And how does it go -

Checking -

"They get along fine, they don't have magic system interactions down yet and both expect it to take a while but should know in a day or two if it's doable."

Bounce.

"Okay. I don't think I need backup, then, thanks - did we actually tell Boots that her Maia tagalong does some interesting stuff in the standard trajectory or did she just learn it in precog, she'll probably want to know -"

"She just learned in precog, I'll send her a note."

"Okay!" And she goes off to actually orchestrate the meeting and is back an hour fifteen minutes later to tell Sibyl about it.

"Welcome back, lovely."

Hug. "I asked Swift how he coped with Saurons being loose."

"What'd he say?"

"They'd be doing terrible things anyway so it's not like fewer people'd be horribly tortured if we were all safe and dead and it's not like it's better for other people to be horribly tortured."

"...that is a perspective."

"I said I'd been kind of hoping for something different and he suggested I ask my evil rapist alt."

"...is that as rude as it sounds, alts are sort of a weird ettiquette case."

"It's not exactly rude but it's exactly as unhelpful as it sounds."

"When did you get around to reading that section, I didn't actually know you had..."

"Tireh asked about taking evil Fëanor to meet his family and I had to know what the fuck had happened such that whether that was a good idea was in question."

"Ah."

"Midnight clearly does have some coping skills the rest of us lack but I am nonetheless not going to ask after or adopt them."

"Wouldn't recommend it. Tireh seems to have decided he's her job now since nobody else knew what to do with him."

"She does?"

"No, but she's coming at it from a perspective such that she thinks she can productively pick it up, with a little bit of 'yeah the peal was gonna let me die I am a suitable sounding board for resentment of the peal' and a little bit of 'I am literally three, he hasn't done anything nefarious since I hatched and I view sexual assault as an obscure old-person misdemeanor'."

"- I guess if it works."

"Seems to be so far."

"Maybe the genderflipping helps but I have a hard time seeing any of the terrible things my alts do as - anything other than very distant disasters that I can fathom having happened under completely different circumstances but - so different that I only sort of recognize myself -"