"Thank you," he says delightedly. "I knew it could create pretty things but I don't have a way to look at it directly."

"I could maybe osanwë you what it's like? If you want? It's - like fire."

He looks extremely delighted. "Yes, please do."

So she osanwës a weird synaesthetic impression of the shape of his mind. She gets all the information mediated through her heat sense, which is itself not much like seeing infrared or like feeling warmth in the conventional sense - too omnidirectional, too fine-grained, too filtered through her indifference to whether she's on fire or in a blizzard. The result is confusing but definitely complicated and very pretty.

He sighs in delight. Thank you. Are they all like that? Can you show me others, if I get their leave?

They're all different and yours is unusually pretty. If people want impressions of their minds bounced around I don't object.

Maitimo-

- no, he says cheerfully. One of us needs to have secrets occasionally. Kiri can have my oath if I'm making her nervous.

You're not making me nervous enough to want anything like that!

You're very pretty, Father, Maitimo says amusedly when Fëanáro presumably bounces his. Are there typically familial resemblances?

I haven't actually read that many people! He doesn't strongly resemble Tyelcormo? My brothers and parents are all different from me and each other, I guess Jayce is sort of like Renny but that may just be because they're both elay and the rest of us are all different elements.

I think we'd also all be different elements, Fëanáro says, based on how you described them on the Ice.

It's generally hard to identify foreigners' elements - even people from non-Welce countries in my world - but you at least are obvious.

He raises an eyebrow.

I said you're like fire, she points out. I couldn't tell by looking like I could have if you were Welchin but reading you you're obviously as sweela as I am.

Well, that's obviously the best one.

I think so too.

You need to read people to see that? Maitimo says curiously. 

With Welchin people I can tell by looking, if I'm trying to identify somebody in a crowd to someone else I can say 'the coru woman in the hat' or something - it's harder out of the country. And I avoided reading random Malinquans and Soechins and Thiyecines so I don't know how reliably I could sort those. And even looking at Welchin people is not fully reliable; some people are something with a "crown" of something else, which means people will reliably mistake them for their crowned element on a superficial acquaintance.

That's pretty cool; I wish we could learn to see it.

I don't know if you can or not. It may be partly about people wearing their elemental colors and otherwise obeying stereotypes, but there could be some subtle magic component to it.

If there's magic I can probably eventually do it with our magic, Fëanáro says, but there are more pressing priorities.

If you could copy arbitrary magic it'd be more useful to copy blessings.

Arbitrary magic with a local effect, he says, and 'not impossible in principle' may still mean it takes centuries. But blessings  will be worthy investigating in case they take less.

I should see if they still work for Aleko and me, actually.

How can you tell? Can an observer?