"That makes sense." He seems pretty apologetic about having a problem that she doesn't have a standard fix for. "I mean, it's...actually kind of tolerable like this? But I think it wouldn't be if I wasn't also calm about it, and, um, I'm...really not motivated at all to do anything right now." Maybe if he sat around being sad for long enough he would eventually start doing things just to relieve the monotony or distract himself, but that doesn't feel obvious. 

I have to actively maintain the calm and can't do that forever, plus, yeah, it has drawbacks. Do you have any guesses what general kind of end state might be best, and maybe we can figure out how to get there?

It's a really hard question. 

"Where I'm not sad that he's– no," Vanyel shakes his head hard, "that feels...wrong...to not be sad that he's dead. But maybe if I were a more normal amount of sad? I'm not a normal amount of sad, I don't think, most people who knew someone for two months aren't still going to be upset enough about it that they regularly want to kill themselves even if they were really in love. That's a – it's a weird magic thing that happened to me, to both of us, without us actually agreeing to it. If I could just be...sad about Tylendel because of him...and not because he was magically tied to me, I think maybe I could be that sad and still have other feelings and want to do things. I don't know if that's possible though." 

It seems good to clarify what you want even if it's not achievable. I can try looking for the lifebond-specific effects but can't guarantee I'll be able to affect them. Can you identify anything where if you concentrated on it it might help me find it?

"I don't really know which parts are lifebond-specific but this is the part that feels the least like being sad about other things." It's very counterintuitive to try to concentrate on the icy howling void of nothingness where he used to be able to feel Tylendel once. Vanyel has to keep reminding himself that he's going to stay calm about it no matter what, Bella isn't going to let him panic, and presumably if she thinks something he's doing is a bad idea she'll tell him to stop. "That?" 

Yes that. You can stop concentrating.

She is very quiet for a while.

Vanyel picks his way through the rest of his breakfast. 

"Bella?" he says finally. 

Mm? Sorry, I've just never seen anything like this and I'm trying to figure out what might work.

“Sorry.”

It's not your fault.

Uh, this seems structurally distinct. From like - your memories of Tylendel as a person and so on. It's very much attached to those, but it doesn't seem like the same thing, does that make sense? I might be able to differentiate between them more strongly and then they wouldn't feed into each other even though they'd both still be there.

"It doesn't feel distinct." Or does it? He's never tried to ask that question before, why would he. "I mean, I guess trying to do that probably can't make things any worse..." That's interesting. The void itself feels like something he could tolerate, on its own, if it wasn't constantly representative of literally everything else. "I'd be willing to try that." 

Okay. I think I should do this before I try the salience stripping thing, because I know how much oomph the salience stripping thing takes and will be able to budget it better. This could be just like an association pinch only bigger, or way more difficult in some way, but I see how I'd start. Say when?

It’s not like there’s any reason to put it off but for some reason he still hesitates. 

”...I’m ready.”

Okay. If you need to interrupt me raise your hand and I'll come to a stop - this is new territory and a surprise could make me drop something at a bad time.

And she starts attempting as best she can to disentangle the damage from the grief.

Mostly it doesn't feel like that much; he's trying to keep his attention off the part that hurts by reciting bits he remembers from various books in his head. Every once in a while it feels really really weird but he can't actually be scared or even startled by it, with Bella keeping him calm. 

After about an hour: How does it feel so far?

Vanyel tries to think about Tylendel. It's – all right, it's still pretty bad, he misses Tylendel, he's not noticeably less sad or lonely about it – but it doesn't send him slamming headfirst into the void. 

He tries concentrating on the void. It's pretty unpleasant but...in a different way? It's not grief, it's just a thing that hurts, sort of for no reason. 

He thinks about Tylendel. Grief, pain, he remembers a Gate and fire and– ouch, now he's falling into the stupid howling empty void again. He whimpers a bit.

I'm, uh, not done, I just want to check in and see if this is on the right track.

"I think so. It feels different in a way that's not as bad." 

Okay, I'll keep going. Can you ask someone to bring lunch in another hour or so for both of us?

Vanyel can pass a message to Yfandes, who can check if Savil's available in an hour and if not ask Tran – Vanyel isn't sure he really wants Tran coming in right now but he wouldn't mind him leaving a tray outside the door. 

Also it's okay if you want to read or talk to other people with Mindspeech or something, since this is probably boring.

Vanyel picks up the book Savil was reading (it’s a randomly chosen one on weather magic that he’s read before). It’s actually interesting - not because the book is interesting, but weather magic used to be a bit fraught as an area because he remembers lots of conversations about it with Tylendel. Now it feels much closer to a neutral topic.

Some more time passes and then-

:Bella?: No pause for a acknowledgement. :I wasn’t sure Mindspeaking you at a distance would work but I thought you’d want to know that the other Mindhealer just got here!: Shavri’s Mindspeech is even more rapid-fire than her normal talking. 

NOT NOW I'M WORKING