"And then what? I am going to want your help with testing spells, once we leave, and it will become much costlier to continue your sessions there, when time is passing over there. I think it would be best if we did all of that here." 

...All right, fine, he has a point. 

Vanyel will keep doing low-priority-seeming reading, and practicing his relaxation exercises a lot. 

Cam reads about exposure therapy and attempts to provide useful advice about it.

And Lissa tries to remind Vanyel what an astounding amount of rapid progress this is, after over a decade of being totally unable to handle Gate-energy. (She also nags him to take breaks so she can show him all the music recordings she's finding on her new computer.) 

Vanyel is still kind of impatient, but Lissa does have a point.

And by the end of the next week, another two sessions later, he can actually touch the Gate Leareth is casting.

"I kind of want to try casting one myself?" he tells Cam. "Not going through, yet, but raising a Gate and not going through it was less bad than going through someone else's, in the past." 

"That makes sense, since you could kind of brace yourself. How close do you have to be to one you're casting?"

"You know, I'm not sure! I can definitely do it from five yards, maybe ten - I haven't actually tested what the maximum distance is." 

"Maybe cast it a ways off and then walk up to it."

"Oh, sure, that's a good idea." 

It turns out Vanyel can cast a miniature Gate between the embroidery hoops with Leareth holding them fifteen yards distant! He stays where he is for a bit, just looking at the glow of the two thresholds, sort of awed. "I can't believe I can do that and it doesn't hurt." 

"You've made a lot of progress!"

Vanyel tries walking a bit closer. At around five yards he can feel himself start to tense up, and a tiny twinge of what isn't quite pain yet but is maybe considering becoming it, so he takes a few steps back again. 

"I think you should not push it now," Leareth says. "Try again at the next session." 

Grumble.

"You don't wanna overextend yourself," agrees Cam.

"I know." 

It takes another week, three more sessions, but: to his own amazement and awe, Vanyel is able to cast some tiny Gates himself and actually touch them. "I can't believe it! I never thought I'd be able to do this." 

"Congratulations! Do you need to work up to big ones or does it not generally react to how big they are?"

"I'm not actually sure! I hadn't tried casting tiny Gates before this, since they're basically only useful for tests or practice and I, um, wasn't ever going to do a Gate I didn't absolutely have to for tactical reasons." 

"That makes sense. But probably sometimes they're different sizes if the thresholds around are, right, have you ever noticed a difference?"

"Hmm. I hadn't noticed a difference for my own Gates, but I've only done 'regular doorway' or the door to the Heralds' Temple which fits Companions, they're not that different and regular-size ones hurt enough that maybe I wouldn't be able to distinguish anyway. My aunt did a huge Gate I had to be near once, and I recall it being especially bad, but she also had to hold it for a lot longer than usual, so it could've been that. Gating longer distances is worse, I think, but that could just be that the search-step takes longer. I could, er, try casting a regular-sized Gate but starting from fifteen yards away again..."

"Next time," Leareth says firmly. 

"But– all right, fine." 

"You know, you do not actually need to performatively complain and show how impatient you are in order to convey that this matters to you," Leareth says levelly. 

"I'm not..." It doesn't seem like there's much point in arguing. 

"If you're bored I can teach you my music notation and you can transcribe songs, or something."

It's hard to be bored, exactly, when there's an infinite supply of reading material right there, but music is reliably exciting anyway and Vanyel lights up. "I would really like that!"