"If we swear things before the Valar they become aware of them, and sometimes if you hang out at the seaside praying to Ulmo for six months he'll answer a question - Ulmo's the Vala of the seas. But no meaningful ones. We're not allowed back. For the crime of rebelling against the natural order and bringing disruption to Valinor."

"Maybe I'm too used to gates."

"They seem like they'd change things substantially, yeah."

"Before the invention of gates we had carrier pigeons?"

"When we send ships they sink them. We admittedly haven't tried carrier pigeons."

"They kind of require more initial communication, you have to get them from where they'd be sent."

"Tyelcormo might be able to make do without that but he'd do it by making them people. And then sending them off to get probably shot is more of a problem."

"...he can make birds into people?"

"He can talk to animals. And when he talks to specific animals for a while the way they structure their thoughts gets more - personlike."

"How does he do that?"

"I have no idea and find it very upsetting. No one else can do it."

"Huh! A mystery."

"Perhaps you'll be the one to sort it out."

"I don't think I have any special advantages at that. When I started learning magic we were inducted into the mindset of working with subtraction-only power by listing things we'd want to destroy if we got good enough to do unprecedentedly abstracted things and 'ignorance' came up but that's really very very unprecedentedly abstract."

"And might have disturbing side effects!"

"Possibly, yes!"

"I'd still go for it, but the King would glare at me very scoldingly."

"Your mind as-is is a valuable resource for communicating with mindreading-squeamish aliens!"

"But omniscience!"

"I know, so tempting."

"You wanted to meet with a bunch of people, did a chance to talk with orcs end up obviating that?"

"Not completely but substantially. Might as well fill the time before meeting orcs though."

"Okay! Who next?"

"Dwarves sound neat!"

"Dwarves are great!" And he leads him out.