Lancir just looks startled. "What?" 

"You just did stuff to their brains. I mean, it was just helping them remember stuff, I think, but people's minds are who they are and messing with that in any way is a big deal and putting someone in a position where if they did object to that it would be awkward to say so seems...bad. Like, imagine if you had a power that let you stick your hand in someone's chest, that'd be weird and big, right? And a person's brain is a lot more them than their body."

Lancir still seems more confused than anything. "...Vanyel, Tylendel, did either of you have any objections?"  

Tylendel shakes his head like he's mostly thinking about other things, but Vanyel stiffens. It's a while before he manages to speak, though. "I - would kind of - have preferred not?" he pushes out. He can't manage to say why, partly because saying words at all is a massive effort right now but mostly because he's not actually sure. Which makes it feel stupid to object, but Lucy was looking at them so supportively.

She hugs Vanyel and gives Lancir a pointed look. 

Lancir rubs his chin, nonplussed. "...Well, I can default to not doing it in future, then, and ask if I think it's particularly important." He rises. "Savil, call me if you think it'd be good to have me here again, otherwise I'll go catch Elspeth up on how it went. I'll leave it up to you when seems good for Mardic and Donni to come over." 

He leaves. 

Vanyel is giving Lucy a helpless "now what??" sort of look. 

"So, um...do you like music too?" Lucy asks Tylendel for lack of a better idea. "I know a bunch of songs from my world and I've been singing them but I haven't super had time to translate them..." 

"...What? Oh. Music, right. Music's, I like it. Van likes music - right, ashke?" Tylendel squeezes Vanyel again, his eyes focusing for a second, but he's still speaking like someone who isn't quite present in the room. 

"I always find it easier to appreciate a song when I know what it means, so I want to translate them. My repertoire is a bit eclectic, I think, but still nice. Um, I actually grew up in my other shape and wasn't able to be around people outside my own family much until I learned to shapeshift."

"I would really like helping you translate them!" Vanyel offers. 

"Sure, that sounds fun," Tylendel says absently.

"Okay! Um, do you have one in particular you'd like to start with, or should I pick." 

"Um, why don't you pick."

"Um, okay, how about," and she hums the first few bars of Amazing Grace. "It's called, how would I translate it, 'Awestriking Fortune?'"

"Oh, I liked that one." Vanyel also seems subdued, but at least he's making eye contact. 

She nods. "Getting it to scan will be harder, but roughly..." and then she sings each line of the first verse, followed by a rough translation. 

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. 

What awestriking fortune, what wondrous song

That saved a wretch like me

That I, from my misery, have been saved. 

I once was lost but now am found

Though I lost my way, I have found the path

Was blind, but now I see.

And the darkness has been lifted from my eyes." 

Vanyel listens attentively, hums along – and, just as she finishes, bursts into tears. 

Tylendel looks stricken. "Van, ashke, what - hey, it's all right, you don't have to cry..." It's very obvious that he has no idea how to respond. 

Lucy hugs him, looks at Tylendel, and jerks her head as if to say what are you waiting for, also hug him. 

Tylendel pulls Van into his arms again, but he's still giving Lucy a helpless look. A few seconds later, he reaches out with a Mindtouch. :Can you hear me this way?: 

:Yeah.: Her Mindspeak voice hasn't started sounding any less weird. :It's how I talked to Savil and Vanyel and Yfandes and Kellan at all before I learned Valdemaran.:

:Oh. Right: He tenses more; it's another reminder of the time when he wasn't there. :Lucy, I - it's all my fault. I hurt Van so much, it's my fault he's upset and– and I can't take that back, ever, that's just going to be forever now...: 

:...I'm going to tell you something I told Vanyel when we first met. So, I'm half not human, my father is some kind of extraplanar magic thing. My mom had me and my twin like that because her life kinda sucked and she wanted to give something special to her children. But the thing is we came out weird. I wasn't humanoid at all, I was an invisible tentacled creature with a bajillion legs who grew way too fast. We kept me fed by buying cows a lot, but Grandfather was handling it and then he died and my mom and my brother had to handle that but the people who were selling cows didn't like them much, they hadn't liked Grandfather much but with him they had at least had an ongoing business relationship. So the cow supply dwindled precipitously, and I got hungry. I got so hungry it got hard to think. And I asked if that was normal, if you were hungry enough, and my mom said yes and she was worried but she was worried for me. Because when a human gets so hungry they can't think at all, they just pass out. 

I don't pass out. Or not entirely. My higher functions stop working and my body is operated entirely by instincts that do nothing except look for food. And don't notice that people aren't. 

When you woke up, you found out you fucked up and got dead for a year. When I woke up, I found out I ate my mother. 

Someday I'm gonna figure out how to get her back. And probably she'll be mad at me. But she'll still love me, because when we fuck up horribly, the people we love still love us, and we don't become monsters.:

...Well, that's horrifying. And gross. And - gah - it's worse, than what he did, but...Lucy isn't, Lucy cares – she found Van, his Van, and she decided to find Tylendel's ashes and bring him back because even with what he'd done Vanyel still wanted him and Vanyel was broken without him and, and– and he doesn't even know what, it's all tangled puzzle pieces that don't fit together. 

:You're not a monster: he pushes out. :You - weren't you, when that happened. It was just your body. I...made a choice: It's tempting to pretend it somehow wasn't his fault, that it was all just instinct after Gala died, but that isn't true. He remembers choosing.