I'm done eating now.

They they can walk over! They end up at another L-shaped stone building on the other side of a courtyard from the main House of Healing. 

There are three free rooms that Bella can choose from – Melody will end up in one of the other two but she claims not to be fussy. The building is visibly newer, with high ceilings and large windows that offer lots of natural light. The suites themselves differ from the guest rooms in being larger, having separate bedrooms with doors, each containing their own fireplace and (cold water only) pump in a wall alcove, and having clearly been lived in long-term and modified by past inhabitants. One of the has the bedroom divided into two smaller bedrooms, one of which, judging by the wallpaper, used to belong to a small child. Another has the main sitting area divided up with a partial wall and curtain to make a cubicle-like office with a desk in it. The third is at the end of the wing, and has its own exterior door opening onto a terrace, which has been fenced off with wickerwork and still has some potted plants in it. 

"What's your preference?" Melody asks once they've quickly looked at all three. "Oh – this one at the end is furthest from the shared kitchen, it's in the middle. You're welcome to have all your meals in the dining hall but you can also keep some food in there and do your own cooking. Bathhouse is shared but you don't have to go outside to another building, it's at the far end of the hall." 

I like the one with the porch but might want to steal the desk.

"You're welcome to it – I might take that one then and use the tinyroom for storage, I don't like working cooped up. Anyway, if you want more or different furniture, there's a market we can go visit at some point, if you don't like any of the previous furniture you can leave it in the common area by the kitchen and someone will want it. Anyway I'd like to go make a pot of tea and then we can sit out on your new porch and chat for a bit – er, let me know when you'd like to head off for your other tasks." 

Will do. They're currently not pinned down to a schedule but I should follow up if I haven't been bothered about them by lunchtime.

While the tea brews Bella swipes the desk and positions it in her new room.

Melody carries out a tea tray and some wicker chairs from her room to the porch. "Good. First up – Lancir says you have some very thorough oath of secrecy. I'm pretty curious to hear the full version of that." 

Bella recites her oath of confidentiality - no leaking information, slander exception, confirmations and denials at patient request allowed.

"...And this is something that everyone where you come from, including, say, people in positions of power, agree is a reasonable standard of professional ethics, and you wouldn't get pressured on it?" 

For people who decide to be therapists, yes. But if someone in a position of power wanted someone's head ransacked they would just, uh, hire a subtle artist who was not a therapist, probably.

"Goodness. Does that happen often?" Melody grimaces. "I mean, honestly it's one thing if the Queen wants to hire some outKingdom spy or, gods forbid, order a Herald to use their Thoughtsensing that way. It's another thing if they want to ask me after the fact to hand over things someone told me in the expectation it'd be private, or be a backchannel about which Heralds need time off if they haven't said it's all right. Might hold more weight if it were something official instead of what I've decided on for myself, you know?" 

I don't know how common it is in practice. I agree it's better to have the principle established before it comes up.

Melody goes quiet for a minute, clearly thinking. 

"...Anyway. I wanted you to demonstrate some things. First, if you're comfortable with it, you could look at my mind with your senses – I'll unshield for you and I'm really not self-conscious about anything in there, plus I know what it ought to look like to my own Sight – and then I can read you to piggyback along?" 

Sure.

Bella reorganizes her shielding to accommodate this and goes and has a look at the synaesthetic mess. I don't have much of a bird's eye view so tell me what you want me to zoom in on.

:You really don't, do you?: Melody seems to have decided Mindspeech is simpler. :Hmm – my relationship with family? I keep that pretty cordoned off from my work life. I'm thinking about my children now: 

Bella rummages for the place where Melody's concentration points; she finds the kids, turns up all their names and images.

Melody has three kids, all of them grown – and quite independent, she left town when the youngest was still only sixteen. Her eldest daughter lives in their original hometown of Kettlesmith, married to a butcher; Melody passes through once a year and spends a week living in her spare-room. Her youngest is out in Traderest making carpets and tapestries. They've all done well for themselves. Melody's feelings about it are mostly straightforward; fondness, pride, satisfaction, she misses them occasionally but it's not like they need her, anymore, that was never how things ought to be, in her opinion children need to make their own way in the world. She's glad to have set a good example for them, given how their father–

:Ooh, I'm curious about this piece: Melody sends. :Haven't seen it through someone else's eyes before: 

Okay, uh, stop me if you need to and I'm going to bail if I see anything about your sex life in here.

Given how their father...

Melody married when she was nineteen, to a young man who had met her passing through on his father's trade-caravan route. They had known each other for three months at the wedding and Melody was a month pregnant with his child. Everyone was pretty surprised about this decision, she was normally so hardheaded about everything, but Melody couldn't see the issue. She didn't have to marry for money or stability; she was Gifted and, at this point, actually knew what Gift she had and that it was a lot more precious to the Kingdom than the village Healer's original guess of 'probably projective Empathy?' So, no reason not to marry for love, and she did love him. 

Her new husband, it soon proved, was a drunkard and a gambler. She learned to hide her coin from him, but other than being hopeless with money or holding down any kind of paid work, he wasn't a bad man. He was sweet to her and gentle with their baby daughter and she loved him, and if she had to work and do everything around the house, well, that was the price to be paid for an ill-advised impulse decision. It was pretty clear within a few years that they were a terrible match in every way other than loving each other, but still, her babies adored their silly joking Papa and she wasn't about to divorce him until they were grown. She could make it work until then. It was a lot of work but even so. 

When he died of a fever about ten years later, it...certainly wasn't something she'd expected or hoped for in any way, and she wept for her children and for him, but not, really, for herself. She knew she would manage fine, and she did. 

Now, there's a faint wistfulness in the memories, but the remaining grief is very abstract. It's sad when people die, period. Melody...isn't particularly more upset that her husband is dead than about anyone else. It doesn't seem like it would help, so what's the point?

(If there is anything about their sex life, Melody is keeping it carefully folded away from the main threads.) 

Do you have anything for birth control in this world?

:There's a herb. It's moderately effective. Tricky to grow, so it's pricey and hard to get in smaller towns – I could've gotten some if I tried but I clearly wasn't trying. There's timing it with your cycles, of course, women use that to space out their children but it's not totally reliable. Also if you know a Healer they can terminate a pregnancy at an early stage and most of them will if you ask: 

...mmm.

Melody drops her concentration on that area. "That's very interesting," she says out loud, smiling. "It is messier, but I reckon you're seeing more than I do – my Sight is some kind of simplified representation, I think. I can pick up affect shifts with receptive Empathy but it's...I have to interpret for myself exactly how it maps to the structures? Same with Thoughtsensing to get the verbal thoughts or ride on memories. I can do that, but it slows me down." 

The smile grows to a grin. "So. Care to show me what you can do with it? I'm happy to let you demonstrate just about anything you like on me, as long as you can put it back after, it's not horrifically unpleasant, and you give me a general sense of what to expect first." 

Um, there is always some risk that I will mess up and some risk that if I mess up that I will not be able to undo it, but it's small in both cases. There's a whole genre of agnosia, subtle artists who are not very nice people sometimes use them as pranks? If you want to try being colorblind or something like that.

"That's fascinating – I don't think I can do that. I can, oh, make somebody think of a concept or word or specific memory in response to a trigger, once on a dare when I was seventeen I did a redirect on Gemma where she'd get a silly song from our childhood stuck in her head every time she saw her mentor at the House of Healing. If I really push I can sort of blend senses, make it so someone smells colours or whichever, but not with any precision. Anyway, I'll absolutely try it, go on." 

Oh, I can also do synaesthesia! It's fun and for reasons I do not understand the same person will think a number smells the same, or whatever, every time between applications of a particular correspondence. Uh, colorblindness in three, two, one - And now Melody has color agnosia.