"No, no, don't worry about it. You seemed to have added a new association to something else, is all – thinking about it a lot will do that. Is it troubling you at all? I could try to strip out the secondary part, but it'll a little tricky so if it's fine I'll leave it be."

"I don't think you need to mess with it. I should take a minute to think about that calming loop, though." It would be magic messing with his emotions, but he already has a giant hole in him messing with his emotions, and maybe if they cancel out that's better than having just one thing. "Can you tell me more about how it would work?"

"Hmm. To start, a lot of what's troubling you right now would be a perfectly normal fear-response, if you were actually in a fight or under attack. But your mind has learned to associate a lot of commonplace situations with a threat, or associates them to a particular bad memory. Which is exhausting and will keep you on edge. It's not feasible to do a redirect for every object or place that bothers you, but I can give you a way to tamp down the fear a bit more easily once it happens. Basically, what I'll have you do is pick a calming scene - maybe a nice evening you spent with Yfandes in k'Treva, as an example - and sort of do a trance-exercise focusing on it, and I'll use my Gift to push that more deeply into your mind. Then we'll try to give you a link to it, like the phrase 'I notice I'm upset' or just the feeling of noticing. If it works as intended, then next time something hits you that way and you're feeling scared or overwhelmed, you can try reaching for it to calm yourself down. Does that make sense?" 

"So it won't do anything unless I decide the fear is irrational and trigger it on purpose? Or will it happen every time I'm upset?"

"It should be voluntary. I don't want it setting off and distracting you in an actual fight."

"Good, I was worried about that too." And if it's voluntary then it would be pretty foolish of him not to take it, when he could just choose not to use it if it turns out he'd rather not. "And you think it would help me stay aware of where I am and keep doing things? It won't be much good if I'm hallucinating I'm in k'Treva instead of hallucinating something else."

"No, no, it's not going to be nearly deep enough for that. I'll be building on a mental image, not something you're actually seeing; it shouldn't be possible to confuse with the place itself. And the reason you get confused like that sometimes is that when you're scared enough, your mind really etches in whatever was happening at the time. I'm not doing the same thing at all." 

"Then it sounds like it would make me a lot more functional. And you'd be able to take it out again if it turned out I needed to not have it for some reason, right?"

"Of course. It's harder to take it off than to place it, so I wouldn't want to put it in on a whim, but it's definitely possible. Oh, and it'll only last a few months on its own anyway, if I don't reinforce it. Faster if you never use it. So if it's not helping after all, you can just stop using it and wait for it to fade out." 

"Oh! In that case I should definitely do it." It would be pretty cowardly not to, since it's clearly not dangerous; if he's going to learn to only be scared when being scared is reasonable he should start now. Thinking that thought doesn't make him not nervous, but it makes him determined to go ahead anyway.

"Good." Lancir smiles at him. "Why don't you take a minute to pick out a nice calm scene? Doesn't have to be the specific one I mentioned. Ideally it's something where just thinking of it, you'll feel yourself relax a little, do you know what I mean?" 

"Yeah, okay." Yfandes and k'Treva are good suggestions . . . .

He recalls one of the nights he slept next to Yfandes in the hammock. It was cloudless that night, and a new moon, and in the gaps between the trees he could see an entire sky full of stars, shining serene and untouchable above them. He remembers Yfandes' love, and the peace of the silent night, and nods. "I've chosen something," he murmurs.

"Very good. Now hold onto that, and – oh, warning, I'm going to use my Gift at moderate strength so you may get some of the changes to your vision again, and it'll be for a longer period. If that part by itself ends up making you nervous, please tell me, because we really don't want to cement in 'feeling anxious' right now, right, we want the opposite." 

Abras nods, distantly, still concentrating. "I'll try not to worry about it."

Lancir waits a bit, then says "Now," and the world goes soft around the edges. 

Don't think about not being able to see clearly. Don't think about having his mind modified. Think about the memory, and calm, and peace and quiet surrounded by friends.

It last about thirty seconds and then lets up. "Doing all right?" Lancir asks. 

"Yeah, it's back to normal." And now there's a lever in his brain he could theoretically pull and he's not sure how, and he kind of wants to try it immediately specifically because he's worried it will be some flavor of awful and the uncertainty is worse than any plausible outcome. "How do I use it?"

"Hey, we're getting there. For the next part, I do need you to - think about something upsetting, because that's the state we want you to be able to transition to toward the calm-loop. I'll prompt you through it; I'm going to tell you to notice what you're feeling, and then to think of your calming scene, and I'll use my Gift enough to form a link between those two thoughts. Hmm. What would you call the emotion you're feeling, if you're walking around in Haven and something - reminds you of it?" 

Oh right he forgot that part. "Um, it feels like--noticing something that was always there in the background, like when you're reading a book and you realize you've been hungry for a couple hours? Except the thing I'm noticing"--and it is not within his capacity to describe it without noticing it--"is that, it's not okay, the world is wrong, I'm wrong, something is broken and it can't ever be fixed--" he runs out of words at the same time his throat closes up.

"Thank you. Good. Notice what you're feeling right now." World goes gooey again. "And - now, think of the calm scene." 

He fights to drag his mind away from the pain and loss. The wrongness in the world is a fact, yes, but Yfandes is a fact too, k'Treva is a fact, the stars are real and unchangeable and still out there.

And the memory itself is - not exactly clearer, but brighter than it was before, it has a pull to it, drawing him into the peace-and-stillness-and-Yfandes'-love. 

The corners of the room snap back into place. "That's all," Lancir says. "Hopefully. How are you feeling?" 

"Weirdly nice." He wonders if the memory is now more, or less, true to his actual experience of the moment it's a memory of. "Thank you."