"...that's really unpleasant," Kiri remarks of this phenomenon.

"Protection against the Enemy, apparently. I suppose they don't have the capabilities to be discriminating. Ah, well."

They ride on. 

Kiri can't quite read her own mind the way she can read others' but maybe if she just stares this forest down and wills it -

She'll get a headache. She might be having less of a hard time staying on course but it's not obviously so. 

Annoying. She stops looking so straight at it.

And before long they are at it; the trees slide away right in front of their eyes. They dismount and have a cautious mostly-osanwe conversation with the guards. They hand over their weapons.

They want to blindfold us, Maitimo says, so we don't learn the way to their kingdom from here.

Well then somebody's going to have to carry me, 'blindfolded' is one of those conditions under which I cannot walk up to my usual impeccable standard.

A minute's awkward conversation. 

Then Maitimo says, under what circumstances do you share the contents of peoples' heads. 

I am not a perfect actor. Apart from that not unless invited. If this is really prohibitive I can probably crawl it, or just live with tripping over tree roots a lot, or lean on Aleko - he can't carry me but I can use him as a crutch -

I can do it. I like you and that would be a tremendous waste of everyone's time. 

You really don't have to; I am reasonably accustomed to falling over and leaning on my brother and such...

I can imagine! And if I point out that days in this war may be measured in lives you will worry I'm pressuring myself needlessly. I am happy to carry you. 

If we insulate one of us enough that blocks it but it tends to interfere with breathing? Is breathing something your species does by necessity or only because it is required in order to sing, frankly the latter would not surprise me?

Osanwe laughter.

Regrettably we do have to breathe. What sort of insulation?

Jayce wrapped himself up in a ton of coats and blankets but it only worked if he had his face covered up too.

If we were in Valinor and had time to assemble the equipment...

I would prefer carrying you to having you limp along with your brother. 

If you're sure then I suppose I will accept under protest.

They are blindfolded. He picks her up and they start walking. He is running through everything he remembers of various chemistry lectures in Valinor, in his head.

That is an entirely reasonable behavior. She makes no comment.

It is eight hours of walking. That's a lot of chemistry lectures. Chemistry is safe though. not even any particular automatic associations to anything else - people would otherwise be wondering what he had to hide -

People! That can be done without rudely touching on politics, can't it? If he starts with people uninvolved? Here are all the people he knows - hundreds of thousands of them - and why he is fond of them and what drives them, if it's not private. He's staying away from anyone who even might be. 

...she's sort of tempted to make a complimentary remark about how his brain does that, because wow it's almost like being next to several people at once, but it might just be uncomfortable and he hasn't asked.

He should probably talk with her, but it'd be such a weirdly asymmetrical conversation and she might touch on something he does not want to think about. Or perhaps she's already picked up on it - it's good that at least the secret likeliest to pop out if he fails to distract himself with enough chemistry and people is one he's at this point very sure she wouldn't share, and one that does no harm unless she does. Except probably making her very uncomfortable around him but so it goes. More people. He has reasons to like quite literally all of them. 

Okay, no conversation then. She can do no conversation. Minds are interesting, she's not bored or anything. It's really impressive how he catalogs all these people, like wow.