"I turn into a giant invisible beast with tentacles all over. I can do the tentacles without turning all the way, though," she says, playfully manifesting one off her arm and tapping Donni on the shoulder with it. 

Donni lights up. She goes off into peals of laughter. "That's so unbelievable! Mardic, did you see, Mardic, look!: 

"Donni, love, I'm a little busy greeting our best friends who we haven't seen in almost a year. In case you hadn't noticed, they're here too." 

"I'm not sure what he'd get out of looking, anyway, since, invisible," Lucy points out. 

Donni shrugs and goes to hug Vanyel and Tylendel as well. She whispers something in Vanyel's ear that makes him turn bright red, and gives him a playful smack, then turns to Tylendel and grabs his shoulders, staring into his face at arms' length. "Never thought I'd get to know the answer to this, 'Lendel, but. What in all hells were you thinking?" 

Tylendel stares at her, slack-jawed, his cheeks going pale. Then he bursts into tears. 

Vanyel hugs him tightly. "'Lendel, it's all right – Donni, can you please not right now?" 

"I kind of had to spend a chunk of last night convincing him that fucking up that badly doesn't make him a horrible monster who doesn't deserve to be loved," Lucy murmurs quietly into Donni's ear. 

"...Oh gods they're going to be even more melodramatic than before, aren't they?" Donni keeps her voice discreetly low, at least. "Don't worry, I'll play nice. For now." 

"Just remember that if you make more work for me in calming them down, I'm not too full of feelings to put frogs in your bed." 

"...Duly noted." 

Mardic has his hand on Tylendel's shoulder; it looks like they might be taking their turn at a private Mindspeech conversation. Then Vanyel kisses Tylendel's forehead and steps back, only releasing his hand when he has to. 

"We're going for a walk," Mardic says. "Just 'Lendel and I. We'll be back soon." 

"Cool." I will not eavesdrop, I will not eavesdrop, even though my hearing is better than human and I could probably get away with it--actually. "Uh, if you're discussing anything you don't want heard, my hearing is about twice as good as a normal human's, so you should probably take that into account when estimating earshot." 

"Oh. Thanks for the warning." 

They head out. 

Vanyel stands for a moment with his hands loose at his sides, like he doesn't know what to do with them, then makes a beeline for Savil, who's relocated to the couch. Instead of sitting beside her, he folds up at her feet and puts his head on her knee. 

"--Sorry about the frogs thing, I thought it sounded cool but, uh, I don't actually know you well enough to know if it would sound playful or creepy." 

"...I put a toad in Mardic's bed," Donni says. "First week we were both here. I was mad because – well, he would say things and they were distracting and it felt like he had to be doing it on purpose. It, um, turns out that was just being lifebonded."  

"Maybe this is just my first experience of the phenomenon being Vanyel before I brought Tylendel back but I think I'm glad we don't have those where I'm from, losing people sucks but having a gaping hole in your brain just doesn't feel like an appropriate response."

The face Donni makes is of someone who is doing her best to listen politely to the new guest, but also would really rather not follow that line of thought.

"Eh," she says. "Upsides and downsides. We can do really cool magic. And if we die at the same time it's fine." 

"Tell me more about the magic, I haven't had a lot of opportunity to see the upsides." 

"Well, it lets us do concert work," Donni says brightly. "It wasn't easy to learn, we, er, have very different styles of doing magic, but once we got it it worked great. So if we're fighting together, we're a lot more than twice as strong as either of us alone. And we can coordinate really well, we both have a sense of what the other is doing." 

"They're nowhere near mastery of what's possible here," Savil jumps in. "Starwind and Moondance are lifebonded too, and they're incredible. They can go into full rapport and practically use each other's senses and Gifts interchangeably." She strokes Van's hair. "Hey, ke'chara, that's a thought – you and 'Lendel are both mages now."

"Oh, they are? Somehow that didn't come up..."

:They weren't going to bring it up casually with Van nearby: Savil sends privately. Vanyel...is looking kind of tense again, despite Savil's proximity. 

:Yeeeeah that makes sense.: Lucy goes over and also sits at Savil's feet and hugs Van.