"Ugh, you're right – I didn't think of that, I'm sorry." He kicks the leg of his desk in irritation (not very hard). "I hate this. Having to think this way about everything." 

Yep, it's awful.

Vanyel takes another deep breath. "But...I'm glad you're here."

He nudges himself away from the thought that if Bella hadn't showed up then Leareth wouldn't have felt time-pressured or motivated to be honest, and he still wouldn't know anything about what Leareth thought of the gods, and then things would be fine. Well. Not fine. 'Lendel would still be dead, that part would be worse, and...it would probably still have come up eventually, when he had no one to go to for help. 

I'm glad I can help. Do you think you need any more examples? On any particular themes? I'm not sure what in specific you feel most urgent about working through with Yfandes.

Vanyel thinks silently for a while. 

"...Honestly," he says finally, "the thing I wanted was, I guess just her to say that I'm not insane if I think Leareth has a bit of a point? It might not justify what he's doing but – I don't know, is that crazy? To be a mortal and look at the gods and say that you think what they're doing makes the world worse, and if you could you'd want to change it?" 

Vanyel closes his eyes, brings his hands to his temples again. "It scares me, to think that. I don't know where you go, from thinking that. But I can't unthink it." He swallows. "Bella, I know you're - not supposed to, or don't feel comfortable, putting in what you think, but...do you think it's crazy to think that? 

I think ethics is like math.

A god - well, a sufficiently and relevantly powerful being of any kind - can have two things, and then pick up two more things, and do something along the way to add an extra thing, and have five. But two and two is four. A god can have four things, and give you two things, and disappear a thing along the way so you only have one. But four minus two is two. A god can threaten you into saying that one is larger than twelve. But one is smaller than twelve. A god can reach into your brain and mess with how you perceive things until you'd swear all day long till you were blue in the face that a square is a circle. But it isn't.

So no, I don't think it's crazy, though if I were operating a practice in Materia and you came to me and said that I'd probably have to recommend treating it anyway because the gods like to step on people for thinking stuff like that.

"...The gods in Materia go around reading people's thoughts?" 

Even the mortals in Materia go around reading people's thoughts! I'm not the only subtle artist. But usually just thinking doesn't get you in trouble if you don't overtly have an attitude about it.

Vanyel doesn't know how to explain why it feels so much worse to imagine a god reading his thoughts constantly than to imagine Savil or Yfandes doing it.

–Then again, the fact that Yfandes is the creation of a god makes those things more similar than he'd like, and now he's back down the path of being deeply disturbed that Companions exist and this is– well, Bella has a plan and they're going to try to fix it and he knows his feelings aren't always reflecting reality, but right now it feels like this is absolutely guaranteed to end in disaster.

Vanyel closes his eyes, takes some more deep breaths, focusing on calming himself down before he can get all the way to panicking again.

"That...helped," he says. "Thank you. But, I'm still really scared." 

There's a lot of scary stuff going on around you right now. What's topping the list?

"...I guess the most scary thing probably isn't going to happen," he admits. "But, I was starting to panic that, I don't know, the fact that I let Yfandes Choose me means that the god that made her has - access to me - and that it's inevitable now that I'll get...stepped on. Leareth hasn't, but he's, um, presumably never had a Companion." 

- let her? You had to let her?

Uh, I think Leareth is aware that you're a Herald and have a Companion, he probably knows common knowledge about Companions, and he... bothers talking to you in the dream, although I suppose it's possible he's doing that so he can aim a god at you.

"...I guess I don't know if I had to let her. I...wasn't really conscious at the time, I sort of remember a fragment of it but I didn't know what was happening until later."

He makes a face. "I think the gods are probably smarter than Leareth? Since they're gods and all. And that seems like a scheme where they'd have to be stupider than him for it to work." It's still a pretty terrifying thought, but it reminds him of another piece that's still just confusing, and confusion is better than terror.

"Bella, I don't understand why I can talk to him in the dream at all. Foresight doesn't normally work like that – er, I tried to research it, the only shared dreams I could find mention of were between lifebonded people who both had Mind-Gifts and I'm, um, really definitely not lifebonded to Leareth. And Leareth didn't do it, at least, he was surprised and didn't seem very prepared in the first couple of dreams. So...I think a god did it, probably? But I don't understand why. Especially because it happened a year later than the Foresight dream by itself happening."

Like "powerful", "smart" isn't a single thing. A Maia has hundreds of times more attentional capacity than a human and has to concentrate very hard with a lot of it to make facial expressions. They could have some area of mental weakness he can navigate.

Why the dream works oddly I really don't know. It can't be me, I wasn't here when it started, so it has to be running on the native structures somehow. A god could have done it but we don't know what information they based that choice on or what result they hope for from it or if their reasoning, whatever it was, is correct.

The comment about Maiar and facial expressions gets a weak chuckle from Vanyel, but he's quickly serious again. "Right. It's...really frustrating, having just this one piece of information and nothing else that we'd need to know to make sense of it. Maybe it's still better than not knowing anything..." 

Or it'll be worse for a while and better when we know more, perhaps.

Nod. "I don't know if I can make any more progress thinking about it now, maybe I should just go exercise or something and calm down and leave it alone until I've absorbed it a bit more." 

Okay. Ping me if you need me but maybe check the time before starting anything really fraught with Yfandes.

"Hmm? You mean not starting it too late or when you aren't available?" Vanyel is privately thinking that he's not sure he'll be brave enough to raise the matter with Yfandes at all for at least a couple of days. 

Ideally. I'll understand if the timing is out of your control.

"I'll, um, do my best to be careful of it." 

Wrap for the day?

Sounds good. 

Vanyel...would normally go run the obstacle course with Yfandes a few times, if he was feeling this badly shaken and wanted a distraction, but that so does not feel like an option right now. Instead he heads to one of the Work Rooms that he knows isn't in use, and practices the most exhausting combat magic he can afford to use indoors until he can barely stand. And then stumbles back to his room and topples onto his bed fully clothed and goes to sleep without needing help from Bella at all. 

She makes a note to ask him about that in the morning when she gets ready for bed and he still hasn't called her, but then she goes to sleep.

By breakfast the next day, Vanyel still hasn't talked to Yfandes about anything more substantive than a morning 'hello'. He's content to sit with Shavri, who's sad that her new friend was called home urgently, and listen to her talk his ear off about whatever she feels like.