Her smile vanishes. She goes rigid. "...Sorry, Nightsun, I think I had better go." :Ke'chara, let's go back to the ekele and discuss this in private: She's already unfreezing herself, clambering out of the pool and seizing her robe. 

Oh crap, he ruined his aunt's nice morning. And people keep taking his nightmare seriously instead of telling him to get over himself. And Nightsun, which whom he has only arguably interacted for all of three seconds, probably thinks he's a fathead. He mumbles an apology in Nightsun's general direction and follows Savil.

:Stop it, ke'chara: Yfandes sort of smacks him, mentally, in a way that doesn't hurt but does jolt him out of his thoughts. :I think it's worth taking seriously even if it turns out to be nothing. And Savil cares about you. Of course she wants to know what's going on. Anyway, Nightsun's a scout and he'll be headed out anyway in the next candlemark, you didn't interrupt too much: 

:I know she cares. I'm just catching myself halfway hoping it turns out to be something important so I'm not wasting people's time and that's stupid, I should be hoping it's nothing. Anyway, thanks for the reality check.:

They reach the ekele, and Savil pulls Abras into the ground-floor room while Yfandes hovers just outside. She rolls down the screen that serves as a door, closes her eyes and casts a couple of different privacy-spells, then perches on the edge of the bed and beckons for him to join her.

"All right. Tell me about the dream." 

He was really hoping to have Yfandes here for this but at least she's nearby. He gets through the whole story again, making it through the part about Tylendel by reciting his own previous words and trying to forget that they mean anything. His voice still shakes during that part.

Savil reaches out and grips his hand. 

:It's always hard to tell if something is a Foresight dream: she admits when he's done. :But the fact that it's always the same, that it feels more vivid than a normal dream, and that Yfandes thinks it seems different, is...indicative: 

It doesn't seem like she has any idea what to say next. 

"Is there anything I can do about it? To avert it, or prepare for it, or learn more about it?"

"I'm sure there is. And we'll get to that. I want to tell Starwind and Moondance as well, see what they make of it." She holds out her arms. "Abras, you don't have to do this alone. I'm going to be here and I'm going to help. I promise." 

Abras accepts the hug. "Thanks. I know you will. I'll do my best to--well, to figure out what needs doing. Which reminds me, I was going to ask if you had a longer-term lesson plan worked out."

"I've been working on one – I'm glad you're asking. Starwind has a lesson plan for mage-techniques, you should ask him for that, but it's tricky because your mix of Gifts is so unusual – I'm not sure we can even train all of them here, though the weaker Gifts won't be nearly as much of an issue, mage-gift and Thoughtsensing were the big ones. Hmm – have you noticed any accidental use of Fetching or Farsight?" 

"No, I haven't. I, ah, haven't tried doing them on purpose either. Is it likely to be safe to try them on my own?"

"Farsight, I can't see any issue. Fetching – hmm, you might throw things around, but it's not as strong a Gift as some of the others. You could do it in a secluded area if you were worried."

She sits back on the bed. "Hmm. Then there's Healing and Bardic. I have no idea what to do there. I guess there are Healers here, if you end up having any time free. You've only got a tiny bit of each, though, they're not the first priority." 

"I'll at least practice Farsight, then." Knowing him, if he tried to practice Fetching on his own he would end up dropping a rock on his head. "And I do want to learn to Heal eventually, just because--well, because Healing is really interesting. And there might be a situation when I'm the closest thing to a Healer available in a hurry. Bardic I'm not sure I have the nonmagical talents to make it worthwhile."

"Might be useful to see if you can train it even with humming or speaking – it's a lot like Projective Empathy, you know, except that most people don't shield against it. Anyway, if you'd like to help me work through some lesson goals for the next few months, I...wasn't expecting it but I would be delighted." 

"I would. I like having plans." And maybe thinking about the next few months will make it feel like the future extends beyond today and maybe tomorrow.

"I can understand that. Very good." She pats his shoulder. "Abras, you're doing really well. You know that, right?" 

Abras is deeply unsure what to do with that question and settles on "Thanks" again.

Savil, for her part, doesn't seem to know what to do with the conversation from that point onward. She hugs him again. "Let's check in about the lesson plan tomorrow?"

The next days and weeks fall into a routine. Starwind covers more varieties of offensive magic – controlled fireballs, daggers of invisible force, force-nets to trap opponents, snare-spells that can be laid in advance. There are some more, well, domestic uses of magic as well: lights, heat-spells, illusions. He teaches Abras to lay wards around a campground that will detect approaching magic, and starts coaching him on the complex but very efficient weather-barrier technique that he taught Savil thirty years earlier.

Savil is covering some of the non-magical Heraldic education with him as well, the roles a Herald plays on circuit, lots of examples to review of past gnarly legal cases. He learns about circuit patterns and how the Mindspeech relay and Farsight checkpoints work. Some review of ethics. A surprising number of lessons cover material he's already at least glimpsed before in books from his grandfather's library. 

At the end of a few weeks, after some check-ins in the interim, Savil asks him over breakfast if he wants to go over the plan for his Gifts other than mage-gift. 

Wards and traps are interesting. Illusions are a lot of fiddly work, but when he's in the right state of mind they're the fun kind of fiddly work, and they don't take as much power as other things so he can practice them until his brain goes numb if he likes.

"Yes, definitely," he says of the lesson plan. "I've tried Farsight on my own a couple times but haven't gotten anything to happen." His attempts so far have mostly consisted of standing with his eyes shut, dropping a rock on the ground, and trying to see which way up it landed. 

"Hmm." Savil sits back and thinks. "I'm sure there's a usual curriculum for Farsight, back home, I just don't know it – never had a student with that Gift. Curious if we can make progress on our own, though. Visualization helps with a lot of Gifts? For Fetching, for example, I know the advice is to visualize the rock moving before you can actually get it to work, and try it different ways – imagine moving it with your hand, with your foot, with a third invisible hand growing out of you, with a net..." 

(Savil knows the Fetching curriculum because of Tylendel. She does not bring up this fact.)

"Might be worth trying a lot of weird exercises for Farsight too," she offers. "Like, hmm - imagine a third eyeball growing out of your forehead on a stalk, and moving it past, oh, the door-screen?" She gestures at the ekele. "We could try an exercise where you visualize moving an eyeball in there, and I've moved some objects around, and you try to tell me where they are?" 

"Sure, that sounds worth a try. Want to try it now or talk more first?"

"Eh, if you're done eating might as well try it." Savil shrugs. "I'm making up the curriculum as I go this time." 

"I guess we'll both learn something, then." He stands up and moves to just outside the entrance to the ekele.