Nor am I. But if our creators had strong expectations about what kind of species we'd be, and then we were doing something different, and also we were under extreme conditions, that has to pop out as an explanation.

It is at least partly cultural sometimes or humans would be more consistent about it, I guess. What happened to the polygamous marriages when you all got here?

The Valar helped them identify which the real marriage among the parties was.

Wow, that sounds really awkward.

Hmm? No. People find eyes desirable in romantic partners.

Oh. Pause. Arcane healing is a thing, it's not nearly as common or easy as divine healing but it's a thing.

It has its drawbacks, but it's not actually on the top ten things I'd change about myself, given the power to give myself new senses with magic or something equivalent.

...Do you want to try synaesthesia? I can do induced temporary synaesthesia, it's really fun in smallish doses.

That sounds incredible. Yes please.

What do you want to map onto what?

Sounds onto colors would be the obvious one to try, assuming you can do that when my color-memories are all old or secondhand?

"Hello," he says, and giggles. "My name is Rúmil of Tirion." and then, in a deeper voice, "Through long ages the Valar dwelt in bliss in the light of the Trees beyond the Mountains of Aman, but all Middle-earth lay in a twilight under the stars. While the Lamps had shone, growth began there which now was checked, because all was again dark. But already the oldest living things had arisen: in the seas the great weeds, and on earth the shadow of great trees; and in the valleys of the night-clad hills there were dark creatures old and strong."

Giggle.

I don't know why I expected the colors would correspond to the ideas, it's the sounds they're related to. That's a bit from the history I was trying to write while you were gone, the first history of our people.

"Does Pax look really different?" she wonders, simul-translating like she does with Fëanáro.

Might just be your voice as compared to mine.

"That could be it too! Synaesthesia turns out different for all different people, one time everybody in the class I was in tried it on each other and there was a really heated argument about what colors numbers were - for some reason symbols like numbers and letters are easy to synaesthetize."

Teach me the numbers in Pax.

So she does, referring to page numbers like when she taught them to Fëanáro. Fëanáro says you use twelves; in Pax it's tens.

He says them aloud, delightedly. What color do you think they are? Or does it depend each time you do it?

When I tried synaesthesia I actually did textures to sounds, so I don't have opinions on what color three is. The argument was between someone who thought it was brown and someone who thought it was yellow, I remember that. I think if you do the same match on the same person it's consistent but I don't remember for sure.

People in Tirion would love it if you did this for them.