"Yeah. I should have waited until morning and asked you. And Savil. I think there are a lot of things I should have done differently in the past couple days, I'm just not sure what they all were yet."

:I feel the same way: Yfandes edges closer to the pool so she can rest her muzzle on his shoulder. :I knew there was a problem, I wanted to help, and...I didn't know how, it felt like anything I might do would make it worse. So I left it alone. And probably made you feel like you were on your own to solve it: Another wash of guilt. :But...just for future, you don't need to wait until morning to talk to me. You can wake me with a Mindtouch anytime, that's what I'm here for: 

"Thanks, that's. I appreciate it." And the thought of how patient and kind she would be if he woke her up for something objectively frivolous fills him with pre-emptive embarrassment, but maybe sometime years and years from now he'll take her up on it.

"And, um, you don't need to feel guilty? If there was anything you could have done to fix it you would have. Just having you there being patient about it helped."

:...Thank you for being so understanding: There's a tangle of surprise and gratitude there. :I love you, Chosen. And, I think you're going to make a good Herald: 

"I really hope so. And, actually that's one of the things I don't know if I should have done differently. If I'm going to be a Herald I need to have some response to danger that isn't 'run screaming in the opposite direction'."

A chuckle. :Sometimes running is absolutely correct! In fact, I think Heralds tend not to do it enough. But, you’re right, often it isn’t the right response. You will have to learn to throw yourself toward danger when it’s needed. We’ll have plenty of chances to practice that here, once you’ve got some combat magic down: Nuzzle. :And I’ll be there with you, don’t forget that:

She settles back. :Anyway, you don’t need to worry about that yet. Let tomorrow be tomorrow-you’s job. Today your mission is to rest and recuperate: Another chuckle. :Something else most Heralds often fail at:  A playful lip at his hair. :So I hope I can train you to do better: 

A human putting their mouth on Bruce's hair would have been weird and disturbing, but coming from Yfandes it's merely a bit startling, and once he realizes what happened he almost chuckles. "Yeah. It's weird, but I think I'm actually more interested in learning combat magic now than I was before. Because I got reminded that even if I don't want to fight, I won't always have a choice. And . . . Yfandes, it was only luck that I didn't kill anybody. If I know what I'm doing, that gives me the option not to do anything worse than I have to. Does that make any sense?"

:It makes perfect sense to me, Chosen: 

A pause. :I love that about you. How much you don’t want to hurt anyone. I...won’t lie, it will make a Herald’s job harder for you. Because sometimes you won’t have a choice but to fight, hells, sometimes you may have to kill. But...I never want you to have to be hardened to it, if that makes sense?:

"Yeah. I don't know . . . well, a lot of things. About what it's like to fight, about how I'll react. I guess I'm going to learn a lot of things about myself, eventually." If he lives that long. The future doesn't seem real; all the expectations he had last year are gone and it feels hard to really believe in next year when he has so little idea what it will be like. "Better to know. It's always better to know. I just wish I could find out all at once and not . . . by having it happen."

:I know, love. The world can be cruel that way sometimes: She nudges at his shoulders, and points with her muzzle at a tray of food that's appeared on the stump-table by the courtyard. :One step at a time. For now, why don't you have breakfast?: 

Breakfast is not morbid and almost certainly won't reveal any hidden defects in his character and that makes it an excellent next step. And after that, unless something else turns out to be a higher priority, he's going to swim until he's pleasantly exhausted, with frequent pauses to center and ground and check his mental shields.

The next two days are mostly similar. Savil and Moondance both seek him out for conversations or meals together, and occasionally prompt him to check his shields, but he's getting a lot more reliable at shielding so the nagging becomes less frequent.

On the third day, over breakfast, Moondance asks to look at his mage-channels again, pronounces them fully healed, and Starwind asks if he feels up to their next lesson. 

Yes he is, he thinks, because wondering whether he's going to be able to do anything this time has gotten really nerve-wracking and he needs to just find out one way or the other already. What he says is, "Yes, that sounds good."

Starwind leads him to the Work Room and sits him down and has him do a quick trance-exercise. He's actually smiling slightly. "A barrier-shield, please," he says. 

He takes a deep breath, centers and grounds, and . . . pulls some magic into the beginning of a barrier shield. And promptly drops it on his metaphorical foot in pleased surprise and has to start over, but he's grinning as he does so.

Starwind, still showing the tiniest flicker of a fond smile, proceeds to walk Abras through all of the defensive magic they had previously covered, being quite patient about his minor fumbles and overall sloppiness. 

"Stand up," he says finally. "If you can recall how to gather the lightning... Just a little, please, no need to draw on the Heartstone yet." And he points firmly at a piece of wall. "You may direct it over there. The shields on this room are very strong, and if you do damage them, they can be set right easily." 

He's several days of rusty on his defensive magic, but the procedural memory starts coming back. And when Starwind asks him to throw lightning at the wall, he pulls the crackling power into his hands, steadies himself, and looks around the room to remember that he is here and now and not in danger. And then he throws the lightning against the shielded wall and laughs in relief at how much nothing happens.

"Very good, boy!" That's quite a lot of smile coming from Starwind of all people. "Try it again. A little stronger." 

Starwind has Abras do it about a dozen times, until he's almost too tired to stand and is starting to fumble it from sheer exhaustion, and then walks him out of the Work Room. "Good work today. I mean that." 

For once, Abras takes a compliment at face value, possibly because he's too tired to do anything else. "Thanks. Wow, lightning is a workout; I'm looking forward to lunch."

Yfandes picks him up, radiating pride, and lunch is waiting for them, along with Savil and Moondance. 

Abras eats heartily, and if he doesn't have more lessons after lunch he asks Yfandes if she'd like to go for a ride.

:You're all done for today! And, yes, I would love to stretch my legs: 

Then they can ride through the Vale and admire how gorgeous it is. 

"So I was thinking," he says after a while of this, "I should be starting lessons that aren't about magic sometime soon, right? Heralds need to know about law and economics and what's the right thing to do in various situations and stuff, and I had some of that before but it was all assuming I would eventually run a Holding and Heralds probably have a different mix of subjects."

(He came up with this thought during a period of "being stuck thinking about Tylendel and what his days had been like before they went to the Leshara estate" the previous day, but he has the question prepared already and can manage not to think too hard about how he got it.)

:I'm glad you asked, actually! Savil brought textbooks for those lessons and everything. We judged that your Gifts were more urgent to train, but I think you're at the point where that's no longer true – oh, you've got months more training to do, but you have basic control. So, if you think you have the stamina for more than one lesson per day now, I think Savil would be delighted if you asked her about it: 

"Oh good, I'll do that. I tend to wear out my magic faster than I get too tired to think, and it would be good to have other things to study in the afternoons." Because the alternative is searching for something to do before he can end up alone with his thoughts, or else lose a big chunk of time to being aware that 'Lendel is DEAD. Also possibly learning Herald stuff will make him feel like he has any idea what being a Herald will actually be like.