But what if Gem wants a tenth kiss?

Well, then, they had better go and fix a tenth world! "Give me some criteria to hop by!"

"Hmm - populated's more interesting but so far literally all the worlds are populated - how about 'has magic' and let's land somewhere pretty, the look on your face the last place we dropped was hilarious but I don't need to see it twice."

"Okay. Pretty, has magic -"

Pop.

"Nicely done on the pretty.

Does this look Elfy to you."

"Yeah. Yeah it does. Very distinctly Elfy - d'you'suppose we found another Arda -"

"Could be. Edda's next to at least three, we could have two no problem."

And then Lúthien spins around because her hearing, better than Bella's, catches two riders approaching. "Our intentions are peaceful," she says, and then two identical Elves on horseback weave out of the trees and pull to a halt staring.

She looks like their sister Arwen, she looks like Lúthien who Arwen supposedly takes after, she is the most stunningly beautiful -

"Hello?" he ventures.

"Hello."

Aaaaaaaaaannnd someone's got to make it awkward and say it, so - "Great-grandma?"

"If your great-grandma is a Lúthien then this is an alternate universe version of your great-grandma. Uh, disambiguating nickname of Joy."

"A Lúthien?" He says the word like very devout religious people speak the name of their god. 

"There are, uh," she counts on her fingers, "that we know about, at least five not counting yours here - six? Would you have been born yet in Telperion?" This last question is addressed to Joy.

"Nope, not yet - if I have great-grandchildren this must be a late-timeline Arda and it's not a blighted hellscape, that's good news - what year is it?"

"2970."

"Of the Sun?"

"Of the Third Age."

"...so the Sun's been around for how long?"

"7000 years?"

"...wow, okay, new record for oldest Arda."

"The other Ardas are at different times? Uh, you need to warn the Valar not to pardon Sauron after they stop Morgoth -"

"...This is the only Arda where 'stop Morgoth' is already past tense by the time somebody shows up. They pardon Sauron, are you fucking kidding me, are they incapable of learning from mistakes."

"Can't say, never met them." And to Lúthien "can you defeat Sauron again? It's really important."

"...again?"

"The next-oldest Arda's sun has been around for less than four hundred and fifty years, for reference."

"Wow. Okay. We need to get my dad, I don't know what year everything happens in. Lúthien defeats Sauron and sings his fortress to the ground and rescues her boyfriend from it and then they go off to steal a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown so they could get married. So you're capable of it in principle, even if you haven't done it yet in your timeline."

"It's probably much faster and easier to do it with otherworldly magic than to send Joy into single combat or whatever." Sort of nice to know the crown thing is not just him having something against me personally?

Yeah, actually, it is. Also sort of nice to know that I can take Sauron in single combat even if we're definitely not doing that.

Without even being a magic rock. "Otherworldly magic requires as an ingredient somebody who super wants Sauron dead and feels very strongly about this. I can go get somebody with this property if necessary."

"Everyone super wants Sauron dead. Why don't you come meet my dad and then we can find the person who wants Sauron dead most - probably is my dad, actually -"

"Okay. Although my alt might be annoyed with me if I don't let her Maedhros do it, come to think of it..."

Blink.

Several more blinks. 

"...ssssorry can you maybe back up a bit -"

"Lots of worlds, oddly many of them are Ardas, all at different times, this one is way oldest, lots of me but none of us are from Ardas originally we just keep landing on them and changing things, and one of my alts has killed a couple Saurons with a magic item only she can safely use and is annoyed that she's never found a way to let her Maedhros kill one?"

"And in this world Maedhros is the most infamous war criminal in history."

"This being some special non-Ainur category of competition, I can only assume."

"Yes. Still was a pretty crowded field of competitors, back in the First Age."

"Well, that's not as surprising as I wish I could claim it was but the others are all well before that point and thoroughly derailed therefrom."

"Yeah but still - there are people here who watched him kill their families, he murdered my grandmother's parents and siblings in front of her and then murdered her in front of my dad and his brother and then kept my dad and his brother as hostages for a decade - it is maybe not a great place to bring Maedhros. Even one who hasn't done that yet."

"I will not invite any of 'em over to your house for dinner or anything."

"Okay. Do you want to come meet my father? He'd be eager to meet you - he never met his you, Lúthien, you were dead -"

"- what, and stayed that way, or just Valinor continues inaccessible...?"

"Stayed that way. Her husband was human, and died, so she died and went off and pleaded with Mandos to bring him back. So Mandos returned them both to life but when they died again they both went on to whatever fate humans have."

Huh, a story with Mandos in it that doesn't make me want to purple-energy him in the face.

Told you I was pretty sure I could talk him around. Though I'd hope I'd do it on something more important than returning my boyfriend to life. Maybe we had a plan to take Morgoth.

Maybe. We should generalized-death-solution this place and ask her. "Anyway we'd be happy to come meet your father. I'm Bella, by the way, but call me Gem, some of my alts are also named Bella."

"Nice to meet you, Gem. And an honor, of course, Lúthien." And they will lead them off around the lake!

What a pretty lake. "So where are we?"

"Imladris. It's a hidden city in the mountains, it was built as a refuge during the second-to-last war with Sauron."

"How many wars with Sauron are we talking about here?"

"Lots, but two major ones since Morgoth fell, plus Númenor."

"Well. I'm sorry none of me got here sooner."

"If you can stop him, yeah." They approach the main buildings."The last war was three thousand years ago so you'd have had to really get here early."

"One of me got to hers early enough that the Trees are still standing."

"...wow." He sounds vaguely longing. "But no Lúthiens who took on Sauron, so probably no worlds where my family existed at all?"

"Not found so far, no."

"Well. Welcome to Imladris. One of the last Elven settlements this side of the sea."

"It's really pretty," murmurs Gem.

"You've seen Menegroth, right?" He says it like someone might speak of Atlantis.

"What happened to it?"

"...the sons of Fëanor."

"Was somebody sitting on a Silmaril, is that what happened?"

"Yes. Lúthien's son - it's kind of a long story, and there's no one still alive from back then to tell it..."

"We've got resurrection that works on humans, if he's not just kicking around in Mandos - how do part-humans even work?"

"Dior - Beren and Lúthien's son - isn't in Mandos, he went - wherever humans go - as did his sons who died in the same fight. His daughter caught the attention of the Valar and they offered her and her descendants a choice. My father chose the Elven fate, his twin brother chose the human one.

...you can bring them back?"

"As with the killing Sauron thing I require someone who wants it really bad. And getting it done for the whole world as opposed to a single person requires six someones. But yeah."

"You won't have trouble finding those. The whole - world - that's millions and millions of humans, we don't have anywhere to put them -"

"My home planet holds billions, but it does it at a higher tech level. It's okay, we can find more planets."

"Okay." And they're approaching the city, if it can even be called that, and some people descend its stairs towards them. 

He's never seen Lúthien either.

He does recognize her. 

"...how?"

"There are more Ardas, this Lúthien is an alt of the local, disambiguating nickname Joy. And I'm Gem."

"More Ardas? 

Welcome to Imladris. Please come in and sit down and - Ardas where things went differently?"

"Yeah." In they go and down they sit. "This one is much later than any of the others were when found. Alts of me - or in one case my alt's daughter - keep landing on Ardas in various stages of the timeline and derailing them. The next oldest Arda has had a Sun for less than five hundred years. The youngest one may never get a Sun, it still has Trees."

"...oh. Wow. So I imagine you would like a history of what happens afterwards - people are going to want to go see the Trees, I think - everyone would still be alive -"

"I'll let relevant people know that Tree tourism is likely to be a thing. And yes, history would be good. Although it is likely that someone should wish rid of your Sauron first. And what did happen to Morgoth, did they actually kill him or just lock him up again?"

"You can't kill a Vala. Locked him up again."

"Yes you can, it's been done, although I'll buy that for whatever reason the Valar can't do it."

"Well, he won't ever be paroled again, though perhaps it'd still be better to kill him. I don't know what eternal imprisonment's like."

"How sure are you he won't ever be paroled again?"

"The first time the Valar said they were sentencing him to three Ages. This time they said 'forever'. They don't tend to lift their sentences unprompted or even prompted."

"Okay. But if someone feels sufficiently strongly about it it's demonstrated possible to get him and Sauron both in one wish. And it'd make relocating all your orcs slightly more convenient probably."

"I am not equipped to make such a decision about the taking of a life. Sauron, yes, because he is still a danger."

"Okay. You want to wish it yourself? It's one wish per person and I'm told I should not bring a Maedhros by to do it."

"Possibly I should not even mention the name?"

"Are there worlds where he's okay -"

"I, uh - yeah? Some of them are okay."

"I became a healer. I think I could help him now but - six thousand years too late -"

"...I can pass on the offer?"

"I take it they wouldn't know me."

"The other Ardas are all well before when you would've been born insofar as I understand the local timeline."

"Well. I am - happy to try. If you won, that's - something. I think that might almost have been enough."

"Didn't hurt. Uh, if it is not a horrible idea for one to visit here after all one of my alts has been looking for a way to let her instance kill a Sauron for multiple Saurons now..."

"How long would he need to be here?"

"Literally seconds? And not necessarily actually on the planet?"

"Then it shouldn't be a problem. Him walking around will terrify almost anyone who recognizes him, but -"

"Doesn't have to walk around."

"Then it's fine. The ones who are all right, are they alright because you found them before it happened, or were they able to heal afterwards?"

"...uh, define 'all right'? - Joy can you nip off to Vanda Nossëo and ask him if he wants to kill a Sauron?"

"Yep!" Pop.

"He can't currently muster a physical form, it's not urgent in the sense that people are being harmed while we delay."

"...could've led with that."

"We very nearly killed him three thousand years ago. We did destroy his body very very irrevocably. But he'd made a magic artifact that anchored him, made it impossible for him to actually die, and the artifact's been lost to time, so even though there are no signs of it yet we know to expect he'll return eventually."

"Okay. So explaining how all the Maedhroses are doing will probably make more sense if I give you, like, the really really executive summary of the multiverse?"

"Please."

She pulls up a map of the multiverse and highlights all the Ardas. "Ardas. This one doesn't have one because his dad is currently twelve -" It de-highlights. "This one is weird and does not go in the really really executive summary -" Shadow de-highlights. "These three are pretty normal and each have one," Elentári and Shine and Luster, "and this one is weird in the sense of being really high tech and it is also possible to duplicate Elves from it, they're like, a different kind of Elf. This one and this one," Elentári and Shine, "are last I heard convinced that they are not hallucinating, so that's good, and they are functional and friendly and it is generally quite possible to forget that they may not be okay for the duration of a conversation. This one's not sure yet though." Luster. "And here," Space, "uh, the duplicating thing people made Morgoth even worse than he usually is. Like, a lot. But the extant instances of Maedhros are all duplicated from pre-capture so they're okay. There's six of them, he decided six was a good number for some reason." She adds a new node to the map. "We are here. Also none of them got to the part where people were withholding Silmarils and became a disaster, so there's that. This timeline," Shine, "was derailed before the Silmarils were even invented and there's no oath about them."

"That's good. And Maglor?"

"Those are all fine as far as I know. One of 'em did a concert with Joy on my home planet the other month, it was awesome. Oh, and there's human versions of the entire family here in this non-Arda," Hex lights up, "if that counts; they're all fine, there wasn't some replacement for the war with Morgoth or anything."

"Okay. 

This is a little complicated emotionally; perhaps I'll explain when I get to it. The Ardas all progress along the same trajectory until intervention?"

"Except the weird one yes -" She rattles off the years for each Arda.

"Okay, so I can start explaining the history in roughly the year 400 of the First Age. The Noldorin front against the Enemy collapsed in 455, in the Dagor Bragollach - the Battle of Sudden Flame - so called because the Enemy had turned all of the mountains in the range surrounding Angband into volcanos, and they all erupted at once. There were almost no survivors from Dorthonion and Ladros, the northern-facing kingdoms, Himring stood through apparently sheer force of will but the rest of the east collapsed. The High King Fingolfin rode out and challenged Morgoth to single combat.

It was - closer than you've have expected, given, and he injured Morgoth seriously enough that Morgoth never ventured out of Angband again. But he lost. Manwë sent an Eagle to take his body to his family."

"Manwë has a thing for sending Eagles when they are still technically helpful but would really have been handiest earlier."

"Yes, he does. Anyhow, Fingon becomes the High King and he and Maedhros start working on uniting all the free people of Beleriand for a final offensive. It would have been a long shot but if they'd actually gotten everyone to participate I think it would have worked.

Among the human survivors of the fall of Ladros was Barahir, who had once saved the King Finrod of Nargothrond's life. The King Finrod had given him a ring to pass on to his descendants and sworn an oath of friendship and aid in every need, to him and all his line. Barahir led a guerrilla campaign to inconvenience the Enemy in ruling Dorthonion. They laid traps, set fires, sprung ambushes, and were so inconvenient the Enemy eventually sent Sauron personally to deal with them."

"Let me guess: time-unlimited oaths committing someone to future action prove to be a bad idea again."

"It could've gone better.

Sauron kills, horribly, all the insurgents save one, Barahir's son, who escapes over the mountains into the Valley of Dreadful Death, somehow survives it, and wanders into Doriath dazed and traumatized and not having spoken to another human being in six years. During those intervening years Sauron goes and topples Tol Sirion, incidentally, and Celegorm and Curufin, fleeing the fall of Himlad with their own people, happen to be in the area and help the population of Tol Sirion make it safely south to Nargothrond, which is a cave system and accordingly more defensible against the Enemy.

Barahir's son is named Beren, and when he wanders into Doriath he meets Lúthien, and they fall in love."

"Okay." Gem's Lúthien is clearly the best one so it is okay that somebody else got this one.

"They keep it a secret awhile but someone finds out, and Lúthien asks her father to swear he won't kill her lover, and then brings him before Thingol for an audience. Thingol says that Beren can marry his daughter when he fetches him a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown. Beren accepts. Lúthien is inclined to run away and break off ties with her parents, but Beren had pulled off a lot of improbable things in the war, and didn't want Lúthien to be forced to leave the safety of Doriath, so he persuades her to let him try. And he goes to Nargothrond, whose King had sworn to aid his family, and he asks for help stealing a Silmaril.

Celegorm and Curufin were in Nargothrond, and they were appalled that Beren would ask that of someone oath-bound to help him, and also that Finrod would choose to interpret an oath to aid someone as an oath to go Silmaril-questing with them rather than an oath to, say, shelter the newlyweds or try to talk Thingol down. When it becomes apparent Finrod is going to commit Nargothrond's forces to a futile Silmaril-mission they stage a coup."

"Naturally."

"Finrod goes off alone, with Beren and ten people loyal to him, and they go for Tol Sirion where Sauron's embedded himself, and Finrod challenges Sauron to a duel of songs. It's - again, closer than you'd expect but he loses. Sauron takes them all prisoner.

Melian learns that this has happened with her scrying magic, and Lúthien asks of her father, who started the mess, that he mobilize Doriath to go assail Tol Sirion and rescue them. He refuses, and gets worried she'll try it herself, and imprisons her in a treehouse so she won't die of it and can't get herself into danger."

"I wish I were disappointed."

"Lúthien cuts off all her hair, weaves it into an invisiblilty cloak, escapes the treehouse, escapes Doriath entirely, and heads for Nargothrond on the grounds their King is a prisoner too and they'll be likeliest to be willing to help her assail Tol Sirion."

"...okay."

"They are, of course, not willing to help her. Curufin and Celegorm tell her they'll think about it and then write Thingol a letter - an extraordinarily rudely worded letter - telling him that Lúthien's here, can expect the same treatment here she found at home - which is to say, they weren't going to let her leave - and that if Thingol wanted a Silmaril he should marry his daughter to someone with a right to one.

Thingol takes that as a threat to marry Lúthien against her will. I don't know if he was right to interpret it that way or not. He mobilizes Doriath to go to war with Nargothrond."

Sigh.

"Lúthien has meanwhile made fast friends with Huan, and has been pitching him the idea of killing Sauron and saving all the people he's torturing, and Huan's convinced. He helps her get her invisibility cloak back, they sneak out of Nargothrond, they assail Sauron, and they win. Shred his body, leaving him irrelevant for the next century, and spare his life in exchange for him handing over the fortress so it doesn't crumble when he dies. Lúthien grabs Beren and heals him. Finrod's already been tortured to death but the other prisoners Sauron was holding in Tol Sirion - there were hundreds - make their way south to Nargothrond, which is in considerable disarray over the situation. 

Lúthien wants to head south and not look back; Beren thinks they can take Angband. Eventually they decide to do it. Meanwhile, Finrod's nephew stages another coup and expels Celegorm and Curufin from Nargothrond, and they run across Beren and Lúthien preparing for their Silmaril quest and open fire on them. Lúthien takes them down, takes their weapons, lets them go."

"...how's that work out?"

"They go home to Maedhros, who is still trying to organize a unified offensive against the Enemy and is less than delighted to hear that Doriath is now definitely going to be unpersuadable to participate and so is Nargothrond and also its King is dead."

"No doubt."

"And Beren and Lúthien go for Angband. Lúthien ventures into the Valley of Dreadful Death and finds, fights, and kills a Maia servant of the Enemy named Thuringwethil, kills her without damaging her current physical form, and then uses her skin as a cloak to get them into Angband in combination with a lot of stealth magic."

"Thuringwethils I am aware of, if not personally acquainted with any. Why did she need a new cloak?"

"Needed two of them, Beren wanted to come along.

The cloak gets them as far as Angband. Once they're inside she throws hers off and tells Morgoth she's switching sides because she hates her parents and their stupid prison of a kingdom."

"...heh."

"And then she dances for him and puts him and everything in Angband to sleep. They'd taken Curufin and Celegorm's weapons, you'll recall, and Curufin had a special magical knife for Morgoth's crown - they try stabbing Morgoth first, obviously, glances off him - and he pries a Silmaril out of the crown and is going for the second when despite the sleep spells Lúthien is still singing, Morgoth and his lieutenants start to wake up.

So they take their one Silmaril and she levels the throne room behind her and they run for their lives, and on their tail is Carcharoth, a monstrous werewolf taller than a man, and Beren's holding the Silmaril and vaguely remembers that they burn evil things so he waves it at Carcharoth, hoping it'll burn him, and Carcharoth swallows his arm whole, including the Silmaril.

The Silmaril burns Carcharoth from the inside out, but he has powerful regeneration, and his body repairs the damage as fast as the Silmaril burns it, and he loses his mind in horrible agony and starts thrashing around killing everything in sight and giving them a little bit more time to run for it, though they're not going to make it out.

And then Manwë sends an Eagle."

"I wonder what the Eagles think of all this inefficient errantry they get sent on."

"Good question. Lúthien and Beren land in Doriath, badly injured, and Thingol swoops over to find them and says to Beren "I told you not to come back here until you'd completed your task" and Beren says to him "even now a Silmaril is in my hand" - waving the bloody stump -"

"...hee."

"Anyway, Thingol has - a revelation, or something, because he apologizes and welcomes them both to stay in Doriath and politely ignores that they'd, um, already gotten married, and offers his blessings for a wedding.

And then Carcharoth comes at Doriath. With a Silmaril he can bludgeon his way all through the protections. Huan - who'd gone back to Celegorm - hears and comes to help fight. Beren considers it his responsibility, goes to fight too. Huan and Carcharoth die with their teeth locked into each others' throats, there's a lot of collateral damage - including Beren. He dies.

So Lúthien goes to Mandos to give him a talking-to."

"Oh, fun fact, in the arsenal of cool multiversal stuff I can grab is my alt's daughter who is capable of talking Valar into being reasonable people, but apparently Local Lúthien got somewhere with that even absent this advantage?"

"Somewhere, yeah. She convinced Mandos to return her and Beren to life, and he assured her that the Valar were anticipating that soon-in-Vala-time there would be a means to take Morgoth down with less collateral damage and that her descendants would play a role in that. She also got promised that there's a plan for Men after they die, and she decided to take that alongside Beren rather than be separated forever.

They returned to life. They settled far south. They had a son. As far as I know Lúthien never spoke to her parents again, but Thingol announced his grandson was his heir."

"The joys of sexist primogeniture."

"Most people who want their sons to inherit just have a son first, makes it less obvious. Anyhow. Maedhros retakes the east, retakes Dorthonion, in 473 they convene all their forces - six different nations of Men, two of Dwarves, the Noldor under the High King Fingon, the Feanorians-about-whom-it-was-never-clear-whether-they-took-orders-from-the-King-at-all, Cirdan's people...

...one of the nations of Men turns out to have been suborned by Melkor, they delay the Feanorians from getting to the site of the battle and then attack them from behind. The Enemy realizes he needs to draw out Fingon's forces before the Feanorians arrive and he's fighting on two fronts, so he starts gruesomely executing prisoners in public in the field in front of Angband and some idiot sees his brother being killed and charges. And the dragons were at full strength, and we were very badly outnumbered. There were very few survivors. They called it the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. The Enemy piled up the dead in the fields, hundreds of thousands of them, and then picked off the remaining kingdoms at his leisure."

Nod.

"There was a human kingdom of Dor Lomin, they'd sent everyone off to fight who could, they were defenseless. The Enemy enslaved the inhabitants - I don't think humans are as fun to torture - and the ten-year-old son of its previous chieftain, Túrin, they smuggled to Doriath, because word had it that Doriath was still safe.

Thingol - Thingol took in the child and raised him as his own and when he came of age gave him a place among Doriath's guard, where he distinguished himself by expanding Doriath's position so they could protect a nearby human kingdom, and he was rising rapidly in Thingol's favor, and someone was jealous. They made a comment which - which I think they intended to be a mild childish insult, your-mother-is-promiscuous, you know how people are -

- but Túrin had watched his people enslaved and taken as wives for the invaders, and he drew a sword and told the joker to run for his life and the next anyone heard, the man was dead and Túrin had fled the kingdom."

"Wow."

"Thingol sadly announced that Túrin was exiled for murder, and then someone came forward to explain what had actually happened - Túrin was screaming at the guy and he didn't look where he was going and he ran off a cliff. Not - ideal, but manslaughter, not murder, and under the circumstances Thingol pardoned Túrin and sent some people to go find him and let him know he was pardoned. 

They found him rallying the scattered bandit groups that had been preying on Beleriand under his banner and into a fighting force he was going to use to liberate his people."

"I'm gonna guess that like literally every part of this story it doesn't end well?"

"It gets much much worse from here. If you were hoping for a happy story I can just stop there and say everyone died - everyone did in fact die -"

"I can cope with an unhappy story."

"So Túrin had a - very intimate friendship - with one of the guard captains who'd fought alongside him to protect the mortal kingdoms neighboring Doriath, and when Thingol announced he was pardoning Túrin it was this man, Beleg, who went to seek him out and tell him the news. He sought him in vain for years - the bandits were good at hiding, and Túrin avoided Thingol's people - but eventually he was taking prisoner by them and, recognizing him, Túrin called the bandits off and greeted his old friend and persuaded Beleg to stay and fight with him rather than return to Doriath. They call the realm they built together the Land of Bow and Helm, for Túrin had a dwarf-made helm he'd inherited from his father and Beleg was the most gifted archer of the Eldar.

And for a few years they kept their part of the south safe, but they didn't have the strength to go and rescue Túrin's people. And eventually they were betrayed and orcs took Túrin prisoner and dragged him towards Angband. And Beleg followed, alone and in desperation, and waited for a moment when he'd have an opening to sneak in among the orcs and save his friend."

...Gem raises her eyebrow at "very intimate friendship" but doesn't comment.

"And Beleg finds alone and starving in the woods an escapee of Angband, and gives him food and aid and asks his help in rescuing Túrin, and a few nights later there's a thunderstorm and they get an opening and he sneaks into the camp and cuts Túrin loose - and Túrin wakes in the dark to someone near him with a sword, and grabs the sword and stabs him, and then there is a flash of lightning and he recognizes Beleg, dying on the sword he'd just used to cut Túrin loose, and he becomes insensate with horror and grief. The escapee of Angband has to carry him out."

Oh dear that is very sad.

"Ready for the tragic part of the story?" he says bitterly.

"...yes."

"The escapee of Angband used to be from Nargothrond, and his fiancée is still there. He takes Túrin there. Túrin - pulls himself together, a bit. He goes to Nargothrond and meets the fianceé - her name is Finduilas - and starts lobbying Nargothrond's populace to do more to protect the surrounding population. 

Finduilas can't - can't make it work, her fiancée - isn't the same person and isn't ever going to be okay and - she develops a crush on Túrin. Her fiancé tells her she should be happy. Túrin - in all innocence, I think - is happy she's so interested in working with him because it means more influence for his campaign to get Nargothrond to build a bridge  -- it was a cave system, tiny entrance - so they can deploy forces and oppose the Enemy in the south.

He gets what he wants. Nargothrond becomes involved. And the Enemy decides it's time to get rid of it. He sends Glaurung, a giant dragon, and a whole host. They cross the bridge Túrin made. They kill a lot of people and take a lot of prisoners. Túrin manages to escape. Tries a rescue. It, uh, succeeds in the sense the orcs kill all the prisoners. And Túrin wanders hopelessly through the woods until he comes across a naked and terrified young woman."

"So Túrin had been, you'll recall, sent away from home at age ten because he was the son of the previous chieftain. His mother was pregnant when he left - managed to conceal from the slavers that the child was her husband's - and when the girl, Nienor, was old enough to travel, went with her to Doriath in search of Túrin, only to hear that no one had heard of him since he'd left. So she disguised herself as a man and went out looking for him. And at some point she runs across the same dragon, Glaurung, who finds it amusing to erase all her memories and throw her in Túrin's path.

He helps teach her language again. He builds a house for them to live in. They fall in love. They get married. She gets pregnant."

Aha.

"Glaurung comes back and starts chewing his way through the remaining scattered human settlements. Túrin goes out to fight him, and wins, though everyone who goes with him is killed and he's badly injured. Nienor hears the fighting end and races out to the site of it to see a dying dragon and what she thinks is a dead Túrin. Glaurung gives her all her memories back. She leaps off the nearest cliff. 

Túrin wakes up. He goes into the nearest human settlement demanding to know what happens, and they - try to avoid telling him - and when they do tell him he murders the teller in disbelief and horror and then kills himself. 

At this point Morgoth sees fit to release their father, who was one of his prisoners ever since the battle of Tears Unnumbered."

"Of course he does."

"Túrin's father is named Húrin, that was the style of the age...he wanders around reconstructing his children's lives as far as he can, and when he reaches Nargothrond he finds one survivor, an embittered petty-dwarf who is the last of his race - petty-dwarves were a dwarf subspecies annihilated during the war - and who tells him what happened. Húrin picks through the wreckage of Nargothrond and finds some invaluable Dwarf-made royal presents and takes them with him to Doriath and throws them at Thingol's feet and calls him rather a lot of names."

"I didn't know Dwarves had subspecies."

"Because the one was all-but-extinct by the time the Noldor even arrived in Beleriand. Anyway, Húrin then wanders some more and at the grave of his children, slowly starving to death, he finds his wife, and he stays by her until she dies and then throws himself into the sea."

Nod.

"And Thingol takes the salvaged necklace and asks some Dwarves to embed the Silmaril in it for him - as a sort of memorial, maybe, I have no idea, and there's a dispute over the price and he says something insulting about Dwarves and a Dwarf stabs him and he dies and his people kill every Dwarf in Menegroth in retaliation."

"And the Dwarves march on Menegroth in retaliation for that, and sack the city, and Beren hears part of this story and comes up to destroy the Dwarven kingdom that did it, and does so, and acquires the Silmaril, and at this point Beren and Lúthien are getting on in mortal years and hold onto it until they die. And then their son takes the Silmaril and attempts to rebuild his grandfather's shattered kingdom."

...Gem slowly facepalms.

"Dior was in his late twenties and had three children. Twins, who were six, and my mother, who was three. I think he thought it would just be the sons of Fëanor themselves, because who not bound by their oath would obey them in executing it - he'd never met Maedhros, if he had I think he would have guessed better - 

-  my mother survived the sack of the city, none of the rest of them did, I never had the nerve to ask Maedhros or Maglor - most of their brothers died in the fighting then -

 - my mother and the other survivors fled to the southern banks of the Sirion, where it meets the sea. She had the Silmaril with her, she'd smuggled it out. She grew up. People looked to her, she was Lúthien's granddaughter. She married. She had children. Twins. And - when the Fëanorians sent letters she said it would delight her if they came so she could have the chance to kill them. 

And they came. We were five."

"- five aging like humans or -"

"Half-elves age like humans, yes. I don't - I didn't actually witness much of it, I didn't learn the truth until much later. I thought they'd killed my mother. They didn't. She jumped off the cliffs into the sea rather than let them get the Silmaril. They did kill the servants who were protecting us. They took us with them. I don't think it was kindness,  Círdan's people were an hour away, but it wasn't - they were very broken people, by then, I'm not sure there's a way to make sense of it.

They raised us. They loved us. They taught us everything a Noldo born to Valinor would have learned, in their lessons, and everything we'd need to know for the world we'd been born to also. They taught us how to fight. I - Imladris is built with a music hall Maglor'd like, though he's never seen it, there are eight-pointed-stars in the walls, they were monsters and they were my fathers - 

And when the host of the West arrived we said that we were going off to fight with them and we said goodbye and - 

- the war lasted sixty years, it was a nightmare, 'an opening to stop Morgoth without collateral damage' only in the sense that orcs didn't count and everyone else in the continent was dead and couldn't be collateral damage, by the end of it I understood them - at the end of it the Valar recovered the other two Silmarils from Morgoth's crown, and they declared that the Fëanorians had forfeited their claim to the Silmarils through their evil deeds and the Silmarils were now the property of the Valar."

"Poor orcs. There's an orc planet, a bunch of hops away from here, somebody will take all your orcs there and then one of my alts will give them free will and they'll be okay. ...stupid fucking Valar."

"Maedhros and Maglor fought their way into the camp of the victorious host of the west, and they seized the chest holding Silmarils, and they prepared to die, there, fighting, back-to-back, and the herald of Manwë said 'no, let them go', and they left. 

The Silmarils burn evil things. They took the Silmarils and they burned them right to the bone and the oath was over and Maedhros took his and leapt into a chasm that had opened as Beleriand crumbled, and Maglor threw his into the sea, and hasn't been seen since, I don't know if he's dead or if he's - singing -

The Valar pardoned everyone else. For being descended from the Exiles."

"This is up to how long ago now?"

"This is the year of the sun 590."

"And the next several thousand years are full of wars with Sauron."

"There were only three major wars with Sauron, they were just - even worse than you are imagining."

"...If you'd rather tell this story to one of my alts with more of a personal grudge against Sauron I can get one."

"Would they like to hear it? I am not sure how many tellings I'm up for, but I am very confident in my ability to have my audience hating Sauron by the end of any given telling."

"I'm taking notes and I'm going to write it all up for distribution, so they'll get the content and you only have to tell it once."

"Then I can go ahead. 

Some of the survivors of the war - not that there were many - declined to graciously accept the pardon of the Valar; they moved to Eriador and built a kingdom there. About two hundred fifty thousand Noldor crossed the sea to start the war, I think? There were ten thousand in Eriador, and many of them were assimilated Sindar. Probably three thousand of the original population. Círdan's surviving people moved south too, settled in Mithlond. 

And then there was the question of what to do about the Men. Lots of them had been liberated from slavery or had been living among Círdan's people and had subsequently fought in the host of the Valar. The Valar decided to reward them. They made them an island. Star-shaped, abundantly fertile, in the ocean between Valinor and Ennor but closer to Valinor. 

And the half-Elven they decided to give a choice. Whether to have the fate of Elves or that of Men, I mean. I - I was an Elf at heart, I knew it. Elros - 

- Elros had seen what it was like to desperately desire to die and know that you would instead endure as long as Arda."

Nod.

"He was a King of Men. A great King of Men, surprising no one who knew his fathers and therefore surprising everyone because no one alive knew his fathers. And he. Got old. And he died."

"Six wishes and we can grab back anybody we want," she assures him.

"Thank you. 

And his kingdom thrived, and our kingdoms thrived, and - 

Curufin had a son. Named Curufinwë Tyelperinquar, in the Quenya; he preferred no one use his fathername. For. Understandable reasons.

Celebrimbor, in the Sindarin. In the year 1200 a Maia showed up, charming, bit reserved, had studied under Aulë but realized Middle-earth needed him more. He went by Annatar. He asked the King of the Noldor if he could be of assistance. We turned him down. Something seemed off. 

He went to Celebrimbor. In Eregion, the Noldorin kingdom on the continent of Eriador. They collaborated. They invented astonishing things, marvelous things, things to surpass Fëanor, magic rings - I have one - that all but make you a Vala. People started thinking that perhaps the greatest achievements of our people were not already behind us. But Celebrimbor got suspicious, eventually, and he smuggled the rings out and to safety, and when Sauron unmasked himself - because it was Sauron, of course - it almost wasn't too late..."

Wow, surpassing Fëanor. The Fëanors might not like that.

"There was a war. He'd been building up forces in the far south in secret, we were horrifically underprepared. The Dwarves fought with us and we still weren't able to hold on very long - I was so angry with Maedhros then, if he'd just - just found it in him to keep existing in unendurable agony for a thousand years for our convenience -" he sighs - 

"Eregion fell. Sauron captured and tortured Celebrimbor for the location of the rings. Didn't get it from him, by all accounts, and when he got it by a different means he kept it up for fun - when we saw the orc armies marching towards us with Celebrimbor's head as their banner -

Eventually the humans from Númenor, my brother's kingdom, mobilized and came to our aid. They won, but by then Eregion was lost, almost everyone was dead - I founded Imladris in that time period, it was a refuge for the survivors -"

Nod.

"Sauron was very nearly destroyed, his armies were, he escaped south. And we - clung to the coast and stopped being ambitious, mostly, it was a shock, losing so much, losing so badly...

I should give some more context about the humans. They'd built up an impressive and impressively advanced society in Númenor, and started colonizing to the east. Sometimes in a - friendly way, sometimes in a less friendly way - they were a very sophisticated society, they had book-printing and shuttled goods around on rails with steam power, the rest of the world was miles behind them. And they started resenting that mortals were barred from visiting Valinor. And they started resenting that mortals were, well, mortal. Cults sprung up around mummification, around reincarnation, around all these ways to evade or defy or postpone death. The Valar told them it was disrespectful of the Valar and of Eru to desire a fate they were never intended for. 

They became vehemently anti-Valar. One of their kings named himself 'Lord of the West', which is Manwë's title. People who were faithful to the Valar and Eru were on some occasions persecuted. The society had the usual secularism road bumps. Meanwhile the treatment of the colonies was - very worrying - but with the contempt for the Valar came contempt for the Elves and they ignored everything we said to them about it.

Sauron rebuilt his army and started making trouble in the far south. They landed a massive fleet and marched against him. Mordor - Sauron's kingdom - folded like a deck of cards, the Númenoreans had gunpowder weaponry and an army of a million - mostly conscripts from their colonies.

And Sauron surrendered and the King of the Númenoreans took him prisoner. And he was taken in chains back to Númenor and he told them that in Valinor they'd age ten times as slowly, they'd have time to find the cure to death the Valar were withholding. He taught them vaccination. He taught them how to make steel ships. He taught them rocketry.

And he led them into an invasion of Valinor."

"The ten times slower thing is even true. I assume the Valar did not take this very well?"

"The Valar asked Eru for aid.

Númenor had a population of fifty million. 

Eru sank it."

"We will get them back and we will put them somewhere else."

"The tidal wave destroyed most of the coastline, too. And the soldiers who'd landed in Valinor proper, Eru made immortal, just as they'd wanted - can't be killed by anything - and then crushed them under a mile of rock. They are still there. It's been three thousand years."

"Oh my fucking god we knew Erus were assholes but that's really overdoing it!"

"I told you it was uglier than you were expecting!"

Gem inhales through her teeth. "Okay. If they're still alive we don't even need wishes, Joy'll be able to teleport them all neatly out when she gets back - not sure what's keeping her, maybe he was in a meeting or something - I can teleport but she's better at things where she doesn't know where everything is -"

"They're still alive, that's the whole point."

"Yes, and by tomorrow they will be alive in a world that is not run by a fucking Eru."

"So Sauron survives the sinking of the continent, heads back to Mordor, and all the free peoples of the world march off to war to end him for real and forever - and we do, we kill him, it's a horrible war but we do it - but he'd made that ring, the one I mentioned, and we only realized later how it anchors him in the world, and it's lost now to time. So someday he'll come back. We don't know when."

Pop! With Maedhros.

And then she gets a look at Gem's face and - "what happened -"

"Turns out that Ardas where I don't show up one way or another to save the day are so terrible. Hi Maedhros this is - hasn't introduced himself actually - who your alt adopted several thousand years ago, wanna kill a Sauron."

"Yes."

"You know the wording that worked in Luster? Actually - if there might be local circumstances - it was phrased there as 'without destroying anything else in Arda, I want Melkor and all of the Maiar that serve him irrevocably dead from this minute forward', last tidbit to enable time travel magic if something went wrong - does this sound like it'll work if it goes through?" she asks hasn't-introduced-himself.

"Sauron might not fall under "Maiar that serve him", present tense, since there's no Melkor around to serve."

"He's just imprisoned again, not dead, right? But fair enough - Melkor and Sauron and all the Maiar that have served them? Are there any reformed Maiar we might need to worry about, the only gray area I know of is Thuringwethil and she's already done for..."

"If there are any I haven't heard of them."

"Is that ring going to be a problem, what with being an anything else in Arda which would not be covered by the wish as specified?"

"Might wish the Ring destroyed as well." He looks at his own mournfully. "All the other ones'll stop working too, if you're feeling creative you could wish for the Ring and all the corrupted lesser ones to be destroyed without effects on the uncorrupted three."

"...'corrupted' here meaning what, mechanically, and your confidence that yours isn't it coming from...?"

"All the ones Sauron worked on he can exert control over remotely, and instead of their intended purpose they corrupt the bearers into his servants. Well, except Dwarves, immunity to mind-control, the Dwarven ones make their bearers more anxious and hot-tempered, because that's physiological. The Elven rings were made by Celebrimbor in secret after he began to suspect Annatar, and you can tell they don't corrupt their bearers because here I am not a slave of Sauron and I've worn it for thousands of years, in addition to the fact he had no part in their making. If he had the One he could probably still tamper with these rings, but only because if he has the One he'll be nigh-omnipotent.

Anyone who has the One is nigh-omnipotent. That's - that's how it corrupts you."

"That doesn't seem like a very obvious mechanism of corruption."

"The nigh-omnipotence is instantaneous, the corrupting is - not slow, but slower. So you tell yourself you can put it on for a little bit, fix everything, make the whole world safe for everyone, but then once it's on you will never ever have the strength to take it off and let it go - if you have sworn to take it off and let it go you will erase the oath with your own convenient omnipotence - and it'll occur to you that people might want to take it from you so you will build yourself defenses against them, or maybe just change all their brains so they can't even think about it, it will seem like a necessary and right thing to do -

- there is no safe way to use the Ring and the more good you think you'd do with it the more of a danger it is to you. Trust me."

"I believe you, but that's not omnipotence corrupting you, that's omnipotence tempting you and mind-control corrupting you."

"If you like. Just destroy it."

"Sure. Can always get the notes on its creation and then, like, throw them at some Fëanors and maybe get a non-mind-control version. Anything else that needs to fold into the wish?"

"You said you had a solution for the orcs?"

"Collect 'em all in one place, teleport 'em to Edda, there's an orcs planet and there one of my alts can give them free will and there's a healing spell that works on their chronic pain thing."

"Then I don't think there's anything else. Well. Assuming you can't do anything about Eru."

"Unsolved problem but so far he has never actually bothered us while we mess with his stuff."

"I hope that holds."

"Me too." She looks at Maedhros. "Magic rock yes or no?"

"Do we know if the indestructibility sticks -"

"Probably doesn't but no reason in principle it couldn't be recast on a rock."

"Except that Mitros will make fun of me. Yes, magic rock."

(He watches. He might be crying.)

"Ready when you are."

"Without destroying anything else in Arda including rings of power that aren't mind-affecting, I wish Melkor, Sauron, the Maiar that served them, and mind-affecting rings of power irrevocably destroyed from this minute forward."

"And there you go." Magic rockification ensues. "Loki owes me dinner or something." She makes a dusting-off-her-hands gesture. "Lúthien there are some legit immortal people trapped under a mile of rock, coast of Valinor, can you rescue them, stash 'em out of the way on Mîr but not in that space we set aside for putting large porting batches through, assign them some people with Loki's healing spell...?"

"Trapped under a mile of -" Pop.

"- and Maedhros you might want to back up at least as far as Mîr too, uh, you remember those prophecies Kib was freaked out about..."

"Vividly."

"...people here'd recognize you." She glances at haven't-introduced-himself. "D'you want to continue this conversation on my planet, or, like, what?"

"What's - next, figuring out how to bring back the dead?"

"Finding six people to wish it. Well, six people to do the thing that covers humans - your Dwarves should be okay actually, Aulë has a design sense and in this kind of Arda he gives 'em a satisfactory afterlife - and one further person with sufficiently strong opinions can omit the need to interact with Mandos about dead Elves and orcs but the one who did it in Luster is presumably himself in Mandos here -"

"If they were a Noldo, yes, probably."

(Maedhros vanishes.)

"Yeah, it was Celegorm."

"Died in the second sack of Menegroth, yeah. I actually don't know if the Fëanorians are in Mandos or in the Everlasting Darkness like they swore."

"Evidence from other Ardas suggests Mandos unless he, like, shooed them all when he had the complete set or something."

"Doubt it. Okay. I don't know who can make your wishes. Probably some humans, for the human immortality - I could do a piece for human reembodiment -"

"We can get some people together. Is getting underway on that more urgent than getting us up to speed on what else is up with this place?"

"Not much else is up. The humans have human problems - disease and violence and succession disputes and so forth - there's a couple Maiar who got permission to try to help, they meet with the remaining Elven leadership, it's called the White Council, I should tell them what's going on -"

"If you like. In which case you should probably know somewhat more about what's going on."

"That would be lovely."

"Do you want to go see if that Maedhros is still on Mîr - that's my and Joy's capital planet - or just hang out here where it is less emotionally complicated?"

"He's a completely different person. If it'd be useful to have him in the conversation we can go get him. I - I don't know what I'll say to mine, but I don't have to worry about that just yet."

"Not especially useful, I don't think, anything he knows and I don't would be personal non-introductory stuff anyway."

"Okay. So what sort of people do you need for wishes, what does 'magic rock thing' - why does wishing change your outfit -"

"Okay, so, my world," she calls up the map again, indicates it, "is not an Arda. I named it Wish. It's got a planetful of just humans, and it's got some aliens elsewhere in the world. Within Wish humans are unique in experiencing emotions. At all. And emotions can be a fuel source for the local magic system. When I was seventeen I was offered a wish by a fluffy li'l alien; the wish came with magic powers and a charge to defeat evil despair monsters therewith. That's legit as far as it goes; what they don't tell you in the promotional material -" And she proceeds to explain the magic system and how Joy dropped on her and helped her break the emotion ecology and trade for the wish thing.

"Congratulations."

"Thanks! How much detail is the council gonna want...?"

"Uh, do you have any way of verifying any of this -"

"Uh, my alt Golden's daughter Elspeth who is going to reasonableize your Valar has truth-telling magic and is very hard to doubt even when she's just talking and doesn't maintain private thoughts? You can come look around at some of the stuff? I should call Cam over here anyway to make him install a comm ball so messages can go in and out of this world?"

"I suppose if no one ever dies again that'll be sufficient proof of most of it. We'll probably stay watching out for Sauron just in case."

"Don't really blame you. If you would find it satisfying Loki does a very good retelling of her own Arda adventure which is by far the most storyish of them all and includes her killing a Sauron with her bare hands."

"It's not really a good adventure story that I'm looking for."

"Yeah I don't really know what you're looking for I haven't met any of you before and it gets way too easy to rely on that after a while."

"Everything you have said is very hard to believe and if I need to convince additional people of it, it would be useful to have evidence beyond 'they definitely did complex foreign magic with nonlocal effects, which they say killed Morgoth and Sauron" - maybe Mithrandir'll have some way to check if Morgoth's dead -"

"The orcs would know, right? Are there any left alive?"

"If you can find one old enough to be sworn to Morgoth, which none of the ones born in the last six thousand years would be."

"Huh, I was sort of expecting they'd keep inducting their kids into the same oath."

"That wouldn't be very useful to Sauron. There are also lots of orcs sworn to no one, just wandering, preying on travelers."

"Well that'll make them annoying to collect and relocate."

"Can't wish it?"

"Could, but that adds the step of finding someone who feels very strongly that they want all the orcs collected into one place, which seems like it might be kinda niche. Especially since if they want to hurt the orcs we have a problem."

"Yeah, you might have a problem there."

"I can bring in an orc from an orc planet to wish for it, I guess."

"Are you all right?"

Blink. "...I'm fine?"

"You seem - anxious - and I can't determine to what degree it's 'this is a complicated problem' and to what degree it's 'all the people I know did horrible things and died horribly' and to what degree there are complications I am not aware of."

"This turned out to be a moderately more delicate 'find a world, fix it up all nice' expedition than I was expecting when we set out. I am not actually super attached to anybody customarily found in Ardas except Joy, and the local Lúthien sounds like she did okay for herself. Some of my alts are going to be desperately upset, though." Pause. "The one with a human version of Maedhros may take it into her head to ask you about his parenting skills? I can tell her to back off if you want."

"I doubt I'd have any insight for her unless hers plans on going through five hundred years of continuous trauma, burying pretty much everyone he cares about, and then adopting a couple of traumatized five-year-olds. I do not mind if she asks, if that's helpful to her."

"I can tell her the information would not be useful."

"I should probably make sure somebody - maybe not you - has the whole picture. They deserve - they deserve for people to have at least a clear sense of what they were at the end."

"...Okay. Who?"

"History? Who's curating all of this in general?"

"It's sort of a distributed effort. There's a Rúmil doing a history of Warp but that's probably not what you mean."

"Perhaps I'll figure it out once I have more information and once everything else is solved."

"Sure. Do you wanna get underway on wisher-finding or go through more multiverse summary?"

"Wisher-finding is currently underway, they'll knock when they're all here."

"Okay." And she goes through the rest of the map, omitting Shadow and much of the events of Space and being correspondingly spare elsewhere to make this less obvious.

And then there are people at the door who feel suitably passionate about human mortality and a way to reembody dead Elves in Ennor instead of relying on Mandos. (They all read very high; they are all happy to participate; they are all trustworthy. He was raised by a Maitimo).

And Gem walks them through the wordings that have worked for these purposes in the past, checks for local conditions that may contraindicate, grills anybody who wants to be a magic rock a little bit, and grants wishes.

"How does the reincarnation of dead humans part work?"

"It's not reincarnation, it's resurrection, reincarnation is a different more inconvenient thing - somebody alive has to nonmaliciously request them so we don't have millions of people suddenly appearing with nowhere in particular to go, and then they show up healthy and young-adult but with all their memories and can be brought wherever their requester had in mind."

"Okay. I don't think any currently-alive humans remember the people of Númenor - but I guess you could only get a couple and it could spiral out from there -"

"Exactly. After the resurrections slow down we can check for any populations that were too isolated to have anybody fetch them some other way."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome!"

"Anything else before you go move all our orcs?"

"Where will be a good place to install a thing to let this world communicate with others?"

"Here could work fine. Is there a way to let us communicate with Valinor?"

"I can ask Boots to send you some earwires, they can close osanwë distance."

"Thank you. And should we be expecting interdimensional visitors?"

"Somebody'll bring you earwires and the comm ball. There might be curious visitors who come by to meet people or see the place but I can tell them to back off if that would be unwelcome, although they won't necessarily all listen to me, like, my template doesn't have much pull with Lúthiens in general and they might ignore me to come check out their alt's descendants."

"Any Lúthiens will be very very welcome here. That story everyone remembers, even if they've forgotten - the rest -

 - the problem is going to be visiting Fëanorians. I can handle them and I think Galadriel can handle them but there are a lot of people who will probably try to kill them on the spot."

"I will notify them that this is a problem. Fëanorians do mostly like Bells enough to pay attention to us on that and I don't think any of them would get kicks out of people trying to kill them. - there is a reckless twelve year old Fëanor. With wings. Would anybody recognize him if he recklessed his way all the way here."

"There is what. And no. No one would recognize a twelve year old Fëanor and I think the general principle of 'if you didn't do it, you would have' will break down with a literal small child. ...why do Lúthiens not like Bells?"

"Well, Joy does, and the one from Elentári is sort of friends with Loki, but the rest of them are mostly working off whatever relations we wind up having with Doriath, which is, uh, run by Melian and Thingol."

"Who she will end up estranged from, but I suppose that's not for a while in most of their timelines."

"Yeah, exactly."

"My universe's Fëanorians - what's the plan there."

"I will consult some live ones but I'm going to guess 'extract them, put them on Vanda Nossëo'?"

"And the people who followed them?"

"Same thing probably. Vanda Nossëo's got room."

"What's it like?"

"...Elfy architecture? Full of Elentári's Noldor? Do you want go visit it or anything?"

"Once I've explained to everyone here what's going on and seen my twin brother for the first time in six thousand years and Ereinion's back and the succession is settled and everyone I can heal is healed. That will take some time."

"Yeah, sure. The comm ball can be accessed via a tech thing or a non-Arda-magic thing and then you'll be able to send messages and get a ride, tutorial for either thing takes less than an hour from a cold start usually."

"Thank you. We'll get started on all of the work that involves."

"Do you need anything else before I hop off, it might take as much as a day or two before Boots brings you earwires and a ball - any more questions...?"

"Who did your Lúthien marry?"

...Gem is suddenly having a coughing fit, please pardon her.

"It's not going to be a problem. Well, if it's a Fëanorian it's going to be a political problem but not from me."

Gem recovers. Mostly. "...it's not a Fëanorian."

"Good, that seems like a terrible match. My great-grandmother is basically 'adorable innocence personified except when she's wearing your skin as a cloak' and my adoptive family is basically 'hubris personified except when they're crumbling from total inability to take care of themselves' and it just really wouldn't work."

"It's me."

"...you can wish for - I suppose if you can wish for anything - did her parents react even worse that the standard reaction -"

"How it happened is a minor infohazard, up to you if you want it - and I guess not, actually, when I met them I'd already killed Morgoth so Thingol wanted the crown but when we found the crown it had Silmarils in it so we told the Fëanorians and they got the Silmarils off the crown and I gave him the crown without them in it and he confined himself to glowering at me a lot."

"Congratulations."

"Thanks."

"I am glad Lúthien is happy. She's welcome to come meet her alt-children once they exist again."

"I'll let her know."

"I regret that I cannot be a more welcoming presence. Lots to coordinate at the moment - lots to think about - "

"It's fine, I'll leave you be - Boots'll be by soonish with stuff to install and some earwires."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

And she goes back to Mîr.

Where she dropped all of the people who've been being tortured for thousands of years and then collapsed into a puddle and is crying.

"Oh -" Snuggles for sad wife.

"I guess everything is Eru's fault but this is more directly so and we can't even say 'okay, we'll make sure he'll never hurt anyone again' -"

"We could evacuate all the Ardas but - yeah."

"He could just drop more species in them!"

"Yeah, he could." Snuggle.

"And there might not even be a finite number of Ardas."

"Yeah." Snuggle snuggle snuggle.

"I wish I'd been more strategic. Even once I got tired of being constrained I wasn't -"

"You were stuck in a badly written story and since you got out of it you've been amazing and you would've been pretty amazing anyway."

"But it wouldn't have changed anything. Illusory kind of amazingness."

Snuggle.

"If I could've taken Sauron then what I should have done is snuck out and gone to the Noldor as soon as they arrived -"

"I'm assuming there was composition time, and risk - Loki could in fact take Sauron but only once she had her ice, and then her teleport -"

"Yeah." Snuggles. 

Snuggles.

"I don't know how to feel about the fact these Fëanorians did actually murder tons and tons of people."

"I think - they'd already done most of the steering they could ever do on that when they took the oath, and that was very, very stupid and very, very dangerous and the ones who did that part are going to be appalled at themselves but - it's not new information except about how many people are willing to look at someone who's sworn an unbreakable oath to win at chicken and play chicken with them anyway -"

"People followed them."

"Yeah, those people are kind of suspect. But the Silmarils aren't just shiny rocks and the Fëanorians were the people who could've made them do more than be shiny rocks, which - might have seemed like enough reason at the time."

"I guess, if it was looking like Melkor was going to win and you knew you could stop him but you had to barrel through a city of innocent people - I don't even have to ask what you'd do -"

"Wasn't trying to be mean."

"It's okay."

"Even once we grab an orc to wish the orcs collected and move all the orcs and hub it I am not going to feel very much like saying 'ten!'"

Squeeze. "That's okay."

They grab an orc from Wish's orc planet and wish all the new Arda's orcs to one place and hub it.

And then they can put the orcs on the Wish orc planet to wait for Loki to have a moment to bring them to within infinity stone range and give them free will.

And Gem writes up her notes and puts them in the files for everyone.

And shortly after that he appears at Kib's door and knocks hard enough to scrape up his indestructible knuckles.

Charp answers the door. Kib is curled up on the sofa reading. "- hi?"

"Are you in the middle of anything urgent."

"No?"

Pop they are on his island and he is going to throw himself at Kib and open and close his mouth several times and then start sobbing.

...snuggles?

Snuggles. Oh so many snuggles. Oh so many -

found a new Arda. No Bells ever landed.

- how far did it get -

7000 years later.

Hugs.

Remember the prophecies -

In excruciating eidetic detail.

It's okay I got you I got to you in time I love you -