So does Bella. At some point do I need to be part of some formal system that comes with meals and a room, and/or paying for my room and board?

Shavri frowns and thinks. "...You'll be with Healers'? So I think you need to, um, get properly on the roster, I guess, and get a room assigned to you in the living quarters wing. I live in the trainee wing – it means I share a room, but I think you'd get a suite all to yourself since I assume you're starting as a full Healer, I mean Mindhealer."

Shavri stuffs some bread in her mouth and switches to Mindspeech while she's chewing. :Technically Aber is the one who arranges that since he's the dean, but he's really preoccupied and he forgets details like that. Maybe talk to Gemma? She's very organized, she always finishes the administrative work that Aber didn't do on day shift, honestly everyone thinks SHE should be dean but she likes things the way they are:

Sure, I'll ask when I'm by later.

Shavri hauls her over to a free spot at one of the tables and sits down. "Do you have questions about Haven or Valdemar in general or Gifts or anything else? I like answering questions! I'm from a small town and I came here by myself when I was about to turn thirteen and it was a lot, but everyone was really helpful, and I like being able to pay that back." 

Can I get a complete list of all the Gifts? I think Savil listed at least most of them but I didn't write them down.

"Oh, of course! Um, I'll just list all of them and then if you need an explanation on any I can give it after?" Shavri counts on her fingers. "Mage-gift. Mindspeech. Empathy – um, receptive and projective, they can come separately. Healing. Bardic. Mindhealing. Umm...Fetching? Farsight. Foresight. Firestarting. Animal Mindspeech, that's different from normal Mindspeech and less common but not as rare as Mindhealing."

She frowns to herself. "Um, and then there are a few rare weird ones. Touchreading is when someone can hold an object and sense the emotions or thoughts of the person it belongs to from the last time they were touching it. Pathfinding is where you can orient on a target and then just know the safest way to get to it. Oh and there's something called the Gift of Tongues, it's probably using a variant on Thoughtsensing but it lets someone understand any language. Apparently all Companions have it, every once in a while a person does. Van told me about something called Earthsense that Tayledras Healing-Adepts have, it lets them be in touch with the land or something, but he doesn't know if anyone in Valdemar has it. Um, and sometimes people have Wild Gifts that haven't ever been seen before. I don't know anyone in Haven right now who has a Wild Gift though." 

Wow, that's a bunch of stuff. She takes it all down in Pax. Are people mostly pretty polite about it? I think my shields cover all the things I'm especially protective of but I'm not positive something here couldn't go through or around.

Shavri looks mildly appalled. "...It's really rude to read someone with Thoughtsensing without their permission. Nobody civilized would do that, and if someone tried your shields are really good. Um, people with Receptive Empathy do sometimes keep it open a little, but you might block that too, um, and Gemma says it doesn't tell you that much more than facial expressions do."

She looks at Bella in a very intent way. "...You don't shield against Healing, and I bet you're not shielded against Farsight, but in general people are polite about Gifts – almost everyone who has them is either a Herald or they're with Healers' or Bardic. We get so much ethics training." 

That's reassuring. I'll ask Gemma if she can get anything off me. What's in the ethics training?

"For Mindspeech, um, the main thing is you're not supposed to ever read un-Gifted people, and if you do by accident then you pretend you didn't. The Heralds have pretty strict protocols around using it to communicate, two Mindspeakers have to both open their shields a little in order to hold a link but you don't open them too much and if you pick up accidental thoughts then, again, you pretend you didn't. Healers are looser about it because we do concert melds – that's where we get into full mind-rapport so that the Healer leading it can direct energy from everyone's reserves and boost off everyone's Gifts, it's hard to explain exactly how it works but it does mean we're in closer contact. Um, a big thing is not using it to get any kind of personal gain that someone without Gifts couldn't, because that's not fair to them. Did Aber tell you ethics about Healing already? That's the one speech he's really good at remembering to do." 

I got the speech, yes. If you just pretend you didn't do people not get any feedback on how to leak less?

"Um, people will take you discreetly aside and tell you if you're leaking a lot or repeatedly. If it's just one time they usually won't bother." She looks thoughtful. "Your version of Mindspeech is very not-leaky. I'm not even getting overtones – that's when you get a little bit of affect or emotion along with the words part." 

I can send those but I don't usually, especially not when you can also see my face. I'm a good natural shielder.

Shavri bobs her head. "You are! You're really good– oh. Just a minute." She closes her eyes. "...My friend Esva wants to go flower-picking with me, she's going to make a wreath to surprise her sweetheart. Um, you'd be welcome to come but I don't know if you have other things this afternoon." 

A couple, yeah, but thank you for inviting me.

"I'm really glad to have met you! I hope I see you lots more at the House of Healing, I still want to try to figure out how your painblocking works and if it's something Healers here could do if we had the technique. Um, and you can ask me for help again with learning the language if you want, that was really fun." 

She bounces and smiles and waves and then she's rushing off. 

Bella takes her notes back to her room so she'll be findable when Vanyel is ready.

Vanyel shows up at her door about an hour later. He seems more cheerful than in the morning, but he's also very fidgety. "Bella? Could we, um, would it be all right if we went for a walk or something?" 

Yeah, sure.

Vanyel leads the way out and walks in silence beside her for a while until they get to the big field where the Companion foals were. 

"I don't really know what sort of goal I'm supposed to have now," he says finally. "But the thing that you did with the...de-association? ...with Savil's Work Room, that was really helpful, I actually went and practiced there last night. I tried to make a list of all the other places that are like that, but it's, um, it's really hard to think about. So I thought maybe we could walk around and find the ones that are...bad...that way. If that's all right with you." 

If you're sure that's easier? Uh, usually seeing a place is worse than just thinking about it if you have this kind of trigger at all but maybe you're different, people are different.

Vanyel looks sheepish. "I think it is worse if I see it, just, I was trying to think through it and I kept ending up doing something else instead. It's... I guess it's bad either way but it's easier to force myself to keep walking than to keep thinking. I don't know. Maybe we could sit down somewhere and I can see if it's easier to stay on track making a list if you're there." 

This could be nothing but do you suppose we should ask Lancir if he did anything, uh, persistent, which might have this hard-to-think-about-things effect?

Vanyel stops walking. "...I mean, he does lots of things that are persistent, at least for weeks or months. He asks me what's been troublesome and if I say, I don't know, that I can't go within sight of the river without panicking and having to hide in my room the rest of the day," he manages to say it while only looking slightly embarrassed, "um, then he puts in a block or redirect. And he did a lot of blocks about the...bad thing...so that it's harder to end up, er, stuck in it by accident. That was the only thing that– well, it doesn't fix the nightmares but it does help a bit." 

He kicks at a stone on the path. "I thought maybe if we could get a list and you could undo the associations, then I could go back to Lancir and tell him I don't need those redirects anymore. Having the redirects is a lot better than not having them but, um, your thing is way less distracting." 

That's... a good idea in principle but I'm really nervous about working around what he did without knowing what it is. You haven't noticed any problems with the one I did yesterday? It's not stuck on yet so if anything's wrong it'll go away but I really shouldn't try to operate blind.