Less than a Valian year. Almost four Endorë ones. She is alive.

"How about now?"

She is alive.

"What about my brothers and sisters - I know Teeth died is she here -"

Almost all the dead come here. Sometimes you can communicate with those who you were close to in life, but I cannot enable that; the spirits must seek one another out voluntarily.

"Well how do I do that."

Think about them and your desire to communicate with them, and if they want that also it should be possible for you to find each other.

"Okay - are any other ones dead except Teeth -"

All of them are dead.

"All of them? What happened?"

There was a war.

"Is the war over now?"

In some relevant senses, yes.

"What does that mean?"

Melkor is not moving. Most of his Maiar are free and well. There are very few surviving orcs. There are not declared ongoing hostIlities.

"Is Macalaurë alive?"

Yes.

"How long has it been now how old would Kat be -"

Less than a Valian year. Almost four Endorë ones.

Well, one time the gap between questions was almost two whole Endorë years - this fucking being dead thing - so. "Are you ever going to figure out how to fix oaths or do I have to be dead for ever and ever."

It is beyond my power to fix oaths.`

"But are you guys even like, sort of working on it -"

We tried when the first orcs came to us. It isn't possible. Melkor offered to help, that was part of why we paroled him.

"Maybe you could put me somewhere I could be alive without being able to do anything I'm sworn about, or, like, maybe you could convey my surrender so I could get out of the one that had the escape clause -"

We cannot bring to Valinor peoples sworn to the evil ends of Melkor.

"I don't want to live in Valinor anyway I want to go get Kat. - how old would she be now -"

Four Endorë years.

"She's little, she needs me. If you told Macalaurë I surrendered then I'd be fine, I couldn't help any Elves but if the war's over I'm not going to be reminded of other stuff, I could go get her -"

I wish I could do that. I cannot. I'm sorry.

"Why can't you?"

I reembody people who are fit to return to life, not people who are loved and missed or people who are needed.

"I was okay being alive except for the one thing and you could patch that!"

I cannot.

"Yeah you can, you just send some Maia flying across the sea to yell 'THE ORF SURRENDERS, BY THE WAY' and then I'm all set and I can go get Kat."

You are not otherwise ready to be reembodied, the reembodied cannot depart Valinor, and we do not communicate with the Exiles.

"...why."

You are in need of much healing before you return to life, we desire to avoid reembodying people to thrust them once again at violence and danger, and because they killed many innocents in Valinor without cause and rejected our pardon.

"I don't need that much healing! I'm fine except for how my baby is growing up without me! Also you said the war was over. And I didn't say you should be friends I said you should have somebody yell at them so I wouldn't get squished."

No.

"How long has it been now -"

Almost five Endorë years.

"My baby my baby my baby -"

A magic rock teleporter catalogues the neighbors of the newly sought neighbors of Edda. Edda has a neighbor-of-neighbor that is an Arda. He duly reports this to Vanda Nossëo c/o Mîr command structure.

"Yay. Tireh, can you drag Melkor and Sauron a hop presuming it's needed -"

"I need to reread some stuff and we don't actually know for sure that I can do Valar."

"If not I think they think they can do it with the Silmarils."

"Yeah. Is it safe to send Elspeth in advance to Taniquetil and see if I even need to? The rereading is not instantaneous."

"Let's check with Sybil but probably."

Elspeth says the Taniquetil seems normal.

Then Elspeth should head on over!

Yep! Hello Valar she is Elspeth, traveling peddler of not being so terrible at things!

Oh, the Noldor already have Melkor and all of Utumno in stasis with the Silmarils, things kind of worked out all right considering how badly they started.

Oh. Good for them. Still, crash course on being better at things, take all your orcs off your hands, etc.?

- yeah, okay. 

Excellent. Here is a standard Valar curriculum. The Edda orc planet (several planets, now, they have a colonization program) will be ready to absorb its new citizens with their complimentary free will whenever.

Mandos will start reembodying them!

There's someone who can erase oaths, he tells Beka. I can bring you back now.

"- will it hurt -"

I don't know how immediately they are doing free will. I can convey your surrender first to be safe.

She thought he said he couldn't do that. "Thank you."

"Beka surrenders," a random Maia tells Macalaurë a few minutes later.

"- we acknowledge that as adequate - does that mean you can bring her back -"

"I don't know. You're still exiled."

"...okay."

"...what happened?"

"Someone came from another world. They can erase oaths."

"Beka-"

"- and travel between worlds? Can they travel between worlds -"

"Who are they, why are they here -"

"I assume they can travel between worlds because they were here. I don't know what they want - they explained how to communicate with Incarnates better?"

"...that's nice of them... can we talk to them?"

"I can mention you'd like to?"

"I think we would appreciate that, thank you."

Messenger leaves.

"Are they always like that."

"That is by far the most coherent I've heard a messenger of the Valar."

"Yikes."

"It was obnoxious. It is possible it'll take some doing to get the attention of interdimensional powers who hop in to lecture the Valar and then leave."

"Perhaps. Don't think we can address an owl to 'mysterious lecturer'."

"Kat needs to know about Beka."

"We could go to Valinor if we won't get smote for it."

"I'm sure Beka will make her way to Kat if possible."

"Which is a potential catastrophe, if the Valar won't let her leave."

"Adding Kat anxious to try to get to Beka is not necessarily an improvement. We could try sending an owl to Valinor, Amber is getting along with the other barn owl in a potentially egglaying fashion so we don't have to treat them as irreplaceable..."

"Still a really long trip."

"Yes, but days long not weeks."

"They seem likelier than not to let an owl messenger in - maybe we can tell Beka to give us a bit of time and that Kat's safe, at least -"

"You should probably write the letter with more or less consultation from Rebecca, put in whatever seems useful."

"Can you take me to her?"

"Sure - hold my arm -" And there ensue Apparitions up to Mithrim.

"Hi. We just got an emissary informing us that Beka surrenders -"

" - so they're going to reembody her?"

"...surrenders? Can she do that by emissary?"

"I have no idea! Apparently!"

"And that fixes her thing -?"

"I mean, she'd still be sworn to whatever she remembered being sworn to, which is almost certainly something horrible, but apparently they can maybe fix that too, now -"

"How -"

"The explanation we were given was very incomplete, but apparently someone stopped by to give the Valar a tutorial and they can fix oaths."

"That's... nice of them?"

"Probably."

He hugs Rebecca protectively.

Snuggle!

Elsewhere a Larya finds Maitimo with a briefing packet! "You want a chiplocked computer but we'll want everyone in one place for that, saves time. There's a you here and a you here and a you here - you'll need to pick a nickname -"

             "There are two of us here presently, though I imagine if you have interdimensional transit Timothy will want to go home."

"- how did that happen?"

             "I haven't the faintest idea. They fell on us."

" - oh, that happens all the time, actually, just usually it's a Bell - we don't know why - it's all in the packet -"

             "A Bell?"

"Name has 'Bel' in it somewhere, looks like this or this or this or this though there's no reason to think that's exhaustive - all yous look like you except the genderswapped one - you've got a list of names in that packet but it's Iobel and Akibel and Campbell and Beldri and Tirehbel and Isabella T'Mir and Isabella Boots and Isabella Gem and Isabella Sybil - the human you is Mitros."

            "The human me here is Timothy. Timothy Michael Theodore Aaron Minor James Samuel though the latter two were left behind in their original dimension and it's not known if they're all right -"

"We have resurrection. Timothy should write up everybody he knows for the list of names, you probably don't know anybody new to us - you've got some people who will want to make immortality necklaces and should be started on that immediately and then there's a slower process to fold the rest of your people in with the multiverse operations."

           "You do this a lot."

"It's a treat, if we find you soon enough."

          "Is this soon enough?" He's flipping through his briefing packet. 

"Yes - oh, there's really excellent magic therapy. For Angband. I can schedule it -"

         "It can wait."

"As you see fit."

         "If you go get Macalaurë Beka he'll be much happier, can that be on the list of first-day projects?"

"Beka?"

          "- uh, yes, the orf who rescued me from Angband -"

" - that's non-standard."

          "Well. Does it usually fail or does she usually not exist at all - I do get out of Angband, one presumes -"

"Findekáno goes and fetches you."

         "I do not think he will resent being denied his chance at heroism - he wouldn't have gotten there for Years -"

"How long were you in -"

        "Objectively? Five or six years - felt like thirty -"

"It's objectively fifty. Usually."

        "Am I typically in greater need of therapy?"

"Absolutely no one except your alts is going to have any idea of the answer to that, milord."

        Maitimo smiles. "Go get Beka."

"My teleport doesn't do people just places but I can find someone -"

        "Yes please."

Being alive again is painful and bewildering and overwhelming and loud and bright and hot and cold and dizzy and it feels so fucking good. Free will feels good too but in a vague disembodied way, she barely notices it amid the sound of breathing and the feel of her fingers and toes and the taste of air.

She misses the transition from where Mandos puts her to where she comes to her senses; the first thing she manages to parse is being in a pleasantly dim little stone room laid out on a cushion. There's a soft recording playing over and over in the Black Speech: "Welcome to our orc planet. There is no rush. Whenever you are ready please say 'I'm ready' and this system will ask you some simple questions to help unite you with your family and find you a place to go. The system can also work in Quenya, Thindarin -" It's got a longish list. Then it circles back around to "Welcome to our orc planet".

Beka eventually tells it she is ready.

It wants to know if she has a name (she does), whether many people knew it (no), how many siblings she has, how many aunts and uncles, did her parents have names, did she have any lovers she wants to find again, did she have children -

"One," she says.

- how would she identify the child's father -

"- no."

"Question postponed."

Eventually it finds enough other information to triangulate her. It assigns her a number and a little ticket and tells her to go here and get on the thing and get off when her number is called and there she will be around a manageable number of other people and be able to find her family.

She is sitting on the train, braiding her hair.

Pop! There's an Elf. "Beka?"

"...hi?"

"Hi! Uh, the Noldorin government in your home dimension requested we find you -"

"- the thing said it was taking me to my family, I need my little girl -"

"I don't think she's here, I think she's still on your homeworld - she didn't swear anything, right -"

"...not while I was there but I was dead."

Pop. Pop. 

"Yeah she's still by Lake Mithrim -"

"- can you take me -"

"Yes." And there they are, right outside the Way estate.

"...what is this place?"

"I don't know," says the teleporter. Uh, Prince Canafinwë - Beka's here -

"Beka's here -" he says to Michael and Rebecca -

Rebecca scoops up Kat and plops her on her hip and goes out to meet her.

Kat blinks.

- Beka makes a soft almost injured noise. "My Kat -"

"All yours, of course, we were looking after her for you," says Rebecca, setting her down.

"- Kat d'you remember me -"

"........Mama," identifies Kat tentatively.

"Yeah - yeah I'm your mama -"

"I swear," begins Kat, and Beka dives to tackle her and clap a hand over her mouth.

Tackled Kat finds this satisfactory and hugs Beka's arm and is scooped up and held very tightly.

Michael hugs his wife.

Eventually:

"Who are you -"

"Uh, there are apparently lots of worlds and they have the same people in them for unclear reasons and we're a species called humans from a world called Earth and I met Rebecca and married her and we have three children - the oldest one is Catherine, she's - the same as Kat the way I'm the same as Macalaurë and Rebecca's the same as you - I'm not Catherine's biological father I adopted her -"

"...aw."

He hugs Rebecca more.

"Kat and Catherine are about the same age, they've been almost like twins since they met, we've been keeping Kat in her room."

Sniff. Snuggling Kat. Nod. "Thank you."

"Of course."

"Do you have a place to go, you could move in here, so they can still play -"

"Really? I, uh, seemed to have been set up with a place to go on an orc planet but you are clearly not orcs even to the extent that I am - that'd be really nice of you -" She glances between them. "- married, huh, how'd you do that."

"...right place at the right time?"

"Damn. Failed step one." She kisses Kat's forehead.

"Uh, he'd definitely marry you. He is the mopiest me imaginable whenever I kiss her."

"He didn't seem overwhelmingly into it before."

"Aren't Quendi neurotic about wars? Also if I were keeping Rebecca chained up in my storage room I wouldn't feel entirely great about proposing marriage - not the sort of reason you want a girl to have -"

"Even after that! Anyway I can't get married, I'm not an Elf or a whatever you are."

"Well, maybe he's a moron," he says, and kisses his wife. "What do you mean you can't get married."

"Awww - um, Quendi do a magic, soul thing, it doesn't happen to me. I dunno what you do, you don't look that kinda married."

"We just tell our families and as relevant the government and the church that we mean to be married? I think in church weddings something happens before God and all but it's not something you would tell by looking -"

"The magic soul thing you can see in their eyes? It's kind of hard to see but I don't see as good as them. I guess maybe your thing works for whoever."

"I think so." Hug.

"Awww." Sigh.

"Rebecca is the best thing that ever happened to me and I mean to tell all the mes in the universe to go find more of her."

"I love you."

"Macalaurë already found me, just didn't - I'm glad you're happy though. I just needed Kat and I'll be fine."

"Just didn't want to fuck up and did not realize 'delaying for years' was a form of fucking up because he is a Quendi. And a moron."

Hey.

Beka jumps. "- is he here -"

"He's inside but. like, Quendi, they've got ridiculous senses -"

"I know they do - hi Macalaurë -"

Hi. I'm so glad you're all right - are you all right -

I have free will now! It's weird! And everything feels really intense, although that's dropping off. Pause. I got reembodied with my hair down!

I killed you. Uh, just so you know.

Is that why you're hiding? I knew that. Thank you.

Not really, I just didn't want to - get in the way - the whole thing was my fault -

Not really.

Could have come up with a safer escape clause.

I didn't know it was going to do that either.

I'm just glad you're all right. Kat was safe and happy and didn't swear anything -

She calls you Cáno I noticed. (Kat has been haphazardly narrating the period of time during which her Mama was dead in a vague pidgin of five languages.)

Catherine calls Michael Papa and they're - such a happy family -

I noticed that.

I dunno if I should be addressing this situation with "you can go ahead and be an Elf about it, I'll keep" or "so hey I wanna find out what sex is like while everything feels about a million times more than usual" and I would appreciate some unmixed signals there.

I was grossly unfair to you and I am so sorry and if I - if you want - 

Wow, regret and sorrow, sexy.

You know what? All right. Come here.

Kat's already wiggling - "I wanna find Catherine -"

Beka kisses Kat's cheek and puts her down. Kat runs off into the garden.

Where's here?

I'm in the house -

She winks at Rebecca.

She goes and opens the front door.

She had started to braid her hair, but she didn't finish or have anything to tie it off with and it's almost slid loose by now.

The house does not actually have guest bedrooms but it has a truly astonishing number of parlors and sitting rooms. 

He scoops Beka up and finds one.

Ooh! Scooping!

He has to put her down to latch the door. Then he can pick her up again. "Did you really think I didn' t like you -"

"Mixed signals," she chirps, a little breathless - everything is still so much, and she is paying lots of attention to all of it.

"I don't - it's not like I had a threshold for how tempting someone had to be before I'd rape them and you fell short of it -"

"You're over that thing now, right, you're not gonna carry me around and tell me how tempting I am and then neglect me, right -"

"It, ah, seems pretty obvious that I could have made you happier and I very much wished I had and I can certainly not hurt you again -"

"Vague sense of obligation, sexy."

"I have no idea what you want from me." Pause. "- well, I mean, in some senses it's abundantly clear? Clear enough I wasn't actually expecting to have to worry about it any further?" He turns her around in his arms, removes clothes. He hasn't touched her hair yet. 

Even if all he's touching is skin (the circles on her shoulder are interestingly textured) he can get her shivery and gaspy like that; she is currently set to Easy Mode. She switches to osanwë. I want, I want - mm - I want you to want me and have me 'cause you want me -

No one has ever in all of Arda wanted anyone half as badly - 

Prove it.

She's squirming too much, he shoves her onto the couch and climbs on top of her and holds her there and undoes whatever remains of the braids and then runs his fingers along her scalp until she is definitely too distracted to make fun of him.

aaaaaaaaaaaa~

Beka's alive, Beka's alive, Beka is forever alive and safe and he is so so so happy about it.

So so so alive. Very much alive. Delightedly alive.

An Elf teleports over to Minor and Finis and Miranda. "Hi!" she says in English. "I've been told you'll want to go home, we can help with that."

"...Hi. Can we also get some kind of - executive summary of what's going on -"

" - yes, sorry, there are briefing packets!" Briefing packets. She doesn't know Miranda so she hands her one without anything sensitive. "The short version is that there are lots of worlds, maybe infinitely many of them, and someone developed a systematic way to go between them and many of them have different magic systems so we borrowed and combined until we could do all kinds of things and now we're going around doing humanitarian work everywhere - we scan for Ardas in particular because they're high-leverage, Melkor is terrible and Sauron is terrible and once they're both gone Elves are super willing to integrate with existing multiverse projects." She nods at Finis. "We owe his alts the original means of travel between worlds and our most scalable form of immortality and anti-aging for mortal species and faster-than-light nonmagical transit within worlds and pending interworld portals - they're really close, just not reliable -"

"...cool. Congratulations, Finis."

"Are there alts of Miranda -"

        "Michael asked that about Rebecca and Timothy asked it about Karen, too. There's a way to check but it demands the time of someone whose time is very very valuable so it'll get checked but possibly not for a couple weeks - you happened to catch us at a busy time, we've grown sixty percent in the last two months when circumstances demanded finding a bunch of worlds real fast. The packet says 'operations on more than four hundred worlds' but it's coming up on seven hundred."

"How much population is that - order of magnitude -"

"Ten trillion? We're not highly involved everywhere, some places we hand better crops and vaccinations and a robot to teach germ theory and economics and then leave."

"Do we need to be very conservative with your time - if you leave and we read the packet and have questions can we write somebody -"

"There are instructions in the packet on how to reach us but your magic system's novel, I'm going to be here for a month or so making sure we don't miss some minor thing that interacts brilliantly with what we already have, feel free to ask questions."

"Cool, if you're going to be around that long we should probably go home. Can you put the house back where it was - the land will have sort of pinched in around the gap -"

" - I should probably have someone with more experience moving chunks of land do it, then, so I don't cause a minor earthquake or something. Your husband gets security clearance for my teleportation spell automatically - well, almost-automatically but we already checked the thing - so you'll have access to the house."

"And Miranda doesn't?" says Minor. 

"It could pretty easily be used to teleport planets into their suns so we're cautious, you can vouch and we'll clear it especially if there's reason she'll need it - I take it you can already teleport locally -"

"...what would I need to do to get non-automatic clearance for that and other things calling for clearance if nobody happened to be convenient to vouch? Oh, and before I forget, some people were also apparently-vanished by the same spell before we were, everyone thought they were dead but it could be they were just moved -"

"Make a case you were going to do something valuable with it, agree to magical screening for honesty about that, if you have alts they check if your alts have a history of genocide or conversely of heroism -"

"I may or may not be immune to - or, well, optionally and visibly-only-to-me immune to - magical screening for honesty."

"Good to know, that's reason to be more careful with your world. We also have Maitimo screening for honesty which I am guessing you are not immune to."

"I am not."

"Saves a lot of time, that, though all of them are pretty busy. The packets describe a process for access to most of our stuff but access is definitely kind of uneven at the moment, it's a difficulty of scaling so fast."

"Well, now there's two new ones, is this a meaningful bump in the Timothy population - sorry, the Maitimo population?"

"Twelve to fourteen, so yes,  it should help."

Giggle. "Is that also how many of Minor and everybody -"

"Uh, the Space ones fork so the actual count varies. There are nine distinct sets of the whole family, one set of which has issues and doesn't really count."

"...issues?"

"Their Valar sucked extra and did thousands of years of random mind control and they vary from 'fucked up by actual mind control' to 'fucked up by circumstances' but they're all kind of amoral paranoid jerks and they export immortality necklaces and their Fëanor invents things but otherwise they stay out of stuff."

"...ah."

"That's the reason your Curufin is only an almost-guaranteed clearance for a teleport, he doesn't often come in 'amoral jerk' but he can if you make everything terrible enough and arrange for Fëanor to be raised by people Melkor cultivated specifically and so on. But this Maitimo's standard and he said it's fine."

"...yay. Thank you for not being an amoral jerk, love."

"I do my best. Uh, if there were a me who was an amoral paranoid jerk not giving him cool magic would make him more of one. I know you're balancing that against saving the worlds and stuff."

       "Yeah, we're aware. I don't make the calls."

"Who does?"

      "Uh, on Vanda Nossëo mostly Loki and our Maitimo - at least the weird calls that we don't have a process for. Loki saved our Arda and she's the one who developed the teleport."

"Would giving him the cool magic make him less of an amoral paranoid jerk, or would they just have a magical amoral paranoid jerk on their hands?"

"If I came in untrustworthy amoral paranoid jerk that'd be more surprising."

"I guess you can request their notes or something."

"It sounds like there's a lot we can do at home, first. - is there a standard solution to slavery or something -"

          "Usually robots, and depending on the situation either a nicer planet for the formerly-enslaved or just some nice stuff to help ease the transition for them. You're an Earth in like 1810, so I can also get you history textbooks from other Earths - different magic systems but it matters weirdly little - so you know how it normally goes from there."

"I didn't realize there were other Earths."

         "Yeah, Earths and Ardas are both commonly-occurring kinds of world."

"What year are the other Earths?"

         "Uh, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2050, 2190, 2250? Something like that?"

"- why a bunch around the same -"

         "Wish and Cube and Eclipse and we have no idea, I think some of your alts are working on it. - your Cube alt invented a cure for aging which unfortunately only works locally where there's different physics but that whole neighborhood's at least really nice -"

Minor grins.

"Congratulations," repeats Miranda. "Uh, our magic system was becoming - less irrelevant - around when we got vanished."

"Then the textbooks might be mostly just curiosities. Post-industrial societies we usually offer our membership conditions and aid programs, pre-industrial ones we mostly bribe governments to stay out of the way or ignore them entirely, 1810 could go either way -"

"Makes sense."

"When you're ready to head back send me a location over osanwë -"

"Few things to pack into the house from the cave lab thing and then I think we should be set."

"Sounds good."

Pack pack pack pack here's what the house looks like here's what was around the edges.

And someone who is more experienced with using the teleport for things like that is summoned and - 

The Ways are home.

"I should teach someone how to use this crystal ball, it's our interdimensional communications interface," Larya says, looking out on foggy England. 

"I would love to learn to use the crystal ball but first I need to write my mum and some friends."

"Of course."

"Is there a safe way to check if everyone's alive before we draw attention to the fact we are -"

"I can go check if you tell me where, I'm indestructible. Though that hasn't been tested against local magic."

"It's not impossible they've moved. Would you like to be lightly hexed as a test -"

"Indestructibility means that minor things affect us normally - pricking me with a pin will have the same effect as pricking anyone with a pin - but shooting me won't have an effect past that. If you can think of a good test -"

"There's one Karen knows that does rabbit ears."

"By all means."

Karen is fetched from writing her parents and hexes rabbit ears.

Which works. 

"In that case," she says, "we probably should be very cautious operating in your world -"

"I maybe don't want anyone who can't throw off the Imperius and has an interdimensional teleport running around here - while she's still alive, certainly, but even after -"

           "Yes, that seems a reasonable precaution."

Karen fixes the ears.

"We'll go discreetly check how things have held together, I guess."

There's a knock. 

Miranda peeps out the window.

Fredrick! Pacing!

"Timothy, it's Fredrick."

"- huh." He gets the door. " - hi."

"She's dead. A couple places considered reversing their non-intervention policies, considering, but we persuaded them not to, and with the 'magic is allowed as long as you have an ounce of subtlety around it' status quo we set up water treatment everywhere, recruited a little crew of idealistic recent graduates to go around ending famines and wars, made Haiti the nicest place on Earth and asked them how to fix slavery everywhere else. James and Samuel are there right now. She thought you were dead, how are you not dead -"

" - we got sent to an alternate universe. You - how - are you all right -"

"I am not less all right than I'd be if I'd stayed home moping the whole time."

Timothy turns around and looks at Larya and raises an eyebrow - looks at his assembled family members - 

- turns back around and picks Fredrick up and kisses him.

"Get out of my house," Finis says. 

"Delighted, I'm actually in the middle of a meeting." And he takes Timothy's hand. 

Ways watch awkwardly. 

Timothy and Fredrick walk to the edge of the grounds and Disapparate together.

"Something's wrong with him."

"You don't say."

"Not that, that's not a big deal, something else."

"Bet you a Galleon. - bet you a baby dragon, if I am right I get to give it to Catherine as a present."

"That is the worst idea I've heard in. Uh. Three minutes, since someone came up with -" gesture at the door -

"What do you think is wrong with who, Theodore."

"Fredrick? And, like, dunno, as if he got on the wrong end of eight Energy Charms? And how'd he know we were back-"

"Felix'd do it if he happened to be on it right then."

"I guess that'd make sense if he was in the middle of some important meeting? Would Felix arrange, uh -"

"If Fredrick regarded it as lucky. I'm assuming Timothy figured out something by looking at Larya."

"They're usually married," says Larya. "We looked at places that allow it and they're not horribly perverted all kinds of other ways or anything - and it's Maitimo -"

...Karen attempts to edge unnoticed out of the room.

She might be noticed but nobody says anything, at least.

She writes her parents. ...And Stoller, a quick note that, funny story, dunno if Miranda's owl will arrive first, but, not dead.

"We should tell your family, too, they might've worried when they didn't get a Christmas card -"

"Or they figured we gave up, but yeah, s'pose."

"Do you want to, uh, find a priest or something -"

"That would probably be a good idea. I will find my checklist of sins and go see if Father Mere is in so I don't hold up the line Sunday."

Kiss. Kiss kiss kiss.

And he drops off a note at Rebecca's family's house saying that they regret having neglected to send updates but the children are thriving.

Rebecca goes to church and does not explain why she's been gone and confesses a checklist of sins and comes home.

He's reading the briefing packet. "We can be indestructible! There's a waitlist but it's another one one of my father's alts invented, so we can take the kids on a trip to Marlatia and possibly skip the waitlist."

"Wow, they sure invent all kindsa stuff, huh."

"They seem to have been very busy indeed. I will invite Minor and Miranda and Timothy and - ah, maybe just Timothy alone - his local alt is married to another common template, name of Iobel -"

"Karen might like to be indestructible even if she won't want to marry Timothy any more, that's hardly her own fault, is it?"

"Oh I'm sure she will, and so will everyone else, but it's one-a-day and I don't know if she cares to be there at the same time as him, I wouldn't."

"Yeah, that makes sense. Poor Karen."

"I can't fathom what he was thinking." Sigh.

"And even if he regrets it later he can't go to confession, I know you're all used to that but I'd hate to never have that kind of - way to take the pressure off? I was going a little nuts back in Arda honestly, just making little checkmarks hoping we could go home."

Hug. "Which we did. I don't think he'd do it if he thought he'd regret it later."

"I guess. It's not even about regretting stuff for me, I confess stuff I don't regret all the time."

"Aren't things not sins if you're not Catholic?"

"No, they still are."

"Maybe they'll hang out in worlds where the gods have different priorities."

"I dunno what to think about that honestly."

"It's kind of a lot. - if the other Earths are later than ours then they'd probably have yous who lived to like eighty and then died, right -"

"...wow, I guess they might. I wonder if I get out of the convent."

"And we can do resurrections. Would you - want to be resurrected - or are you in Heaven or something so probably not -"

"I'm prrrrrrobably not good enough to get into Heaven. I dunno, maybe a few decades in a nunnery really would reform me."

"I thought you didn't have to be good enough?"

"You sorta do, it's complicated. I guess it might depend on whether my family and the nuns and whatnot were praying for me."

"Up to you. I guess."

"I at least wanna know what happened to them! Then we can decide."

"Okay!" Snuggle. 

"Should we maybe go talk to Karen."

"What do you want to say?"

"I have no idea but -"

"I suppose we could go hug her or something."

"If you did that I would definitely want a hug."

"I am not going to do that."

Where oh where is Karen.

Sitting in a windowseat looking out the window, possibly waiting for an owl. "...hi."

Hug?

Hug.

"You could duel him?"

"I am not going to duel him for being indiscreet."

"For being -"

"Miranda, how about you just explain it."

"I set them up, it wasn't just me."

"Oh. Uh. That makes it - better - like, still rude, but not unconscionably so - is this a common thing -"

"I do not have statistics, you can see why they might be hard to collect."

"A bit." He hugs Karen.

Sigh. Hug. "I don't want people expecting me to duel him but I don't want to explain to literally everyone, either, I might just Floo home after my parents're sure to have got my letter so they won't be too startled."

"I don't know if they mean to tell people who aren't family but they could probably not - if that's easier -"

"I don't know. We haven't discussed it at all."

"Timothy."

"Yeah."

Sigh.

"I think Fredrick may've been on Felix."

"Then perhaps it is Fredrick's fault."

"I mean, Felix isn't mind control. If there's a sentence that would get Timothy to kiss him he'd find it, but, like, there aren't sentences that would get me to kiss him -"

"Well, you haven't been secretly dating him for years."

"Right but- Timothy could just have not been the kind of person who would do that no matter what he said and then Felix wouldn't have gotten anywhere."

"Well. He wasn't."

"Clearly."

"To be fair Fredrick accomplished a pretty impressive list of things."

"Yeah. Didn't know he had it in him."

"If he had tried to tell you I do not think you would have listened."

"Well. No."

Pat pat.

Elsewhere he tells Tireh that there is a Melkor imprisoned and a Sauron loose and one-hopping both is probably easiest - "and if anyone wants to advise our local set of alts on handling of an 1810 Earth, they seem to mostly have it in hand but there might be things they wouldn't think of -"

And demon time is scarce but he puts in a medium-priority request for chiplocked computers for the new alts and a low-priority check for Rebeccas and Karens and Mirandas.

"I can't get them both in one hop if they're not close together."

"Sauron first, then, Melkor can't inconvenience us."

"Is he even immaterial? He's not immune to regular, cheap teleporting when he's material."

"Sauron? He was, fairly recently, running around with the humans being decidedly material but he seems to have noticed something's up and gone to ground."

"Well, all right, I'll get reading so I have enough to spare."

"Sorry. How goes recruiting friends?"

"Somehow 'learn to read, read a bunch of stuff specifically to forget it by teleporting dangerous monsters' is not going over super well with most shorefolk who could spend their time flying around and eating clams."

"I wonder if demons can do 'a specific person, but as a shorefolk', I could get volunteers and have eggs of them made."

"We don't know how templates work, but if you wanna try it with a couple people I can put 'em on a beach that'll take them."

"Cheap experiment, why not?" He starts writing a call for applications. 

Tireh opens up the Giant List Of Names.

Timothy's been too busy to add people from his world but the new Maitimo (Sunrise, because unlike all his alts he was rescued before the first one) went ahead and added everyone from Earth who he knew of. So many names!

Almost completely useless! Efficient for burning!

Timothy drops back home to apologize to Karen and get his things. Karen is gone, so he just gets his things.

       "You're not kicked out," Finis says. 

"I appreciate that but I can't be around him anywhere else so I'd like to live somewhere where I can."

       Finis makes a face.

Timothy does not tell his father that he's worried about Fredrick. He owls Karen an apology. He assents to accompany his brothers and sisters-in-law to Marlatia to become indestructible and meet their alts.

Karen accepts his apology and would like less fanfare in any future revelations.

Iobel is there to meet them when they arrive! "Hi new alts!"

Iobel has a cat. He looks the new alts over disdainfully.

"...my cat. My cat has alts and I don't."

"You know a Cricket?"

"I have a Cricket. He attacked Timothy in Italy while he was a kitten and Timothy knew at once I had to have him."

"That's what you look for in cats for your sister-in-law?"

"My world has typically-very-hard-to-detect mind control, he noticed it. I'd rather he didn't hate me but we take what we can get."

"Cricket's not fond of me either."

Rrrrr.

"He used to like you, it's not like we have discovered an unbreakable pattern of Crickets hating yous. Anyway, Miranda, you should bring your Cricket by sometime and we can see if they get along with each other."

"I bet they will."

Jeremy wants to pet this Cricket. He distracts Jeremy by flipping him around so he can't see Cricket at all. "Very pretty palace. I think it's weird that Timothys are usually royalty."

"All of you are usually royalty!"

"I on the other hand am only occasionally royalty! Once by birth and also adoption - same one - a few times elsewise."

"That is to say mostly by founding an empire."

"Read about that! It's tempting though a little bit less so since I learned it was the motive of the woman who tried to murder us."

"Oh?"

"Killed off the rest of a royal family to get the Queen to adopt her, apparently. We don't know what she had planned after that, she died."

"Well, none of me have done that."

One of her did feed a planet into a black hole! He read about it. He refrains from bringing it up.

"Michael, your alts have a concert planned. You should know that Makarial wished to be the best singer in the multiverse and does not come by it naturally. In case you were going to feel insecure or something."

"None of you have a Rebecca so I'm honestly feeling very secure. I do want to hear the best singer in the multiverse, though."

"Gosh, am I better than being the best singer in the multiverse? What about the other one of you who does have a me - whatever amount he has her now, it's unclear since she is not holding out to get married -"

"I am sure if anyone mentions in his absurdly enhanced earshot that as far as you are concerned he has her less than I have you he will find some way for them to get married."

"Oh, it's not even hard, Elf marriage is expectation-controlled."

"...huh?"

"If an Elf does a thing that they think will result in their being married, then they are married. Otherwise not. If they had all been told at the beginning 'you only become married if you first exchange vows in public' then that's how their marriage would work but instead they were told 'sex is marriage' and so that's how it works. Until they meet the multiverse. Lúthien and Gem got  married just by knowing that gay marriage was a thing.  - I mean, by having sex while knowing that, the having sex might actually be obligatory."

"Gosh. Should I tell Beka?"