Bella waits.

"Huh," Vanyel says finally. "She says there are ripples, something is different, it's...muddier. The main path hasn't changed but it feels, the word she used was 'unstable'. She does think that in the present, it still looks like me talking to him has us on the best path, but she seemed less sure of it than before." 

And that's the only feature of the best path she can see? Whether you talk to him, not what you say or anything?

"I don't know." Pause. "That's all she can see so far. ...I mean, she thinks it's important specifically that I listen to him. She says she might be able to find out more if she takes some time tonight to go deeper." 

I'd be curious what she finds out.

"Me too. She says she needs some uninterrupted time but she'll do it tonight." 

Okay. So other things we have on the docket are - She consults her notes. Lucid dreaming, figuring out ways you can get routine unmarked space from Yfandes, I wanted to check in with how you slept last night, general working through giant-hole-in-you related issues...

"I slept fine, I think? I...would've liked to sleep longer, but I told 'Fandes to make sure I didn't miss Mindspeech relay again. It was at least eight candlemarks. I guess I'm still just really tired." 

In general what things are you trading sleep off for? Relay shifts, and what else tends to keep you up or get you up?

"Relay would be the usual first thing in the morning, I guess. Tran and I would sometimes spar together beforehand, at dawn – that wasn't an issue before, I was really bad at sleeping so I was usually awake anyway. I think I can just tell him I'd rather do other times though. Um, the most common reason I stay up late is when I lose track of time reading, or being over at Savil's suite talking about mage-work." 

Vanyel frowns. "I do end up awake a bunch of the night every time I talk to Leareth. But I sort of don't know what else to do there. If I wait until morning to take notes and talk it over with Yfandes then I forget half the details." 

I don't suppose you could have him send you a letter.

"...What, Leareth? I never thought of that. I could ask, I guess. Probably doesn't get me out of the dreams though." 

No, but it would get you the details written down without panicking about it. You could also try asking him to sleep at a different time, though I guess that's a sort of a vulnerable suggestion.

Nod. "Maybe I'll ask." He looks very unsure of it. "Anyway, the dream isn't that often, so even if stays exactly the same I'll get enough sleep most of the time. And, um..." he hesitates for a bit, "if it really is only once a month that I sleep badly, I could just take leave that day. I probably take a lot more than one day off a month right now if you add it up, it's just all scattered at random." 

If you get the other sources of bad sleep cut way down, yeah, one day off a month isn't much.

Nod. "I... Hmm. Yfandes thinks I probably don't need more than eight candlemarks of sleep permanently, but that right now it would be good if I could just sleep as much as my body wants. It would be kind of unwieldy to go to bed a lot earlier, though, and I can't move Mindspeech relay later. I...guess...I could ask Tran about doing it on his own for a week or something so I could sleep in. And then I can get a sense of how much I actually sleep when it's not constrained by other things, and calibrate my bedtime from that. What do you think?" 

Not a bad idea. Especially if the earcuff works, which I mean to ask about today.

"Oh, right! That...could help a lot. If we can rotate through the Heralds who have moderate Mindspeech, you could give Tran days off too – hmm, and if the range is three hundred miles, that's actually further than Tran's Mindspeech range. Or mine, unless I boost it crazy hard with node-energy, which I shouldn't do unless it's an emergency. If the earcuff works for us, we could change a lot about how we do the relay, especially, um, if you can make more of them..." 

He trails off. "I'm, er, not really the person in charge of that, though. Anyway," he thinks for a moment, and grimaces, "space without Yfandes in my head. I, um..." His shoulders tense. "I had a whole conversation with her about it yesterday." 

I can make more but it trades off against other things. How did the conversation go?

"She agrees that it seems like something I need." Long pause. "Mornings weren't good, but if I don't have Mindspeech relay every day it could be better. But, um..." Another pause. "She agrees it's important and good but she's also scared? I mean, she agrees that the way she responds to my feelings sometimes is counterproductive. And she does trust me to, er, make good choices on my own. Just, I guess she has feelings about it." 

Does she have other people to talk to?

"I mean, there are the other Companions. She can't talk to them if it's related to Leareth, though, because she's, er, keeping that a secret from everyone except Taver. She says Taver has good advice on a lot of things, but he's...less humanlike...than most of the Companions. And even the other Companions who she's friends with don't always get it. Because, um, the things that happened that were really hard for her aren't normal, no one else's Chosen tried to kill themselves multiple times in the first few weeks, that's not how it's supposed to go and...I guess the other Companions don't know what to say." 

And there isn't a setup for Companions to talk to anyone else?

"...No? Why would there be?" 

...you don't think it's weird that there's a species of people who can only talk to each other and one human apiece? If you walk up to another person's Companion and just talk they understand you, right?