Ah. We haven't even started trying to explain that to the Valar.

That another one of their biological confusions?

They have a clear sense of what the soul is supposed to experience. Everything else is a source of some confusion and overlapping concepts for things that I think are actually quite different and it ends up being very difficult to make oneself clear.

I'd expect everybody being telepathic to help with that. It doesn't?

The way the Valar think is very very overwhelming and they have to work very hard to make it comprehensible to us.

...well, I did interact with Aulë briefly and I didn't pass out foaming at the mouth so I guess their filters are good enough.

No one's been harmed by it, it just doesn't communicate concepts the way they're instinctively communicated between us. And sometimes you lose track of time and it's been a year. And sometimes you get headaches.

...their filters are mostly good enough. Um, I can't just lose track of time for a year, I'd die of thirst...

Not in Valinor, I don't think. And certainly not in the immediate presence of a Vala. Anyway, they're working very diligently on it.

What would happen if I didn't drink or eat anything, then?

You would get hungry and thirsty, but much much slower, and you can sort of draw on the energy of Valinor to sustain your body in place of sustenence. In the immediate presence of a Vala you just wouldn't experience the time as having passed.

That sounds really upsetting. The not noticing time has passed, part, not the sustenance thing.

I still think I'd miss a year. Maybe not as much, but even after a thousand years I think I'd want to plan my life pretty densely. If any of my plans involved other people they'd wonder where I'd gotten to. I'd miss whatever was going on that would normally have caught my attention.

Hmm. It may be a different in temperament between, ah, species as well.

Maybe. It is the sort of thing that varies. Although I think even immortal species at home would object to losing a year unexpectedly.

He nods. Someone else asks him something, and he nods again. Do you mind if we sing? It makes the journey go faster.

Literally?

Well, the horses might be energized by it, but I meant more that it is enjoyable and when one is happy, time tends not to drag on.

I don't mind at all if you sing.

They start singing. They have, all of them, astonishingly beautiful voices, and they all seem to know the song well even though it's very elaborate. It comes with telepathy-images of a vast, starlit lake and people racing through the trees around it.

Bella listens, and becomes accustomed to sitting on her horse, and tries to make guesses at word-meaning matches.

After a long time, the golden sky gets less intense and then a silvery color joins it. The song gains energy; the travelers are clearly excited about this. The landscape is now washed in brilliant white light under a white sky.

It's pretty, in a sort of... blank-canvas-looking way.

Rúmil notices her squinting at the sky again. Apparently to the Valar this looks very colorful. We asked them if we can have the stars back and they said they'll try.