Sigh. "I probably should. And tell her that, I don't know - I should come up with an excuse for why I'm not around for a bit, that won't make her worry about me." 

"Reading a book?"

"But then she'll try to–" He stops. "I guess it's fine if she Mindspeaks me while we have the door open. I can shield enough that she won't know where I am specifically. And I can tell her I'd rather not be interrupted." 

"You'd be better than me at predicting any holes in the plan here, I don't know her."

"If she actually comes here for some reason and we've got the door open to something that obviously isn't the chapel... It's pretty unlikely, but I could illusion it just in case, make the door look closed – and we could make a diversion of some kind if someone does come by and look like they're trying to open it." He scowls. "I wish the door hadn't showed up at my parents' house. It's going to be even more awkward if my mother stumbles in here." 

"Okay. Uh, do you want to plan a diversion? Flock of, uh, butterflies?"

Lissa, still holding the door, bursts out laughing. "Can you imagine that, Van? Mother's about to walk in here and suddenly, BUTTERFLIES! That would be hysterical." 

"I was thinking more 'loud noise from the opposite direction'," Vanyel says wryly. "...Cam, can you create a flock of butterflies with your maker power?" 

"Yes. I can't do birds, or, well, I can but they'll just flop around on the ground creepily. Really dumb animals like bugs and snails will behave normally. But I can also do something that will make a loud noise."

"Should work once, at least. It seems hard to keep this door hidden from my family forever, people do occasionally want to visit the chapel, but once we collect Leareth – if that happens smoothly – we can close the door and pause Valdemar again until...I mean, there might not be a necessity to unpause it again for a while." 

"Yeah. Uh, I think you'll still age and stuff here but otherwise yeah."

"Then let's try not to take forever on your problem," Lissa says brightly. "That'll do the opposite of help with, er, the Stef situation. Really what we should do is finish up here, get all your dead people back, and then invite Stef to come hang out in here while Van's paused, and, I don't know, learn the music from a thousand different worlds until he's the same age as Van." 

Vanyel covers his face with both. "Lissa, can you please. Not." 

No comment.

"Aaanyway. Topic at hand." Vanyel shoots one final glower at his sister and then turns back to Cam. "Since we aren't in a rush right now, I might as well duck out and go have breakfast with my family or something. I think I can avoid giving anything away, before I was already preoccupied about, um, other things." 

"Sure, if it won't be weird for Lissa to skip it."

"It won't at all. I'm not a morning person, I usually skip it. If we're still waiting at lunchtime then probably I could cut back on suspicion by going for that." 

"And Vanyel can skip that one and no one will start wondering if you are one another's secret identities or anything from not seeing you at the same time. All right."

Sigh. "All right, I'll be back soon." Vanyel heads out into the courtyard. 

Cam reads to kill time.

Vanyel comes back about an hour later, looking mildly disgruntled. "Talked to her. Don't think she's suspicious. That was exhausting." He flops onto one of the sofas. "Any word from Leareth?" 

"No, not yet."

They can wait some more, then. "Cam, want to give me a copy of the god specs, or any other Leareth reading that makes sense for me to catch up on?" 

Cam hands him god specs.

Vanyel reads. Occasionally he makes surprised or thoughtful noises.