:That seems like a good sign?: Vanyel takes a deep breath, and then a few steps toward Leareth, who's been hanging back while the rest of them talk.

"Hey," he says. "It's really good to see you - I'm glad you're doing better. I, um – it must be kind of scary to come here." Because of the whole god part, but it seems rude and probably ill-advised to say that out loud in Lórien's domain. "And, er, I apologize again about the compulsions, and that I did such a sloppy job."

"Herald Vanyel." Leareth is having confusing emotions about this interaction. He isn't even sure what they are. "It seemed necessary to come here. Only another of the gods of Arda can undo what a god did in the first place. Melody said she was unable to fix the memory alterations."

Public thought: Maitimo help why is he almost crying just from seeing Vanyel's face, this makes no sense.

Maybe in Angband he had some feelings about having dragged Vanyel into this? And then left it all on his shoulders? Sometimes people recovering from an awful experience are also known to cry for no reason at all, though. No one's going to hold it against him.

"That makes sense," Vanyel is saying. "Lórien's - pretty all right, actually. He fixed my Gate problem! Along with a bunch of other things, um, I - got injured a bit before you pulled me in, I couldn't do magic very well right away." 

...Oh no that must have been really, really bad. Leareth had, in hindsight, been counting on Vanyel a lot – it must have been awful for Maitimo if Vanyel arrived, Leareth was instantly captured, and Vanyel couldn't even do magic to keep the war effort going. He's suddenly a lot more surprised that they still won. 

"I am glad to hear that," he says neutrally. Leareth is absolutely not going to cry in front of Vanyel, whether or not anyone would hold it against him, because...Vanyel has been carrying far too much for far too long, and he's used to thinking of Leareth as arbitrarily perfect and powerful, he's used to being able to put weight on that, and, and–

"I am tired from the journey and need to rest," Leareth says stiffly, and looks around for a place to flee to. 

There's a clump of trees with a flat mossy spot to set up camp right on his left barely ten feet away, shielded from this road by a thick line of shrubs.

Then Leareth will head straight there, at a dignified walk so it seems less to Vanyel like he's running away, and once he's behind the shrubs he sits down on the moss and curls up in a ball and cries. Everything feels very overwhelming and loud and that doesn't make much sense either but, there it is.

(Also he's aware that this place is magic, and he can't sense it at all, and that fact is making him feel blind and deaf and helpless.) 

"If your schedule permits waiting for Lórien to see Leareth," he says to Vanyel, "I think he might want to accompany you around Valinor. And he will have to do it now, because they've said once he gets his magic back he isn't allowed. I don't have a good guess about how long it'll be, though."

"Of course I can–" Vanyel stops himself. Turns to Randi. "I...would like to stay for that. I know you need to head back, and - that it'd help to have me around, but..." 

"Vanyel." Randi takes a step toward him, grips his shoulder. "We managed for eighteen months without you. And you just saved the entire world over here. You deserve a break. If you wanted to stay longer than a year, I'd - miss you, honestly, but we're not at war and we're not going to be, and the support and exchange of knowledge we're getting from the Quendi - which you earned us - now should more than cancel out not having you there for mage-work. Which is good, we've known for years that we need to be less dependent on Herald-Mages, and on you in particular." 

Would you like me to come over? he asks Leareth.

Yes. Please. 

He walks behind the hedges. They grow helpfully taller. 

Do you want me to hold you?

Probably that would help, even though Leareth is still confused about why it's the kind of thing that helps. 

He can hold him. 

If it were Maitimo it would be - very frightening, to not be able to form the kind of interpersonal relationship he was accustomed to forming, and to have to instead rely on a different kind, while not even able to reason about whether this kind is trustworthy. 

That - seems like the thing, yes - and it is very frightening - and clearly it isn’t useful to keep being scared about it, that’s not productive, and Leareth is used to being able to, just, set aside fear when it’s obvious not strategically useful to feel it, and right now he can’t. Which is its whole own level of terrifying.

Leareth continues leaving his train of thought public for Maitimo because that’s a lot easier than putting it into words. Especially when he’s still crying, for no discernible reason, it’s very inconvenient how that gets in the way of communicating.

I understand that having emotions gets in the way of being reassuring to Vanyel or acting like the person you normally act like but I don't think it's getting in the way of your larger strategic goals here? We have lots of time, nothing's time-sensitive, we're not going to think less of you.

Maybe? Unfortunately it's not like he can reason it through in a way he could actually trust, so - probably the simplest and most productive thing to do here is to take Maitimo's word for it. 

...being held is nice. If Leareth can let go of worrying about the past or the future and going in circles trying to track his strategic considerations, this...is a pretty good moment, actually. 

He can sit there and hold him and sing, then. 

Eventually he decides it'd be nicer if there were a berry bush right behind him with blackberries, and what do you know, there is. Would Leareth like some blackberries.

...is that magic? Leareth can't tell and he's pretty alarmed about being in a garden that is made of god-magic and can - read Maitimo's mind to figure out what he wants? If it can do that it can read his mind and he really doesn't want it doing that. 

Lórien configures itself to be what it thinks its inhabitants need, yeah, that is why there was a perfect site for a camp hidden by a high wall of bushes right when Leareth decided he needed to run away. I don't know very much about how it works. I'm sorry. If you want to just get the memories done right away and leave immediately we can do that.

Unfortunately doing that requires talking to Lórien, who is a god, and Leareth's current feeling about that is panic.

And then lots of layers of additional frustration - he should just be able to do it, he already decided this was the best next step, it's not ideal and he doesn't want to but he's done a lot of things in his life that he wished he didn't have do, when they were required next steps–

–unfortunately the part of him actually in control of his actions is busy panicking. 

There are songs for calming down, if you'd like me to sing one? He'd been reluctant to suggest it because it seems like maybe adding mind control to the mix here is a bad idea but Leareth should at least know his options.

Well, Leareth would obviously calm down on purpose if he could. He's used to having that kind of control internally. He wouldn't want Lórien doing it to him, but...he's pretty sure Maitimo is tracking what actually makes sense here, pragmatically, and - Maitimo cares about the same goals Leareth does, and that makes it feel - not that different from just deciding to calm down on his own. So that seems good. 

All right, calming song.