Okay.

"It's pretty strange," Vanyel says, a little more animated. "There are some other things in other kingdoms that are almost as weird. Rethwellan, er, they're southwest of us, they have a magic sword that selects the heir to the throne. Hardorn has – actually Rethwellan has as well, I think, on top of the sword – anyway, they have a religion that worships the Earth-Father and the priests can do some kind of magical binding between the ruler and the land, which in theory means that they can't act to harm it. I don't know if Karse has that but they have a god who apparently intervenes a lot." 

He stops, blinks, and deflates slightly. "Sorry if that was boring. I, um, do the gods in the Elves' world do anything like that? What about in the world you're from originally?" 

Um, I don't think they're controlling Elf politics like that. Gods in Materia also mostly don't.

"How does your magic work?" Savil says after a moment. "Lancir seemed to find it very intriguing but I haven't heard much." 

My telepathy and telekinesis are not technically magic according to the definition of my home society, it's called subtle arts. Uh, what do you mean how does it work - it gets better with practice? Some people are born with some subtle arts and most people aren't? Some people can also use it to control fire but I can't. At the time I originally had the magical accident I was in school to learn therapy.

"They have school for that?" Savil glances at Vanyel, who is stubbornly staring at the floor, and rubs her nose again. "Better with practice and some people are born with but most aren't is how it is here as well." 

There are a lot of kinds of magic there, some anyone can learn if they're bright enough or devout enough or something. And a lot of species of people. It's a really complicated place, Arda was simpler.

"You said you helped the people in the other world, er, Arda, with your mag– with your subtle arts?" Vanyel says, cautiously. "They don't have that even though they have telepathy?" 

Their telepathy only reads surface thoughts that aren't being hidden, and sends meanings and sense data. It's communicative but it wouldn't really have a therapeutic application. Uh, one of the Valar sort of tried to do therapy - he's the god of the dead and considers part of that to be healing dead people's traumas and personal flaws-in-his-opinion before he puts them back to life - but he was so bad at it, he mostly just made people forget things and turned them straight if they weren't straight before. I got permission to let people un-forget things, from one of the other Valar, and did a lot of that for ones who wanted to remember.

Vanyel is staring ahead with an increasingly frozen look. 

At 'turned them straight' Savil nearly spits out her drink, but she waits for Bella to finish. 

"That's certainly an interesting type of meddling," she says dryly. She reaches to squeeze Vanyel's shoulder again. "Not that I'd be shocked if the gods of our world have that, er, specific prejudice, but they're less obvious about it." She smiles tightly. "And I do see why Lancir is intrigued. We've got a similar division here, actually. The Mindspeech that Van and I have is closer to what you're describing with the Elves. Lancir is a Mindhealer as well, which is a separate Gift; it's absurdly rare and I'm not actually sure how it works, but I gather he can See different things as well as affect them in deeper ways. Van, you might know more?" 

Vanyel squirms. "Um, not really. He can See structures and patterns of thinking, I guess?" He looks like someone who doesn't want to be discussing this topic at all. 

I can do that too but for subtle artists it's a pretty smooth continuum with our equivalent of mindspeech, and being able to block each other out, and stuff. Though with individual talents. I have naturally really good shields, that's how I was noticed to have subtle arts, somebody noticed they couldn't read me.

"Oh, that is interesting. I wonder if..." Savil pauses for a while. "May I try reading you, to test if your shields are effective against our Thoughtsensing? I assume yes since your mind-communication works here, but it'd be interesting to see if they feel different. I wouldn't try for more than half a second or so, and it's all right if you'd prefer I not." 

Wait for me to say when.

When.

"Well. I certainly can't get through." Savil smiles at her. "That's a very good shield. Feels a little different from one of ours but I'd be stuck to say how." She frowns for a moment. "Wonder if you can get through our shields with your subtle arts. Feel free to try mine, I'm not thinking about anything sensitive." 

All right -

I think your shield might be technically magic in the way that mine is not technically magic, it feels more like what I remember of probing people under mental protection spells than other subtle artists, but it works fine.

"That's really interesting!" Vanyel sits up straight again and actually makes eye contact. "You said that the Elves could block surface thoughts. What did their shields feel like to you – like magic, or like subtle arts, or something else?" 

Oh, uh, nothing, actually. They don't have defense, they just have really polite offense, as it were. I could use the osanwë protocol since everyone else was doing it, but there was nothing actually preventing me from reading Elves' private thoughts, it was just a bunch of metaphors they were all used to using to distinguish.

"What's the osanwë protocol? We have formal Mindspeech protocols among the Heralds – there is an element where everyone agrees to ignore stray thoughts that obviously weren't meant to be public, but it does also rely on the fact that Mindspeakers can shield." 

I just mean that I read people's publicly marked thoughts even though I wouldn't do that in a population that didn't intend to mark any thoughts public, and I learned to avoid what people were marking private even though it didn't hedge me out, and I used shields instead of a privacy metaphor for myself but I put thoughts in public in the same approximate format they were using, especially senses, they like to look through each other's eyes and hear through each other's ears sometimes - they have much better sensory acuity though, they mostly used mine for novelty or in one case there was a blind one.

"Huh!" Vanyel leans forward, animated again. "We only really do sense-sharing with our Companions – actually, hmm, I guess in full rapport concert-work we would sort of be sharing magical senses, but Heralds don't actually do that much, it's a Tayledras thing. Um, sorry, those are a different people in our world that Savil's friends with, they have a lot more Mindspeakers and mages than Valdemar does. Er, relative to population anyway, there's also a lot fewer people total in a Vale." Pause for breath. "You mentioned mental protection spells as being different from subtle arts. That's something from your original world? How does that kind of magic work?"

Um, I'm not sure it's a good idea to get into that.

He deflates again, cheeks turning slightly pink. "Oh. All right. Sorry." 

Savil strokes his hair. "What sorts of things did you do with your subtle arts training to help the Elves, other than unblocking memories?" she asks a beat later. "This is more Lancir's territory, I guess, but I am pretty curious about the training you had before you ended up in Arda."