"That makes sense. Just, it seems someone ought to be paying attention to that, and he's the first one I thought of."

"Well, maybe that's why they left Melkor go, is so he can keep them from making bad choices. Since he created them."

Carissa feels - cold. "Maybe. I guess he'd be the best person for it."

Mhalir is still quietly impressed with Carissa's performance but mostly he's SO CONCERNED. 

<I...am starting to share your impression that these people are very very disconcerting!> he admits. <They - are like very sheltered children - and cannot imagine that anyone else, anywhere, is not like them...> He very carefully keeps his shudder of unease purely mental, cut off from Carissa's body. 

"Is this something you got all concerned about once you stopped using your soul?" the elf asks.

"I guess so. I have more time to think my thoughts without talking to other people so I guess I get some thoughts that other people don't."

"You should write a book! Or do a stage-play." He reattaches the wagon axel with deliberate precision.

"I worry it might disturb people, if it was about things like that."

"Well, I wouldn't have it be about things like that, but there must be other things you thought of that aren't horrible."

"Well, not using my soul makes it harder to know which things will be just an appropriate amount of interesting for an art project and which go too far and are shocking."

"Huh, does it! I suppose it would. It doesn't seem hard to guess but I suppose that's because I will be shocked by the same things as other people, and if you barely talk to other people you don't know if that still holds."

"Yes, exactly. Does anyone ever visit the orcs? I'd think that'd make people think of some of the same things as me."

"...well, no, of course not. Do you know what they look like?"

"What orcs look like?"

"Yes. They're awful. Being surrounded by them would be -" Shudder. "I know some people write letters and that's all right, especially now that they can use a typewriter."

What. 

"So we can't go visit them because they're so ugly that it'd - offend us?"

"Have you ever been somewhere ugly? I don't mean, the design didn't translate spectacularly well to the building and it's a little off-putting, I mean - a construction site where there was a hurricane and now everything is everywhere, or a Dwarf settlement that's not in one of our cities..."

"No, I haven't. What's it like?"

"Everything is awful. It's - hard to remember that the world is a good place, with nice things in it. Most people just close their eyes and look at their friends' sunsets or something. - I don't know what you'd do -"

"Maybe I would think of something that most people haven't thought of since they can look at their friends' sunsets."

"Maybe."

Orcs are kind of ugly even by human standards, Mhalir thinks, that's a fair point. 

<...Fascinating. Maybe a species difference. They - have the same strength of reaction to visual ugliness as humans do to - I am not sure, the smell of rotting meat or something comparable. It sounds so inconvenient!> He thinks for a moment. <...I would be interested in talking to one of them who exchanges letters with orcs, if he knows someone specific or has other leads on that.> 

"Do you know anyone who writes letters to orcs?"

"Hmmm? No, not personally. You might ask at the palace, we have diplomats and such and I'd expect they write letters, or know people who do."

"I've never been to the palace before, are you allowed to just walk in?"