"Mm, not exactly. Expanded attention capacity is more parallel than serial, serial is speed not attention - and magic progression works more like intransmissible spontaneous insight which takes a while to come around to than like brute-forcing anagrams or something. Working on mental speed does have that compound effect but it takes people a really really long time to get a meaningful speed boost. I mean, a really long time by human standards, an Elf would probably consider it well worth frontloading a decade on speed before doing anything else, but I was concerned about how to get a job when I graduated school so I didn't prioritize it. Eidetic memory helps too because it means I don't lose track of what angles of the magic I have and haven't thought over yet."

"And the insights can't be communicated?"

"Yeah, no two people do magic similarly enough to find any progress anybody else has made useful even if a telepath picks it up out of one mind and dumps it in another, closest we get is knowing that any psion can pick up any trick-psions-can-learn and same for mages."

"Huh." She hands the computer back. "Still jealous."

"Sorry."

"You can make up for this tremendously upsetting thing you've done to me by helping me fix everything on Earth."

"Deal."

And they come up with a priorities list - things they can do with money, things they can do with diplomatic maneuvering, things they can do with an independent kingdom in Endorë, things the Valar might be able to do once they have a long-range precog to check that the Valar will not instead do dumb things.

Isabella (and her apparently rather longsuffering brother running most of her errands) manage Earth things. (Isabella's taking a big pay cut to make herself the most attractive person for interfacing-with-Valinor tasks. She's sublet her apartment in Manhattan and has no material expenses in Valinor - things like 'laptops for Elves to play with' she can expense - and considers the chance to help steer around the Elves' money more than enough compensation for the rest.)

Eventually there is a neurologist available to nudge some people into portal cooperation.

The Noldor royal family is granted something along the lines of sovereign immunity which should smooth over any minor hiccups with the confusing legal systems of Earth, but they are strongly advised to have a cultural escort along for moment-to-moment explanations and coaching if they want to visit. Macalaurië's record label will provide such for her. Anybody else want to visit? Isabella can show them stuff.

She would totally like to visit Earth.

Yeah, sounds like so much fun.

Then they can be the test subjects for exploratory mage neurology on Elves. (Isabella's standing by to check for side effects, but the mage isn't actually doing anything, hence 'exploratory'. They're fine.)

And here they are in a cave in Florida!

Exciting!

"Alex'll be here with a car in five minutes, he got caught in traffic. What d'you wanna see?"

"Human architecture, human technology, Earth ecology, human languages, a library -"

"Traffic engineering, city planning -"

"All right, we'll see if there's enough architecture and city planning to look at on the way to the nearest big library, how's that."

"Great!!!!"

"Portal's kind of in the middle of nowhere, it'll be a little while on the highway before we're in Tampa."

"I am excited to see highways! I am excited to see Tampa!"

"The novelty of highways will probably wear off pretty fast."

"What are they made of? How is their construction incentivized?"

Isabella giggles. "Asphalt and concrete. In the United States they're a public project, there's interstate highways that are federally handled and some that the states manage, paid with tax money out of the government budget."

"How many people travel on them, when were they built, do they require maintenance -"

Isabella peers ahead at the Wikipedia page on highways that she could look up on her phone if she wanted and recites highway facts.