"...I wish that was possible but I'm not sure how it would work. It's a brilliant idea if it does, though. Did the world you came from have schools for a mundane equivalent as well, or just for the subtle arts version?" He shakes his head. "Gods, I wish you'd gotten the books across somehow. I try to imagine writing a book about what I do, and I can't think how I'd describe it in a way that would come across."

Subtle arts isn't uncommon in Materia, so a therapist career is in fact gated on it there, but it seemed like it might work in a population without that option. A lot of it is just talking, even if the arts effects are more dramatic when they're called for. I can try to write down what I remember from the books.

"That would be incredibly valuable to us, I think. I've already alerted Healers' and asked them to hunt down their nearest Mindhealer to talk with you – I think they're out on circuit. Since they're not here yet, though, I'll jump to the front of the line for sharing ideas with you. I haven't had nearly as many opportunities as I'd prefer to ask advice, much less ask someone who has books on it." 

He frowns, thinking. "Hmm. I guess I do plenty of work that isn't actively using my Gift, and even some without my Sight. Feels hard to manage entirely without, though." 

Well, some things would be impossible, yes. Though maybe you can do things with magic I can't do at all and vice-versa, so we could fill each other in that way.

"Hmm. That's a good idea. I'll try to start." He's silent for a while, rubbing his chin. "Well, I can See the...structure, I guess, of people's minds. Kind of how the various patterns fit together. It's different for everyone, but for me it's like a metaphorical house. Rooms, doors, windows, pillars, all that. I can look at it overall or I can try to go in closer and See more details in a given area. It's all pretty abstract, though, so to interpret it, helps a lot to ask questions." 

He starts doodling absently around the edges of what looks like a handwritten accounting report with some corrections in red ink. "Then, I can push and move things around. I've caught up with other Mindhealers a couple of times, enough to get on the same page with terminology – two of the main techniques are called blocks and redirects. A redirect is a single thread of thought that I can...bake in deeper, I guess...with my Gift, usually to try to replace some other thought that's harming the person. So if a patient has problems feeling guilty in a certain kind of situation, say, I can remind them in a session to be gentle with themselves, and if I want I can push with my Gift to make it stick, so they'll keep remembering it in the relevant times and places." 

"Blocks are more... Hmm, so if there's an entire region of thoughts that's bad, often it's a kind of loop that someone will get stuck in, that'll show up in my Sight. And I can sort of...put a wall around it. It's not an impermeable wall, minds don't work that way, but it'll often keep them from wandering there by accident. Not sure how to describe it any better than that." 

He sits back again. "Is that anything like what your subtle arts do?" 

Those both sound similar to things I can do, yes. I wound up seeing in Arda a lot of effects downstream of people having been tortured and enslaved by an evil god so most of my experience is with panic attacks, nightmares, flashbacks.

"That sounds awful!" Lancir almost knocks over his tea. "Savil said your world sounded perfect, but...gods." He makes a face. "Literally. Sorry. Anyway, I see some amount of that too, for different reasons obviously, although probably the most common thing I have to address is people feeling horrifically guilty for screwing up in a mission or circuit and people being harmed as a result." 

He straightens the papers on his desk. "Anyway, were you able to figure out anything that worked really well? I've got one patient in particular I could use your advice with, for those sorts of issues and other things. Basically, something really bad happened to him, and... I don't know. It doesn't seem like putting in blocks around it is enough, or even the right tactic to be taking, but I don't know what else to do." 

The evil god is in prison now and that was pretty much it for bad stuff.

Uh, some people like to forget outright, I don't know if you can do that? I also have a thing where I can run somebody through a memory with all the interesting content and feelings elided till the mind stops making a fuss about it, like if you're flashing back to the time the orc chased you to the edge of a cliff and you broke your leg, you give it an overlay of "the time nothing in particular caused you for no reason in particular to be nowhere in particular and then nothing in particular happened".

"Huh!" Lancir puts his hands up behind his head. "Fascinating. No, I can't make people outright forget, at least not without breaking a lot of other things in the process – closest I can come in practice is making it so memories don't come up very often. The second thing... Hmm. I can't do that with my Gift alone, possibly if I had Projective Empathy as well – or Bardic – I could do something similar but I don't think it'd be as fine-grained."

He gets out a bit of paper and scribbles something. "Out of curiosity, how much can you see the patient's responses during, in real time? One of the really irritating parts is that I'm not a strong Thoughtsenser, so if I'm seeing someone who shields well by default, I get the overall shape but none of the specifics of what they're thinking." 

I can follow quite a lot but usually I make do with just an affect read - that's receptive empathy, I'm not sure what category that falls under for you guys. The exact timing of the changes matters more than the verbal details, usually, I can ask the patient to produce verbal details if they matter but it's often hard to remember timing from inside.

"...That's the same thing for us but it's a separate Gift, usually comes with projective Empathy but not always, and I don't have it either." He looks vaguely envious. "Thoughtsensing alone does give some overtones that convey affect. I think I agree with you on exact timing of changes mattering; I can generally pick that up but it's intuition as much as anything else. Or I can prod a bit with my Gift and see what kind of response it causes, figure out what's going on." 

Prod a bit? Prod what?

Lancir gets a weird cross-eyed look. 

"...I don't know how to explain it without you also having my kind of Sight," he says finally. "The...relationships between parts? Feelings and thoughts and beliefs and the core things that a person cares about, there's a structure there, links – which I see as the rooms of a house, or as various metaphorical interior decorations if I go in really close. And my best understanding of what my Gift does is just make it all a little softer, more malleable, so it can be moved around a little rather than staying fixed." He shrugs. "I can also use my Gift without moving anything around myself – I just make it easier for the patient to think a different thought instead of the one they would've had the last fifty times." 

Do you have this sense reflexively? If you wanted you could, uh, show me a room in your house.

"What do you... Oh, do you mean can I turn my Sight on myself and then have you read that? Clever, and yes. Give me a moment. I'll need to partially take down my shields, I assume. Let me just check the room shields are up... Good." He closes his eyes, his expression flattening. "Go ahead and look." 

Bella will see a brief glimpse of something that does in fact look sort of like a house, though in a bizarre metaphorical and dreamlike way – a cottage-like dwelling, square and single-storeyed with a thatch-style roof and simple windows on either side of an oak door standing open – and then the view ducks inside, there's a narrow entry-hall with tapestries, one end has something like a desk, there are three doors along it. Two have curtained doorways, one has a heavy door and very obvious lock. 

The view swoops through one of the curtained doorways. More tapestries on the walls, though the pictures they depict keep shifting – there are maps, pastoral scenes of fields, other images that seem to be mid-battle, old men seated in curved rows in a stadium-like room, people in white in a smaller meeting-room, all of them half-sketched, more evocative than detailed. 

There's a table. It holds books, and jars, and a sheathed dagger, and various other items. 

I call this my strategy-and-tactics room, Lancir thinks, the words floating up clearly but not quite projecting. It's the part of me that's engaged for most of my work as the Queen's Own, or my past work when I was a Herald-Mage on circuit. 

A point of bright light nudges at the dagger, and something echoes through the room. One of the tapestries becomes brighter while others dim. The books on the table seem to...sink, or become smaller, while several of the jars shine brighter. 

That is what I mean by pushing with my Gift, Lancir thinks. I am going to stop doing it now because it's quite distracting to demonstrate on myself in the middle of a conversation. 

Wow, that's really different - I have telepathic senses but they don't resolve into anything this literal.

Lancir shrugs. "I could wish it was easier to interpret. If I'm looking at someone who isn't me, it can be pretty non-obvious what the things I'm Seeing mean. Hmm – can you describe more what yours is like?" 

More synaesthetic. Things that smell like colors or whatever. But that's more a matter of learning how a given person is - similar structures won't smell blue between people - so between people the generalizable navigational skills are to a significant extent about ignoring all that confusing sensory stuff and maintaining a clear focus on what I'm trying to learn or do without going 'wait, that sounded like chocolate, what's that all about'. And then with practice across people I can make it resolve into more useful images and feelings.

“Huh. That’s how I’ve heard strong Receptive Empaths describe what it’s like to sense emotions. Complete with the fact that subtler things they can pick up on are different between people, I guess because people relate to their own emotions differently or something, I don’t know. Only it sounds like it’s all one Gift or equivalent for you, sensing thought and emotion and structure?” He smiles a little. “Convenient. What does it feel like when you try to change something?”

Well, it depends what, obviously. It's not just of a piece with my other telepathic stuff, it's also ultimately the same as my telekinesis, so it feels a lot like using that, but I suppose that doesn't explain much for your purposes... Imagine tying complicated knots in the dark at arm's length with a mix of various kinds of yarn, cooked pasta, wire, shoelaces, etcetera.

Lancir laughs. “Goodness. I sympathize - I mean, the specifics are different for me, obviously, but that feeling of being in the dark...” He makes a face. “Gods, especially with Vanyel. Mostly because getting him to talk about what’s going on with him is like pulling teeth, so I’m left playing guesswork at what’s going to help.”

“...Do you have any advice? I’ve been frustrated about this for the last year but there aren’t exactly any other Mindhealers around I can ask, given our shortage. I mean, I can talk to Savil but I can’t expect her to have really useful thoughts. People aren’t her strength to begin with.”

Okay just - stop. Don't - what the fuck do you think you're doing?

“What?” He looks blankly at her.