“If you need a Companion,” Savil says dryly from behind them, “I do have one too. Can’t do in here though.”

This place is not very accessibly designed considering.

"You know, it really isn't. Some of the newer buildings are better, but this one's been standing almost since the Founding – buildings last a long time with mage-work reinforcement. I guess they hadn't thought through what having Companions would mean. Hells, the main wing, that's where Lancir's office is, actually predates there being Companions, since it wasn't until near King Valdemar's death that the whole miracle happened." 

Wow, I guess that'd explain it. And I guess it's not as bad since you can talk to them wherever.

"It's fine almost all the time and occasionally it's a massive headache." Savil stretches her back. "Done eating or should I wait?" 

She assesses her remaining two bites of rice. I'm good.

They can go outside then; there are still a few more hours of daylight left, it looks like. A white stallion is waiting for them just off the path. :Pleased to meet you, Bella. My name is Kellan: 

"Hi. This work okay?"

It works fine; Kellan can relay to Savil and Melody (Gemma hasn't bothered to follow them out, she's presumably less interested in a detailed interrogation about how subtle arts compares to Mindhealing). 

"Okay, what do you want to know?"

"Hmm, so what I know from Lancir is: you've got something like a combination of very strong Thoughtsensing and receptive Empathy, if we're mapping to Valdemaran Gifts, in addition to an ability to affect minds in a structural way that's more similar to our Mindhealing than either of those, but you don't perceive the structure quite in the way I do with my Sight, it's less literal? You can block memories entirely, without breaking everything else I assume, and you can do something I didn't really follow that involves replaying traumatic memories but with an overlay that makes it boring? I'm curious if that's right, and then I sort of want to just hear you describe it. Hypothetically, I mean, no need to talk about specific patients – just generic examples of things you might see and things you might do about it. Figure that's the most useful thing to learn tonight so I can be ready with my more interesting questions once you're rested." 

Melody's very fidgety; she's already rolled the sleeve of her robe up and back down again and is starting on a second go. "Oh, and Lancir mentioned you were working with something I'd probably find fascinating, but then he sort of caught himself and said he didn't actually have permission to tell me about it, so – well, I'm honestly burning with curiosity, but obviously it'd be up to the patient in question and I won't push you on that." 

"The way subtle arts telepathy gets summarized where it's common is 'the ability to perceive and interact with the mind'. That's basically as broad as it sounds though individual artists vary in strengths and talents and raw oomph and it's a skill that benefits a lot from practice. Uh, if your sight is like Lancir's then I'd say mine is less metaphorical. Maybe you mean 'concrete', mine is less concrete. The traumatic memory thing I have lots of practice with, yes, as a made up example suppose you went for a walk and got beaten up and mugged and couldn't walk away from it for a while. I would walk you through the structure of the memory with all the interesting details blurred so it'd be like 'I went for a walk and there was some guy and he did something and I sat around for some amount of time for some reason and then went home'. If I do that enough the mind starts reacting with boredom instead of perseverating panic to the memory."

"That's really interesting, I'm trying to think – I don't know that I could do something like that myself, I've barely got any Projective Empathy and I think you'd need that. Poor Lancir doesn't have either kind of Empathy and he's barely a Thoughtsenser, I can't imagine, I'd be so frustrated – it sounds like your artists vary a bit on those kinds of dimensions too. Anyway, yes, concrete is a better word for the Sight distinction."

She sits back. "All right, so you're seeing a hypothetical patient for the first time – walk me quickly through the arts side of your process for figuring out what's going on and what to do? I assume you'd do a lot of talking too and I'm curious to hear about your process for that later in case it's different but magic side first – gods I should be taking notes, there's no way I'm going to remember all of this." 

"Subtle arts are not technically magic. Uh, you should know that I'm largely self taught and may have missed stuff in the process. Sometimes I ask people to concentrate on things so I can follow that concentration, kind of like how I use people's words to find what they mean to say to me. Then I can find what it's attached to and connect or disconnect it to or from things. I can find things I'm familiar with in general without the concentration part."

"Hmm. Asking people to concentrate on something and following it is a trick I use too – there's Sight and then there's knowing what I'm looking at. What's attached to what, connecting or disconnecting, actually that's pretty similar to some of how it feels for me. I don't understand why this is the case, but for our kind of Mindhealers, our Sight comes in with a different primary representation or metaphor. Lancir sees houses – I see tapestries, the structure's in the weave and the pattern and the colours. Which affects how we work, too; I'd do a block differently, honestly blocks are harder for me to pull off but smaller redirects are easier. Just pick up a thread and loop it over here instead. I've seen some of Lance's work through my own Sight and it certainly comes out looking odd, I'd imagine mine would to him as well." 

She takes out a tiny stitched leather notebook and writes something in rapid spidery shorthand, then her eyes flash back to Bella, hand darting to her collarbone. "Anyway. Your basic move is disconnecting or reconnecting, you can use that to run through painful memories with the parts blurred – what other techniques can you build out of that? Or am I missing basic moves other than the disconnecting and reconnecting?" 

"I think you're imagining this wrong somehow - uh, imagine someone incorporeal asked you what it was like being corporeal, was it just a lot of picking things up and putting them down, and, sure, you could describe it that way, but you wouldn't."

Melody bursts out laughing. 

“All right,” she says, “I’m clearly not getting the picture - it’ll help later on, when you’re not tired, if I can piggyback on your senses and actually have you demonstrate directly. In the meantime, what do you think is the most useful thing to describe, given that my job is apparently,” she rolls her eyes, “assessing whether you know what you’re doing, and how to best work with you if you stick around?”

She tugs at her sleeve again. “Though there’s an awful lot more than that I’d like to learn from this eventually. Crosschecking some theories I have about my own Gift, and how minds and memories and all that are put together. Anyway. Your turn?”

"I don't mind showing you stuff but obviously will be limited by availability and privacy of patients. I suppose I can demonstrate stupid college student pranks and that might be informative. Uh, do you want to know about my clinical experience, or what?"

“Oh - that’s fine. You can demo anything you like on me as long as it’s something you can put back after. And Gemma’s the one I usually practice with if I need to work through a toy example of something; we’ve known each other since we were tiny, she used to try out Healing techniques on me as well but at least she can use mice for that too. Student pranks! Stands to reason, we had our share, once I- no, later. Probably very informative. Anyway. Experience, sure, go on?”

"I spent nearly two decades in another plane, not the one I grew up in, where most of my patients were specifically suffering one of memory loss pursuant to the god of the dead putting them back but obfuscating some memories first because he thought this would improve them as people, or the effects of having been either attacked by the creations of, or captured and tortured and enslaved by, an evil god. There weren't very many other psychological problems around because I was on a paradise continent and Elves, the incarnate species there, are very well designed in most respects."

Melody blinks owlishly at her. "That sounds as though it'd be very interesting at first and then get rather repetitive. We have a little more variety than that." She props her chin in her hands and leans forward. "Honestly I'm now very curious about these Elves and the death god and a number of things, but that's more general – I've been trying for a long time to better understand how minds and memories work, and I've got my Sight but it's...only from one angle, if that makes sense?" 

"One angle and through a weird tapestryish lens, yeah. Uh, I didn't really find it repetitive? The problems were the same but the people were different and I'm glad I didn't need a new protocol every week, I was doing a lot of different stuff and liked the balance of novelty I had worked out."

Melody nods. "...Could be you're better suited to it. I'm, er, not a patient person by nature, I've worked on it a lot and I think I do all right, but dealing with something new every so often helps. Anyway, I think that's most of what I wanted to ask about for now. I don't have any doubts about your skill and I'll tell Aber that – want me to work on arranging living quarters for you? Probably can't do it by tonight but maybe tomorrow. I'll be doing it for myself as well, I was ahead on my circuit schedule anyway and we can shift things to cover it, seems more valuable to stay in Haven for a while and learn what I can from you." 

"I have a room but I suppose I could have a more conveniently located one or something?"

"You're in the old guest wing? The Healers' quarters are also just better in my opinion. You'd have a suite with multiple rooms, better to have people over if you like, and your own fireplace for heating, and could get your own furniture and decor if you wanted, and there's running water indoors – not in every room but the bathhouse is in the same building at least."