Vanyel has to think about that for a minute. "I guess I like most kinds of fish. Especially this one dish where they roll it in breadcrumbs. Um, and pastries with things inside them..."

They can talk about foods and then whatever else comes up until Savil knocks on the door. 

DZ goes to let her in. "Hello, ma'am."

:Hi. I hope I didn't worry you too much earlier.:

"No, no. I'm glad you told me." Savil goes straight to Van, who started to stand up while DZ was opening the door, and hugs him. "Doing all right, ke'chara?" 

"Better now. I had a really long nap– um, careful, don't step on my food." 

Deskyl fetches his plate and hands it to DZ, who settles herself at Deskyl's feet, on the other side from where Van was sitting. :Yep. We - actually - do you want to explain it, or should I?:

"I, um, I think probably you should explain it?" Vanyel is moderately tense again, though it might not be noticeable to someone using only their eyes and not Deskyl's Force-sense. 

:All right.: She starts the calming effect up again and gestures for them to sit. :When I was done talking to you I went to see what he was up to - if there's two things I want to do it's better for me to do them together, longer stretches of rest are more useful for me. We got lunch, but I noticed something had upset him, and I asked about it, and - he wanted me to know, but he was having trouble telling me, so I suggested that I could look instead. I can be pretty gentle about that when I'm trying, and I had him under a calming effect, but it still didn't go well - I stopped before I could see much, it was clear I was going to hurt him if I kept going. I did see enough to get an idea of the effects, though, even if I don't know what happened, and I think I know more about what that is than you guys do, and a little more about what can be done about it - not much, still, but I think a better picture of what's happening and why will help him cope at least.:

After a brief unspoken back-and-forth, Savil takes the other chair and Vanyel sits on the floor again, half between her and Deskyl. 

"...I see," Savil says at the end. She reaches out to squeeze Vanyel's shoulder. "I guess we know what's wrong and we don't – I mean, we know what caused it, but at least part of his situation is kind of unprecedented." The worst part. "So even Lancir wasn't sure how it would affect him. It sounds like that's the part you know more about." 

:Yeah. I mentioned earlier that he had a panic attack, that seems like an unfamiliar concept - when someone has been through something very traumatic, they learn from that, not the way you learn math, but the way you learn what it smells like in a particular place before it's going to rain once you've been there a while. This often isn't conscious knowledge - if you've ever just had a feeling like it was going to rain later, it's like that, except instead of rain, it's being in terrifying life-threatening danger, with everything that means physically, whether the person is right about being in danger or not. Like if - what's something that's dangerous but not too scary, I'm not sure what examples are safe to use.:

"Falling out of a tree?" Vanyel suggests. "I know heights in general are scary for a lot of people, but it doesn't really bother me." 

She grins and nods at him. :Like if you were up a tree and scared of falling, your heart would start beating fast and you might have trouble breathing or moving very much, or get shaky, or have trouble thinking about anything but what might happen in the next couple of minutes - even though just being in a tree doesn't hurt you, if you think you're in danger or about to get hurt, your body will try to get ready to deal with that, to fight or run away or at least minimize the injury. It's an emergency response, and it takes a lot of energy and isn't very nice to experience - it doesn't matter, usually, that it isn't nice to experience, that's not what it's for, it's for keeping you from dying.:

"Right." Savil is nodding along. "If you're actually in a fight, it's pretty useful – well, not panicking completely, but a certain amount of it. And I've known Heralds who had a bad experience out in the field, and would respond that way to anything that startled them for a while, even if it wasn't dangerous. Does that sound like the kind of thing?" 

"Mmhmm." :Exactly. Because it's not something you think through, it's something that just happens on its own - we say that it's the person's body doing it, rather than them doing it themselves. Their bodies learned that being startled meant that they were about to be attacked, and it took some experience with being startled and not being attacked for their bodies to realize that it doesn't always mean that.:

:And then some people get unlucky, and do get attacked after being startled a few times in a row, and it sticks, and some people get unluckier than that, and their bodies decide that that danger response itself hurts, and any time they're startled they have a chance of picking up some new thing that will set them off.:

"That makes sense. ...I guess I'd hoped it would get better for Van, with more time passing. I mean, it's gotten a little better, but - more than that." 

"I might've just gotten better at doing things anyway," Vanyel admits. "It's less often that it's bad enough I end up hiding in my room the rest of the day." 

:Yeah. There's - kind of a lot of things in there that can set you off. I wouldn't be surprised if this is happening basically every day. The good news is that if you are picking up more, knowing what's going on should slow that way down and maybe stop it altogether.:

"Mmm." Vanyel thinks. "I don't think there's anything that wasn't upsetting before and is now. Just, there were a lot of things. Um, Lancir does redirects so it's easier for me to deal with - things that remind me - and that sort of works, but it doesn't make it never happen." 

:Yeah, I saw those. I can do something a little similar that might work better, once I know your language, but I'll want to experiment with it very carefully, if at all; I can't undo it.:

Vanyel shivers. "That sounds kind of scary." 

:Yeah. I think there's a chance it'll work more smoothly and reliably, and I should be able to learn to undo it, but if you'd rather not try it, I won't.:

"How does it work?" 

:It's called a mind trick, and it adds beliefs - usually it's used for very short duration kinds of things, like 'I have permission to be here' or 'you want to give me a good deal on this trade'. With longer term things - if I made you believe that the sky was yellow, you could go out and look at it and see that it was blue and believe that, and maybe you'd think it must have been yellow some other day that you're forgetting about, or maybe you'd wonder why you'd been confused about it, but most people wouldn't still believe it was yellow - some people do actually disbelieve their senses in a case like that but it's very rare. For something less straightforward it's more likely you'd keep believing what I'd told you - if I told you that being up a tree was safe, you wouldn't still believe that after you fell out of one, and probably not after you saw someone else fall, but you might come up with your own reasons to think it was safe until then. And if you never fell and never saw someone fall - if being up trees was in fact safe - you'd probably just believe it forever.:

"Right, that makes sense. So if there was something that some part of me thinks is dangerous, like - walking by the river - but actually isn't, then you doing that would cancel out the wrong belief I have now?" 

"Mmhmm." :Assuming it works, yeah. Whatever's at the core of your problem is pretty strong, and mind tricks can fail.:

Vanyel nods, tensing up a little.