Welcome to Milliways, says a suddenly appearing napkin. Can I interest you in a beverage?

"Uh, sure. And an explanation of what Milliways is, please."

Of course. Something green and fruity appears on a (blank) napkin; a new napkin says Milliways is an interdimensional bar which appears beyond assorted doors according to a schedule as mysterious to me as it is to my patrons. I am called Bar, female pronouns please, and while the first drink is free subsequent purchases, which may include not only food and drink but also any other non-weapon non-living non-enormous non-magical items you might care to buy. You may run up a tab. There are inn rooms upstairs, restrooms beyond me and to your right, and a door to the backyard beyond me and to your left.

"...Oh, sweet. So what is this?" she asks, gesturing to the green thing.

Weeping berry nectar.

"I don't know what that means," Emily admits, taking a sip of the drink. "Aside from delicious, apparently."

I'm so glad you like it.

"...Oh, hi! This is apparently a transdimensional bar, I was expecting somewhere else too."

"...It's supposed to be the chapel. My chapel."

"I was expecting a laboratory. This place apparently hijacks random doors."

"Is my chapel gone?"

"...I don't think so. It had better not be, that would mean the lab was gone too, and there was someone in there. Bar, the chapel isn't gone, is it?"

The door redirection is temporary. If you exit the premises and allow the door to close, then reopening it will yield whatever room you normally find in the relevant location.

Emily picks up the napkin and makes to hand it to the girl.

"No," shrieks the little girl, flinging herself bodily away from Emily and landing with a nasty-sounding thump on the floor. "No you have to stay back from me."

"Ohmygosh are you okay," Emily says, not coming any closer.

The girl sits up and hugs her knees. "It's just bumps. I get lots of bumps."

"I--um--are you okay in general, that is not a normal response to. Things."

"It's just you have to stay far enough away is all."

"Would it be rude to ask why?"

"...I don't think there are actually rudeness rules about it because there's only one of me."

"Generally there is only one of anyone, as far as I know."

"I mean there's only one person people have to be away from. And it's me."

"Why would people have to be away from you, though? ...I'm sorry, I'm being pushy, aren't I."

The little girl frowns. "Um, I'm the Ardelay prime, and if people get too close to me I read their minds and I can't stop. But - it's only a few feet so I don't have to go live by myself in the middle of nowhere or anything."

"Oh, if it's only mind reading I don't mind."

"...I can't stop," she repeats. "And I get all the thoughts, even if you didn't want me to see them and - and you have to stay back."

"I mean, if it bothers you then of course not. But--I mean, I've never heard of something called Ardelay prime, we're probably from different universes, it's not like you'd be able to use it against me if I accidentally thought of one of my deepest darkest secrets."

"That's not the point!"

"...Then what is the point?"

"The point isn't that I would - would tell other people the secrets, it's that I'm a person and I being a person could know the secrets even if I never did anything or told anyone, and I'd know all about how your mind works and - and everything." She swallows. "The - the last Ardelay prime might have done it like that or she might have had it different and we don't know. She might have just gone around, reading people's minds, all the time..."

"I mean...I'm not going to tell you that it's okay to read people's minds without their permission, it's not, that's true, but my twin sister is a telepath. She can not read minds if she chooses to, and she usually chooses to, but I let her read my mind all the time. I genuinely don't have a problem with it."

"Are you okay? Was it something I said? Augh, I am a tactless idiot, but I honestly don't know what I said wrong..."

Sniffle. Shy guilty nod.

Hugs.

Hugs. And wishing that this girl's brothers were willing to hug her, and knowing that judging someone for not wanting their mind read was wrong, but she's so sad it's not fair.

"If it was one of them," she swallows audibly, "it couldn't have possibly been but if it was anyway I wouldn't let them either."

"I think I could - do stuff. But I haven't tried it. I don't know what I'm doing. If my great aunt worked like this at all she never told."

"She could tell when people were lying. ...From farther away than five feet. But she might have been faking, only telling about part of her powers. I don't know."

"From farther away than five feet" seems to support the not-a-proper-telepath idea. Well, not that Kiribel is a proper telepath as Emily knows them, what with the not projecting or turning it off, but.
Kiribel does not appear to be actively sad anymore! Yay!

"Maybe she was stronger than me and she did everything I did just from farther away and never said anything except that she could detect lies. Maybe she read my mind. We knew I was going to be next."

That would be very bad, since Kiribel does not want her mind read, and if said great-aunt were to appear in front of Emily with confirmation that she had done so Emily would probably punch her. But it seems unproductive to dwell on, since the woman is dead.

"Yeah. ...We didn't think she was going to die this soon. We thought I'd be older when I got the primacy."

People dying is bad, and Kiribel should not have to go extra years without hugs. But there is a definite trend, in Emily's world, that telepaths who come into their powers earlier than later tend to do better. It is, perhaps, not a statistically significant trend--telepaths are a thing that happens, unlike, say, eye beams, but they're not actually common relative to the baseline population--but younger minds definitely seem better able to handle oh hey I can viscerally perceive that other minds exist.

"I think that's different from me. I shouldn't read most people's minds and I can just tell that people are there from how warm they are if they're out of range and I'm not - having trouble coping with you being in range, or anything."

Her thing is pretty different from mutant telepathy, isn't it? Yeah, so it would unambiguously be better for this other woman to have survived longer.

"Unless she was reading people's minds without permission."

True. But they don't know that she was. Ideally she would be not and also live another decade, and it's not like they can bring her back to life whether or not she read minds.

"Yeah."

"There are five primes. Fire and mind are the halves of the sweela element. The others are blood and water is coru, air and soul is elay, earth and flesh is torz, and wood and bone is hunti. The prime has to be related to the relevant family and have the right elemental personality. I'm really sweela and the last prime was my great aunt and I have a power birth blessing so it was pretty obvious it was going to be me. My twin is torz and my little brother thinks he's probably elay so it couldn't have been them. The hunti prime thinks his granddaughter is going to be prime after him. Since I got it so early he's trying to teach her stuff earlier than he should have to."

That is sensible! And each of these primes has a different part of a person, that's nifty, although she's not sure she understands the difference between mind and soul.

"Soul is more personality than thoughts. They're related, but so are blood and flesh. I can only tell what you're thinking right now, not what you're like over your whole life."

"...It feels different from that to me. Not totally different and I only really have you to compare but still."

That is very slightly a shame! Oh well. And this comparison is interesting, if Kiribel weren't so firmly disinterested in having her mind read Emily would try to get Edie so they could compare. But she is. Oh well. Hugs.

"I'm pretty sure I'm getting the mind reading through warmness. It doesn't happen through walls even if I'm close enough, and I noticed it starting to happen from a little farther away outside at night when Jayce was complaining it was cold."

"Aleko tried it. It only works if he's so bundled up he can't breathe. And even right by the fire it's still not hug range. ...And my mom hugged me one time for as long as it took to think anything besides 'I need to be hugging my daughter right now' so it's not actually zero."

"I can let people get really close to fires without getting too hot. I could probably let someone who wasn't even me be in a fire and not burn but no one's tried it. I don't have a sauna."

Oh, well. What's her world's technology like, do they have oxygen tanks...? (Brief concept of what an oxygen tank is) They could maybe bundle one of her brothers up so much they normally couldn't breathe but have one of those under the fabric? Unless they don't have them.

"We don't have those. ...And they don't sound very huggy."

Eh, it was a thought. Oh well. As Kiri gets older she will probably meet people who don't mind having their minds read who will hug her. Meanwhile, Emily hugs.

Emily hugs are nice. "I'm not sure how many of those people there are."

Well, maybe she could advertise? It's not like someone who was responding to "mindreading subjects wanted for hugging" could plausibly take advantage of her, what with the mindreading.

Kiri snorts. "I don't think so."

"Not really."

Eventually Emily's mind will wander back to the question she wanted to ask Dr. McCoy for her science class. She's having trouble working something out, and she's sure that she's getting something wrong and that the problem will make sense once she has whatever-it-is corrected.

That's okay. Kiri isn't bored or anything.

Then they can keep hugging for a while.