"All right."

"I'm going to go pretty slowly," Melody says. "Mostly for my own benefit, it's tricky to see what's going on, but it should also give you a chance to tell me if something feels bad. Please do that, all right?" 

She waits for him to acknowledge her before moving on. "All right. Any strong emotions you've had in the last day or so that it makes sense to start with?" 

Nod. "Yesterday, when I - realized. I tried to ask myself how I felt about it, and I was...very scared." Just remembering is enough to bring a flicker of it back 

"...Good, good, I see it, you don't need to keep focusing on it. You can distract yourself if you want, that might help – Maitimo, hmm, if you wanted to have some kind of unrelated neutral conversation with him while I do this, that might make it easier." 

" - sure." All of his first ideas for conversation topics are probably a terrible idea to bring up - "Who will have taken over for you at home? Is it a country you run or just an army? How do successive versions end up in charge of it?"

...It is startlingly hard to drag up context of what was happening back in Velgarth, it feels like it was decades ago. Leareth doesn't think it's because any of the memories are actually missing, it's just that he's had no reason to think about it in...it probably was years for him, given the time dilation, right.

"I have not always run the same country or organization over successive lifetimes," he says. "I usually try to maintain them in a position where they can remain stable if I am suddenly killed, since the gods had a habit of making that happen."

(Mindhealing is happening to him - the sensory-distortion effects are pretty subtle, Melody's clearly careful and experienced with it, but it's still very recognizable. This time he can try to parse it as good; it's pretty strong evidence he's still experiencing actual reality.)

"The current one was closer to an army, though it takes a great deal of additional logistics to maintain one," he adds. "This plan was a long time in the making, so I had set up a number of side organizations that maintained certain resources..." 

Leareth can talk slowly and haltingly about things in Velgarth, answer questions, until Melody is done. It takes her about half an hour and he's limp with exhaustion by the end of it.

"Sorry about that," she says, noticing. "It does take a lot out of you, and I bet you don't have much energy to work with right now. If you feel like taking a nap, that's not a bad idea, it'll give this some time to settle in." She looks over at Maitimo. "Is there any particular holdup on taking him to Lórien to get the memory part fixed?" 

"No, we could leave right away."

"Leareth? Is that something you're feeling ready for?" 

Remembering what happened seems good. The fact that it has to be done by a god, much less so. It's helpful that his emotional reactions have just been muted a lot and also he's too tired to react much anyway, because otherwise there would definitely be panic happening about the god part.

(He makes his thoughts public for Maitimo, it seems important to communicate and he's not sure he can get past the instinctive flinch part to say it out loud.) 

"That doesn't look like a 'definitely ready' to me," Melody says, sounding a bit concerned. 

"There's no hurry. At least not on our end."

This requires a decision, doesn't it. Leareth does not at all trust himself to make any decisions yet, which means probably the default is he stays here doing nothing until he decides dealing with a god is better than boredom. 

" - I guess that seems fine."

It's probably inconvenient for Maitimo's plans that Leareth is scared enough of interacting with gods to delay something that is obviously going to help, but hopefully if it's a significant problem then Maitimo will tell him.

"Thank you," he tells Melody before lying down. Falling asleep, fortunately, is not going to require a decision. He doesn't even manage to get the blankets over himself before he's out. 

"Yeah. Thank you."

"You're welcome." Melody switches to Mindspeech to avoid disturbing Leareth. :I'm a little worried he's going to - try to do things too fast, push himself too hard, just expect too much of himself in general. It's...a really different shape of that thing than I'm used to, I don't think it's that he's going to feel guilty or ashamed about not helping or something. It's more – I get the sense he's not used to needing to be gentle with himself, he's still calibrated on the way his mind was before, and he was someone with a lot of - mental control, I guess. Which is part of why he's coping as well as he is, I'm sure, but...he's going to have less to work with than he expects, now, and I sort of don't know how to communicate that to him in a way that'll get him to slow down: 

Hmmm.

I think you're right. He was thinking something earlier about - it making sense that I'd spend time on this because it'll be useful to the Quendi when he's back to normal. Which - I mean, it will, but that's not why, at all, but I'm trying to avoid - claims to a more intimate relationship than he remembers having, that seems unfair to him - also I sort of wonder if anything is complicated by the fact we're technically holding him prisoner. He agrees that we ought to, of course, and it's not as if anyone considers us to have a grievance against him for the Gates into Valinor - I guess the Valar might - 

- we should not take him to Lórien until I get that clarified -

:Yes. That seems extremely important to do: Melody frowns. :Does he have any idea how to have friends? Not strategic alliances with people, just, friends: 

I don't think so.

:Seems not ideal: 

I guess it does. He mentioned that the Velgarth gods did not - want anyone to be close to him, they'd get killed off.

Melody takes a slow controlled breath through her nose, lets it out. :I am really, really tired of the stupid gods messing with my patients: 

...does that come up a lot?

:...I guess it was mostly just Vanyel. And I should ask him before I tell you more. But–: her fingers tighten over a fistful of her dress, :–I hate it. I hate how hard it is to do anything about it. Guess I don't like feeling - stuck, that way: