The Star-Eyed Goddess is indeed not sure how to stop being scared, but - recognition - it would be better, not to be. All of the gods were less scared, before the Cataclysm, and - it was easier, to achieve (the vision of the Summerlands as She recognizes it, the small communities and their traditions since time immemorial, the network of relationships and people supporting one another, children growing up with the safety-comfort-certainty of a well-understood world and place in it where they fit) - it was easier to achieve that with the humans, before the Cataclysm. Her pact with the Tayledras is a scaffolding to steer and build on but it's...not, actually, the original thing, that She had with Her people before...

The Vale would have been a reasonable expenditure of resources if it had worked but it didn't work and so the Star-Eyed Goddess is indeed frustrated at those resources being gone. 

(She does not seem to have any other appreciation of the human-level harm caused, or any concept of...promises or betrayals of those promises. She doesn't seem particularly sorry, just frustrated. It's not clear that She has ever observed 'sorry' as a godemotion.) 

She is also very frustrated with the immortal one for holding one of Her people where he's unable to act. That is definitely not good for humans! The immortal one cannot possibly argue that it's better! 

...does she understand that destroying the Vale hurt her humans?

...They aren't alive anymore and they didn't want to die when they were...? Though the dead souls aren't hurting now, and will be fine when she puts them back in the world again? There are not very many living people who are hurt by it, though, and the parents did not have to see their children die because they all died very quickly at the same time? The two who survived are hurt by everyone else being dead but that is not very many people. 

Many people lived in the Vale and thought of it as their home (and here he pulls out the concept of safety-comfort-certainty of a world well-understood). She took their safety-comfort-certainty from them, forever. And from many others, too. From everyone who would otherwise have thought "things like that don't happen here, the Star-Eyed will keep us safe."

And the humans had worked hard, for many generations, to make the Vale beautiful and safe, and she'd destroyed it. She hates it when people disturb her projects; so do humans. 

She...seems amenable to the line of argument that She harmed Her people more than She had realized, but is still confused? None of them are experiencing a lack of safety-comfort-certainty. And it's not like a Vale being destroyed never happens, some of them were destroyed in the same way many centuries ago.

(Those ones were actually accidents; there were many other times when She had nudged for the accidents that could have happened to not happen, but She had a lot to do and less to work with after the Cataclysm, and - some of the Vales would have been harder to steer in Foresight and so She did not try as hard to preserve them when it would have been costly to nudge.) 

Okay. There is clearly a lot of work to do. He is going to take this from the top--

Wait a minute. He peers at the human who is being held by the immortal one. 

Star-Eyed Goddess, what are you doing to that human???

What? Oh, that one. 

...The Star-Eyed is still going to be confused about Cayden Cailean's question because, from Her perspective, She isn't doing anything in an active ongoing sense. She did send him a vision a while ago? Is that what He means? It's true that giving humans visions seems to be damaging to them in some way even if She is very careful about it. The human sought it out first, though, he came to the Moonpaths and actively tried to get her attention. Also She can't un-send the vision now. 

(Also he is a Tayledras Healing-Adept, one of Her people, born into the pact that his ancestors made almost two thousand years ago, and - by dint of being a Healing-Adept - very very steerable by Her. She isn't doing anything with that right now, though, since he's gotten himself completely boxed into a corner in Foresight by the immortal one's allies and none of the ways She could nudge will actually do anything.) 

Here, Cayden can bounce over what it looks like to him--

The human's mind is very loud, to Cayden's godsenses, and the thing it's screaming is trapped. It looks like there are chains of some kind wrapped around the human's mind, chains so old that the human's mind has grown around them. They normally didn't limit the human much. But now the human's mind keeps half-forming these thoughts, and then the chain tightens and the thoughts are cut off and the human hurts. The human can barely think at all, in fact, except about trivialities, because every time the human tries to think deeply about his situation the chain stops him.

The human is in a lot of pain. He is scared and alone. 

It is one thing to take the human's body prisoner, and Cayden is pretty annoyed with the archmade too. But it is far worse to take the human's mind as a prisoner. 

This is probably because of the pact?

The Star-Eyed Goddess could...not previously see the trappedness...and it does look like someone is being hurt. 

...She could release him from the pact but She doesn't think that the human wants to not be Hers anymore? Humans who want to not be Hers anymore can decide not to be - see, the other human here, the other survivor of k'Treva, is not under the pact anymore. But if she releases a human from the pact who did still want to be Hers then She...thinks...that might hurt the human as well? 

Also She doesn't actually understand why the pact is doing that. It does not normally do that. If She knew why then She could maybe send the human a vision - he's a Healing-Adept, it wouldn't be that expensive - but She doesn't understand what would have to be different for the human to be un-trapped. 

Cayden does not share that Velgarth clerics sound incredibly worrying. 

He does share that it looks like the thought this human wants to have is "the Star-Eyed might have made a mistake." Would it be possible to-- loosen something up to let him think that?

...The Star-Eyed still does not really conceive of the things that happened as "She made a mistake" but She is familiar with the concept that humans sometimes need to be told things in visions that are not actually true in order for the vision to have the intended effect. She can tell the human the thing that the other god is showing her and then he'll be able to think about it, does the other god think that would fix it? 

Wow! He hates every part of how the Star-Eyed relates to her humans!

He doesn't let this sentiment through to his communication with her. Instead, he lets her know that he thinks that would probably work fine. 

That Star-Eyed Goddess seems on board with this! She will send the human a vision and then at least one of the ways that Her people are still being hurt because of the Vale's destruction will be fixed? 

That sounds good!

All right, so, Cayden wants to try again to explain why humans would be upset that the Vale is destroyed--

They're still in the stupid dream. 

It's actually surprisingly hard to keep track of how much time has passed. Nothing in the dream changes; the sky is the same, the army is the same. The winter is the same and Vanyel is starting to get really tired of being cold. He knows it's not real but that does not really make it less unpleasant. 

Also he's bored. You would think that this would be very low down on the list of concerns and that surely he and Leareth would be able to think of plenty to talk about, and yet. 

Leareth is leaning back against the snow-chair he shaped. The air inside the snow-hut they built is well below room temperature, but it's at least not desperately uncomfortable with cold-weather gear. (Presumably one cannot actually get hypothermia from a Foresight dream but it's still uncomfortable.) 

"...I could explain more of the math we were working on before." They've been sitting in silence for twenty minutes since the last exchange of speculation about what might be happening in the outside world, and Leareth has run out of productive topics to mull on internally. 

"Sorry, can we not?" Vanyel drags a hand over his face. "I don't think I'm up for math." He knows it's not helping anything to be ruminating miserably on whether Savil is dead and it's somehow his fault for letting himself be sucked into the Foresight dream in the middle of a high-stakes working, but he can't seem to stop. 

Yfandes liked math don't think about that now.

Fine, then Leareth will put a false-magic illusion up on the wall of their tiny snow hut and do math by himself. It's frustrating not having access to any notes or anyone to bounce ideas off, but it turns out he's somewhat allergic to sitting around doing literally nothing. 

...Dream-magic should not be tiring, but Leareth is definitely starting to notice a feeling of tiredness. He's forming a growing suspicion that perhaps the Foresight dream is not actually very restful. It doesn't actually seem to be possible to tell what's going on with his actual non-dream body, but if it's been multiple candlemarks, it seems likely both of them are going to be getting hungry. Maybe that explains some of Vanyel's increasing moodiness. 

...Actually being alone with his thoughts is the worst idea in the world. 

"Can we talk about something that isn't math? Please. Tell me things about the Eastern Empire or something?" 

Leareth had just managed to think of an interesting problem to attack and now he's lost his entire train of thought. 

He takes a deep breath and manages not to snap at Vanyel. "Could you give me a more specific prompt than 'the Eastern Empire' in full generality?" A lot of facts about the Empire that he could get into are the kind of thing Vanyel would find depressing. 

"Um." Vanyel rubs his eyes. "Education system?" 

Sure. Leareth can probably come up with some things to say about the Eastern Empire's education system to distract Vanyel from - whatever it is that he clearly doesn't want to be dwelling on instead. 

And everything else continues to be exactly the same, until - 

"Um? Where...are you...oh it's a snow house. Hey! I'm coming over!" 

What. 

Well, see, the last time Stef fell asleep cuddling Vanyel and Vanyel had the Foresight dream, Stef got pulled into it! And they eventually had the thought that this might work even if the dream situation is...weird. 

(They were not absolutely sure Stef could get out of the dream again afterward, even if they have someone move him so he's no longer touching Van. But at least they can get a message across one way.) 

He stomps through the snow. It's freezing. Why can't he have a dream Endure Elements