He laughs and claps his hands and then shows her various methods of cooking things over a wood fire.

She is fascinated! Mmm, food.

Zzzzzz.

Rúmil awakes her the next morning by singing next to her be-backpacked head. Sorry, I should have asked in advance what you'd like me to do if this occurred, but Miriel's up and wants to talk to you.

This is fine. Up she gets. To Miriel she goes, collecting random plants to nibble en route.

Miriel is sitting up. Bella. Thank you for coming, dear.

You're welcome. How'd you sleep?

All right. I had a dream that was pleasant enough I didn't want it to end, you'd said to mention that next time.

Would you like me to have a look at the memory and see if I can get anything transplantable out of it?

Yes, please!

It'll be easier to find that and only that if you concentrate on it. Do you want a coffee thing?

Please. She frowns. And I'm concentrating.

She's walking through a vague landscape. She leans down to tie some threads together, and a bush sprouts. She ties some more, and there's a road. She's drawing her hands carefully in and out of the air now, and there's a house, and she goes inside and it's furnished but empty, and she sits down on the bed and sews some birds in the air and lets them go flying out the doorframe.

And how's the affect attached...?

A small burst of happiness, each time she completes a knot and adds something to the landscape. Relief, when she enters the house and it's empty.

Bella signposts the affect and opens her eyes again. I can try to work with this but it's complicated and you'll probably want input into exactly where I go with it. There's a sort of accomplishment-based happiness that I can try to attach to things you might accomplish while awake, and relief that I'm not immediately sure what to attach to but I can put it somewhere if you have an idea.

It's that my husband and son weren't present, she says bitterly. I realize that's terrible.

I'm not here to judge you, Bella says, even if it weren't only a dream. Being surrounded by expectations you can't meet is really hard and they're a concrete symbol of that. It might mean I can't attach the same feeling to the exact opposite situation and have you relieved whenever they're around, but I could attach it to something less directly opposed.

If I could feel it at all when awake that'd be an improvement.

Could I feel relief at waking up, if right now I dread it?

That wouldn't be as hard as attaching it to the opposite of its trigger in the dream, which I wouldn't try at all. But I might have to apply more force and that increases the probability of a mistake I can't undo. It would still be much less likely than not.

What would a mistake feel like?