"Pretty sure you couldn't send anything so complicated it bothered her, yeah. What sort of things have you had trouble explaining?"

Oh, why having a beautiful throne room did not constitute evidence of her benevolence was the first one but it's been a dozen little things, she seems to miss the motives holding any story Elspeth might relate together.

"Well, maybe now you can give it another try!"

Yup! She can do that next time there is anything she wants to tell Melian beyond being background open to people peering at her thoughts.

Doriath is so pretty! Now that the war's over Doriath doesn't need Dwarves so the King expels them all. People are very happy; they didn't like Dwarves.

...is this one of the more humane expulsions Elspeth has ever heard of or not so much?

Very humane! They just told all the Dwarves to leave, and they all did!

Why were there even Dwarves here to begin with?

Dwarves built Menegroth and gave the Doriathrim weapons for the war.

Why'd they do that? The Doriathim don't seem exactly friendly to them.

Well, the Doriathrim rather insisted.

Does, uh, anybody see the problem here.

They're Dwarves. So, not really.

Well.

Elspeth does not contain any Dwarves, but she did live with them for a while and she's chock full of analogies. This a good time to try Explaining Really Fast?

Melian is happy to grant her an audience.

And Elspeth... explains.

Really fast.

A vampire would be inconvenienced for a couple minutes trying to find places to put it all.

(She has wolves whose natural enemies slaughtered their people and made pets of them - she has Aro's snacks who were conquered, who were slaves, who were vassals to powerful neighbors and didn't dare object - she has the dim but echoing human memories of vampires who once were kings and generals and crusaders against, oh, who, somebody, not people, and some of them have since learned regret -)

And Melian goes very still for a while, not inconvenienced but absorbed. Thank you. That is interesting.

It is not the most dramatic possible result, but. You're welcome.

I understand why it might be best for incarnates to conduct themselves differently, if they will later regret their course and pursue it from a lack of understanding. My concern is the protection of Doriath and I cannot regret anything that protects it, but I can understand that now to be a difference between us.

...Headtilt. Elspeth is not sure she understands.

You have explained the incarnate perspective astonishingly well! I am not an incarnate and so I find it interesting but not compelling the way, say, protecting Doriath or having Elu is compelling.

...Is there just a general Ainur-understanding-incarnates problem? Because that would kind of explain a lot.

There is! Their minds are very foreign to us.

Do the Valar maybe want to understand incarnates?

Very dearly, as I understand it.