"Um. Maybe. Which one is it?"

"Nelyafinwë?"

"...I legitimately cannot imagine him committing suicide. Why did he commit suicide."

"I don't know? We mostly talked about science."

"Well, my advice would be no, then, since you can take back not telling him but you can't take back telling him."

"But Bella can probably fix him."

"Probably. But he's been the way he is, however that is, for thousands of years now. Waiting for a little while longer to get more information isn't going to make things appreciably worse."

"...yeah. But Bella's really good. My mom wanted to die and it was because of an oath and Bella made it all better, and that was before she even had practice, and now she has practice."

"She died because of an oath?"

"She accidentally said something that made her sworn to kill me and she didn't want to do it but delaying and delaying at an oath is really hard and after a while you can't care about anything else so she didn't care about anything and wanted to die. Bella just made it impossible for her to hurt me and that fixed it because if you're sworn to do something impossible nothing bad happens as long as you're trying."

"That's kind of horrifying."

"Which part?"

"Mostly the part where it's possible to accidentally swear to kill someone."

"It's not usually. It was a pretty stupid mistake."

"What even happened, or is that private?"

"Bella's not allowed to say because of subtle artist ethics but I am. She was in labor and it was really painful for some reason and she said 'I swear - if this doesn't stop I'll kill him' or something and if you say things not meaning it it shouldn't really count but then if you think you swore it that makes it worse too and then it latches on..."

"I think I could probably avoid that but I think I'm still glad we don't make binding Oaths. Not that either my sister or I regrets or would recant the things we have sworn."

"What did you swear?"

"My sister married Tyelcormo and she and I both swore fealty to our you after the Darkening and Finwe died."

"And you don't regret that? Even after he messed up?"

"I mean, even if it had been binding it was phrased to give someone an out if they couldn't condone their leaders' actions anymore. I don't know if I would have taken that. But yes, I don't regret it. I was upset with him for a long time--still am, a little, to be honest, but I can put it aside--but he's family. I can be upset and still love him and be on his side."

He hugs her.

She hugs back. "It was really awful, watching him get shoved into corner after corner and seeing people get mad at him when he failed to react with perfect grace. I was upset with him for burning the boats but I was also really upset with the people who'd pushed him to the point where that seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm really glad the stuff that happened to him isn't going to happen to you."

"I'm really really really glad there are people who love him anyway."

"Everyone deserves people they can count on unconditionally," she says, sounding like she's quoting something.