when Sauron was fucking with me by sending me orcs who were not at that moment ordered hostile but of course could have been made so by osanwë within a radius of hundreds of miles at any time - she escorted a bunch of orcs and their babies out to where I was with the Men. I chased her down."

"What happened to...?"

"The babies weren't old enough to have sworn. Some Men adopted them."

"Not the worst thing that could have happened."