Melody pours herself a bit of watered wine and sits. 

"...It's weird, you know," she says in a low voice. "Making one five-second decision when I thought I was about to die, and - maybe nobody's going to look at me the same ever again?" She waves her hand. "Oh, I'm not in trouble, don't worry. They're writing a new exception into the Healers' code for it. Just, that isn't actually the point..." 

"I'm sorry."

"Has something like that ever happened to you? You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to." 

"No, I don't think so. A lot of things have happened to me but I don't think it's ever been anything analogous. I wasn't very scary compared to most people in Materia. In Arda everyone was happy to trust me no matter what powers I popped up with, until the last minute, and that was mostly about my influence on the prince. Here, uh, things have happened but I think it's still different."

"I'm sort of surprised by how calm people are about you? Given that you teleported them to some stranger's library and all. I guess maybe they expect you to pull out weird crazy abilities sometimes. No one expected me to mind-control forty gryphons and just leave them like that for a day. Apparently node-boosted set-commands are really intense, a lot stronger than the normal kind – I couldn't really tell when I was doing it – and, um, interacting with them in the interim was creepy. Which is extremely fair. The thought creeps me out too." 

"Interacting with them is creepy how?"

"Telling someone to 'not move' is pretty broad, so if it's strong it hits a lot more than not taking off to attack again? So they just kind of sit there and can only sort of talk to you even. I didn't mean to do it that way but I was in a hurry and I don't actually use set-commands nearly ever." 

"...at least they could breathe, I guess that was a risk if it's that broad."

"I don't think that's a risk? Breathing is involuntary, it's not really the same kind of thing." She looks unhappy about it though. "But I'd never done it that strength before, it's not like I would've known." 

"If Gemma had told us they'd been having a problem like that you could have undone it early, but I don't like it having been that close at all..."

"No. Me neither. ...I guess maybe Leareth would've known? He'd obviously done something like this before, I guess he had that other Mindhealer... I don't know, maybe he'd be fine with maybe killing some gryphons though." 

"I can ask him, I'm going back tomorrow."

"Really? Why?" 

"Uh, he runs his organization with a lot of compulsions, enough that it's a logistical headache to get rid of it all, so I'm helping with the logistical headache."

"Wait. He agreed to just stop using compulsions? I'm assuming because you asked. Wow." 

"I hate mind control a lot and he cannot act outside of Velgarth without my help."

"I guess that's fair. Still impressive as hell." Melody sips her wine. "So, er – what did happen a few days ago? If you can talk about it, that is. They were after you specifically. Do you know...why...? Aside from, I don't know, general making waves, which you haven't done that much of that I've noticed." 

"Uh, the details of this information are hazardous to Her- well, to Companions, but in a way that means you shouldn't tell Heralds either. Sayshen and Yfandes have already heard it. Understood?"

Melody blinks, tugs at her sleeve, takes a moment to think about it. "Understood." 

"Companions are all super mind controlled, which is pretty obvious to me but may not have been to you? and it breaks if you poke it wrong. I don't even mean with arts - I kind of muffled some of it to help thinking around it, but I did not in fact personally break it."

"...Weird. I haven't seen any Companions as patients, so I don't know what their minds are like, but - having seen Heralds as patients, it sort of makes sense. Companion-bonds are bizarre. A lot of Mindhealers find them sort of disturbing." 

"I bet. Anyway, Taver was mad and seems to have reported me to his boss and now the gods are mad too and the one running Iftel decided to give somebody a scary dream about a flying woman."

"...Hellfires. Can I just say that I hate everything about that." 

"Me too, planning on leaving the universe, need more dev time."

"...Wow. All right. Bella, you are extremely yourself and every so often I forget that and then you come out with something like 'planning on leaving the universe'. You inviting anyone else?"