"I'm now kind of worried that I showed up carrying some sort of awful human disease and have started a plague just by having a nosebleed in the street the other day."

"That's also the sort of thing the Valar would handle. The Eldar don't sicken easily, don't worry too much."

"Okay."

"The only person to die in Valinor and not be returned to life was my mother."

"...What happened?"

"She found living unbearable, and then when she was not ready to return to it the King decided that he desired to take another wife. It is the law of the Valar and of Eru himself that a person cannot have multiple wives, so for the King to remarry they had to keep her dead. And so she is still dead."

Blink. Blink.

"Other than that, though, this is the Undying Land."

"That seems like a really extreme reaction to somebody wanting to have a second wife."

"The Valar, because they are very powerful and don't understand Elves well, are prone to reactions that to our small perspectives look extreme."

"...is this why they're no longer in charge of apple disputes?"

"Also Maitimo is very good at apple disputes and needs to occupy himself somehow or he will probably get bored and have a coup."

"Coup as boredom relief. I haven't heard that one before."

"Valinor does not have any problems. It's good, of course, but a touch stifling. I take it that's not true where you're from."

"Not at all. If I were going to try to pull off a coup it'd be because someone was running a city-state unforgiveably badly."

"I do not really think that is how Maitimo would react to extreme boredom. Unforgivably bad leadership wouldn't last long around him, though."

"A good trait to have."

"A sort of peripheral one, in Valinor."

"Do you suppose it would help anything if the Valar heard about perfectly functional political units in my world where people can in fact have several spouses if that's what they want to do?"

He raises an eyebrow. "I think they're worried about - inherent Wrongness, not dysfunction in any describable sense. And we are different species. I am glad those exist but wouldn't expect pointing out their presence would get you anywhere."

"Pity."

Kib is happy to discuss these things in the common while simultranslating with this not-so-scary-anymore telepathy!

At one point he asks whether marriage, either the ordinary kind or the you-can-marry-several-people kind, is an Oath for humans.

Blink. "A what?"