"Oh, they indicate talents? That's fascinating! And most people are born with the right one? I suppose it would often run in families."

"It does. But sometimes if there's an intercaste marriage - those are rare but they happen now and then, especially blue and green - then the caste doesn't match the hair."

"Intercaste?"

"The hair colors are loosely indicative of caste," explains the blue haired person. "The castes have a lot of names but everyone will know what you mean if you use color - blue, green, yellow, grey, orange, purple."

"I don't think we have those. We have different tribes of peoples - the Noldor, the Vanyar, the Teleri, and Endorë has more, and they look different, but they all have all kinds of people."

"Here it would be unheard of for someone of the blue caste to be a farmer, say. - It's a purple career."

"That's fascinating. It's very rare for a Teler to be a farmer but there aren't many things like that, most occupations have all kinds of people. Pure mathematics is almost entirely women?"

"Most of our jobs aren't sex-skewed like that - math is green -"

"Is there a list of occupations and associated colors?"

"Not written down; people here just know it by heart. I could sort things if you name them."

"Literature? Poetry? Ice skating? Teaching? Governance?"

"Literature and poetry would also be green. Ice skating would be grey, teaching orange or maybe green at the high levels, governance is blue with some yellow in the more functionary roles."

"Fëanáro is the crown prince of the Noldor; his father's our King. But day-to-day he mostly invents lightleapers and the Silmarils and so on - how would you sort that -"

"I guess you do caste differently than we do, or perhaps your people don't come in castes at all. Inventing things is green."

"I don't think we come in castes, it sounds like practically everybody would be green. Singing and performing? Owning and running a store? Street cleaning?"

"Singing is green - but dancing is grey - purple for stores - cleaning is red, I didn't mention those -"

"Oh, what else is red?"

"Plumbing, handling the dead."

"Huh. The royal family personally did a lot of plumbing back when we invented it, that was how they convinced everybody it was a good idea to have indoor running water."

"...well." Several people look uncomfortable. A green person asks if it was just the water part or if they also did toilets. Some other people look scandalized. A blue person ventures that he is sure that even if they did the toilets they have certainly bathed since then.

" - well, yes, of course, that was hundreds and hundreds of your years ago. I really don't think we have castes, Aulë, the Vala of engineering, helped with developing indoor plumbing and if it made us unclean he'd have noticed."

"That settles that," says the blue person who first greeted them, and nobody complains further.

Elves continue singing. One explains the Valar - "there are fourteen. Sort of fifteen, one of them used to be evil and now he's been paroled so he can prove he's not still evil. Aulë is metalworking and mining and engineering and Yavanna is plants and crops and genetic research and Mandos does resurrections and justice, and Ulmo is waters and climate and Oromë is hunting - which we don't do anymore, but when he was first the Vala of it we didn't have better ways to get food - and exploration, and Estë does healing and Varda does space and interstellar travel, and Irmo does dreams and psychological healing, and Nienna is Mercy and Tulkas Strength and Vairë Fate and Nessa Dance and Vána eternal youthfulness..."

"How often does Mandos do resurrections?" asks a green person.

"Whenever people die - which isn't very often, we don't have old age and accidents are rare - when we started lightleaping we asked if he'd do resurrections for people who got lost lightleaping really far, just in case he felt that was irresponsible conduct and didn't want to enable it, but he said he would, so off we went... he won't resurrect someone who has a lot of misbehavior to their record and refuses correction, but that hasn't come up with Elves."