She'll follow that for a minute.

He stops and considers a rutted trail turning off the road for a minute, then seems to decide against and keeps following the road. 

She puts the earcuff down, checks back in after an hour.

Tadri is no longer on the road; he's in some woods, on foot now and leading his mount behind him along a narrow trail. At one point he glances down at a map with more notes scribbled in the same unrecognized script, glances up at a tree, frowns at the mark made in its bark, then keeps walking. 

That's weird. She checks in every few minutes.

Maybe half an hour later, one of her checks finds him stopped, waiting in a clearing. There's an old grown-over cottage; the roof is mostly gone, a sapling growing up through it. The door is gone but the doorway is still intact. 

Huh. She keeps watching, tapping her pen on her notepaper.

Tadri looks up, squinting at the angle of the sun, then back at the doorway. 

Maybe five minutes later, if Bella sticks around to watch that long, the doorway will start to glow. 

She doesn't watch that long but she does check back after two minutes and then watch that long. And once the doorway is glowing she is definitely watching.

The doorway glows brighter and then, about ten seconds later, the interior flashes white and then reverts to show, instead of the darkened interior of the cottage, a stone room lit by an unsupported clear globe of white light, and a man in nondescript brown robes (most definitely not Leareth) beckoning to Tadri. 

Tadri hesitates. 

The man says something in a language that isn't Valdemaran. 

Tadri's vision bobs as he nods, and then he glances back at his horse, drops the reins, unhooks and hefts his saddlebags, and walks toward the doorway. 

There's an indefinable boundary there, like a soap-bubble. The instant Tadri steps into it, the earcuff loses its connection with him. 

Okay then. Bella sets down the earcuff and does the rest of her research for the day in her room instead.

Late in the afternoon, there's a slightly frantic knock on her shields. :Bella?: 

Yes?

:I - need help - can you come do the calm thing?: 

Coming. It's closer range than talking. She jogs over, on the way lets Gemma know she might be late.

Vanyel isn't in his room. He's hiding down by the river, in a sort of cave-grotto overhung with vines, so that he's completely concealed from all but one angle. 

She calms him before she sees him. What happened?

Despite the calming, Vanyel still has to take a few deep breaths and visibly refocus before he can speak. "I...think I made a bad decision at some point today or yesterday but I don't know when or what I could've done differently." 

Okay. What results are convincing you of this?

"Well, I, um, somehow spent the last candlemark down here thinking about how gods are terrifying and awful and Leareth is terrifying and I, I can't even trust my Companion and it might not be safe to talk to her if what's on my mind is Valdemaran gods, so - she wasn't actually listening to interrupt me, and I was – pleasedon'tbemadatme – I was starting to actually seriously thinking about killing myself? I mean, I was making a mental list of - ways that might work..." 

I'm not mad at you. I'm never going to be mad at you for telling me so I can try to help instead of not telling me so I can't. Usually she interrupts you? How does that work?

"...She just talks to me?" He hugs himself. "If she can tell I'm getting upset, she asks me about it and points out where I'm jumping to just the worst case scenario or being unreasonable, or she just does this wordless reassurance thing. Sometimes she suggests I stop whatever I'm doing and go for a ride with her or, I don't know, take a bath or go visit Savil, just do something else that's distracting. If the way I was feeling made her nervous she would tell me to go talk to Lancir – before you came, I mean – if she was really worried she would tell Taver too." 

Vanyel puts his forehead down on his knees. "Bella, I miss her. I - just want to be able to talk to her about what's actually important." 

Do you want to... ask her if it would be okay to bring up something with her with me mediating, and get her advance permission to calm her down if she freaks out, maybe even her advance permission to fuzz out the memory - I could put it back later unless I made a mistake - if it looks like it's not recoverable?

"I can't tell if that's a good idea. It sounds really risky but - but I don't know what else to do. If you think it's worth it then it probably is?" 

It's my first idea, I could try to come up with more. You could try just telling her without letting her read you - out loud, maybe, if you don't have very fine control with the mindspeech - that you're finding it hard to talk to her about anything right now because of how she reacts when you drift into certain topics. You could hang on while I go find a Companion to talk to because I haven't done that yet because I'm not sure when is good to bother Lancir about which one to meet and should probably just ask somebody else, and we could see how far I get that way.