Relieved sigh. “...Er, do you think you could help me take a nap now? The coffee thing helped but I think I might crash when it wears off. Yfandes can wake me up so I don’t nap too long and confuse my body about bedtime.”

Yeah, I can do that if this is a good time for a nap.

"I don't have anything else for two candlemarks but I'm, um, seeing Tran again tonight, so I don't want to be really tired then."

Okay. Say when.

Vanyel puts his notes away and lays back in the bed and pulls the covers over himself. "Ready." 

And sleep.

Bella goes with her copy of the notes in Pax and mulls over the whole Leareth business for a bit, then sighs and resumes working on the interplanar earcuff.

Vanyel asks her for help sleeping at the usual time, and doesn't say anything more to her then about Leareth. 

The next day, though, he finds her at breakfast. :Bella, I think I do maybe want to try the blocking Foresight thing. If you don't mind and you have time today?: 

I can slot you in. I don't want to keep trying to find where the dreams come through for more than a candlemark at a time though. After lunch?

"Sure, then's fine," he says out loud. "Thank you." He glances around for Shavri, but she seems to be busy talking to an older trainee. 

After lunch she comes by and roots around and asks him to try various ways of focusing on how the dreams feel but doesn't get anywhere within a candlemark.

Sigh, oh well, he's unlikely to have the dream tonight either. Vanyel does ask Bella if she's thought of any new questions for Leareth, though. If not he maybe wants to go ahead and send a letter. 

I guess I'd like to know if he has any ideas for less cumbersome means of communication. He probably knows you're a Mindspeaker with good range even if we don't want to mention the earcuff.

:Right, that's a good one to add, thank you: Vanyel doesn't have a convenient way to keep notes but he'll ask Yfandes to make sure he doesn't forget. :I'm going to try to send it tonight, um, let me know if you end up wanting to add anything more: 

Will do.

If Bella doesn't add anything more, the Van goes ahead and sends the letter that night. It's not hard to get it slipped in with one of the fast Herald-couriers to the furthest town before the northern border, the outer letter specifying the Valdemaran Guard-post, and then with a request for the Guard courier who makes trips to Westmark to deliver it onward. Vanyel had to look up that part, but it shouldn't be particularly suspicious. Most things aren't suspicious if a Herald does them, it's awfully convenient. 

Bella works her slightly intimidating number of jobs. Puts off teaching anyone wizardry just yet.

The number of emergencies at the House of Healing is not unreasonable and no more-surprising emergencies happen. Whether or not they're making progress on the dream-block, Vanyel doesn't get the dream again, which is good because his sleep remains undisturbed for the next week. 

Nine days after the initial dream, seven days after the letter, a frantic Mindtouch wakes her. :Bella help dream again and he knows things I have no idea how he found out can you come over PLEASE?: 

Coming! Boots, her own notepaper, and she's running.

Again, Vanyel's sleeping mind holds an icy expanse, an army more like set-props than reality, and a Leareth.

"Um, sorry," Vanyel says in the dream. "I missed most of that, er, can you say it again?" 

"Very well," Leareth says. "I have learned some things about your visitor – this Bella – that I very much wish I had known in our previous conversation, because I would have prioritized it very differently. Knowing what I do now, I think it considerably more likely, though of course I am not certain, that you have already informed her of my existence. If you have, and assuming you passed on the contents of our earlier conversation, I would extend her an apology. I had been very much approaching it from the direction of seeking evidence that she was worth speaking to at all – now, I think that perhaps I should have been the one trying to demonstrate to her my trustworthiness. I certainly ought not to have assumed that I could defeat her in a fight, nor hypothetically threatened to do so." 

Leareth bows his head, longer and deeper than a nod. "A person who escaped one world where reality itself does not allow experiments to work," the emphasis hints at how distasteful he finds this, "and who in twenty years advanced the study of alien magic so far – and who, in addition to those already-rare traits of curiosity and ambition, cares about the wellbeing of strangers – is somebody who I wish to know. I would not say that my earlier self was wrong to make the assumptions that I did; they were assumptions that have held almost without exception for the last two millennia. However, it appears that for once I am to be pleasantly surprised." 

I - have not been super discreet about that but am alarmed by the implied reach of his intel.

:That's why I called you!: Even in the cold stillness of the dream, Vanyel feels panicky. :He shouldn't know that much. Or, I mean, he hasn't given any evidence of it before, I knew he had spies in Haven but this would have to be someone within the Heralds...or Healers...: Or who had been in the dining hall when they talked, does anyone actually check that people there are Healers or Heralds. 

Focus. :Should I ask how he learned that? I don't know if that's a terrible idea. He might not answer anyway: 

Yeah - I think even if you barely knew me it'd be in your scope of priorities to want to know -

"Leareth, how do you know that?" Vanyel steps forward in the dreamscape, folds his arms. "Actually, my question is: how do you know that now but you didn't know it last time?"