"I want to learn it anyway! The music is so beautiful. And the language is beautiful. I don't even care if it works. But maybe it will and that'd be a bonus." 

They have the funniest customs around their language. They'll hold debates about whether to go through with a sound change and months-long series of debates over inventing new words for things that are as lovely as possible. She sings the healing song aloud. Her accent in Quenya is good, and she can carry a tune all right though her pitch isn't flawless.

Vanyel listens attentively and scribbles down a few notes on the words. "I might have to ask you again about the words," he admits. "I'm not as quick on that part." 

When he's done helping Shavri put everything away, he smiles and waves to her and then wanders off, singing under his breath and looking possibly happier than Bella has ever seen him. 

Aww.

Bella resumes her usual routine.

At their session the next day, Vanyel excitedly tells her that he thinks he succeeded at some lucid dreaming practice – he still isn't having nightmares, but he did have a normal dream, managed to realize it was a dream, and managed to play around a bit with trying to fly before he woke himself up. 

"That's great!"

Vanyel looks so proud of himself. "I'm going to keep practicing - I don't know when the block will probably wear off but I want to be ready to try doing without it." 

Other than that, things are going pretty well. Vanyel is definitely noticing that, now that he's going on a few weeks of consistent sleep, he's less prone to mood swings even when stressful things happen. He's getting better at noticing the earlier stages of overwhelm and giving himself short breaks. 

He's not miserable all the time. 

Vanyel seems a bit surprised when he notes this. "...I'm not. That...didn't seem possible before. Things are still really hard a lot of the time, I'm still really sad a lot, but... There are actually a bunch of moments where I'm not miserable. Yfandes keeps pointing it out so I notice." 

He frowns. "I...could probably tell Lancir I'm up for taking on more duties. It's been a while since I had to cancel on something or make Savil cover for me - er, not having to do Mindspeech relay every day helps a lot, and Lancir didn't give me anything else to replace it so I'm actually doing less than before." He chews his lip for a while. "But, I don't know. There was a thing you said at the beginning about - I don't remember it exactly, but that your goal wasn't to point me at more responsibilities. I could do more things. But I don't know if I want to, yet." He looks kind of ashamed of this fact, but he still says it. 

I don't remember exactly what I said either but it's correct that my goal isn't to point you at more responsibilities. It might be your eventual goal, or one of them, to point you at more responsibilities, and that's okay if so. But I don't think I can do a good job starting from the perspective of seeing you as a resource instead of an end in yourself. Not being miserable all the time is good and it could be fragile and you haven't had it that long and it would make sense to want to feel more secure in it before stressing the system.

"...I think that's what I meant," Vanyel agrees. "But you said it better. I don't - it feels like it might not take very much, to make things worse again." Pause. "Yfandes agrees. So...I guess if I start having free time and I'm not wasting it being miserable, I can do, I don't know, fun things. Like practice the elf song!" He lights up again. "It's so pretty. I wanted to check again with you that I'm saying the Quenya words properly, though, that part is way harder than getting the notes right." 

Sure. Let's do that outside of these sessions, though, correcting your accent doesn't need to be particularly private.

Vanyel agrees that this makes sense. 

I'm a little curious about how you seem to be contrasting fun and usefulness. The song could be useful; if it works it does healing. Does that make it less fun?

"...No?" He stops to think about it. "If anything it's better, I mean, it makes it feel worth doing. I don't think I'd even mind if I got it working and then Lancir wanted me to heal people a lot. I like singing." 

Do you like any of the other things that are part of your usual task rotation, or could be if your reliability were up?

Vanyel does not seem to have ever asked himself that question before, and has to take a while to think about it. 

"I don't like any of it as much as I like singing," he admits finally. "I guess doing magic is fun sometimes, but the routine work is really repetitive. It's less boring to do with Savil but it usually doesn't make sense to try to have both of us free at the same time, and it goes faster in concert but not twice as fast. I like doing Farsight checks except for the part where I push it too hard and get a headache half the time – they're not in the normal rotation, I just get called in for urgent things sometimes. I, um, I guess lessons are all right? If I'm having a good day. I used to hate them most of the time because the trainees are loud and keeping them on task is stressful, and I don't feel very qualified for it."

He shrugs. "I think not feeling like I'm any good at something makes it a lot less enjoyable, because then I'm stressed the whole time that I'll mess up." 

I think it's common to prefer things that you are or feel good at, and common to prefer to have company. What's making the Farsight checks push too far?

“That I’m checking places far away? I have a pretty good range and then I can boost it further with node-energy, that’s why they ask me.”

They know it causes headaches, that's a known tradeoff?

"I mean, obviously people know pushing Gifts hard causes headaches in general." Vanyel looks sheepish. "I might, um, not usually say anything about it." 

They might call you in less if they had full information. You're useful for lots of things, and if some applications make you worse at others that might be information they'd want, to say nothing of headaches being unpleasant.

Shrug. "I can still do things with a headache, if they're not magic, or a different kind of magic." 

Doesn't having a headache make you worse at everything?

"Does it?" Vanyel doesn't seem to have ever considered this point. 

I'm worse at everything with a headache! They're distracting and put me in a bad mood!

"But I–" Vanyel breaks off, shakes his head irritably. "All right, fine, Yfandes thinks that having a headache obviously puts me in a bad mood and she's not sure how I managed to miss this fact."