" - sure. What -"

Tapestry! 

The unraveled part doesn't look very different, except that the threads jury-rigged across it are a tiny bit sturdier-looking, and slightly more of the folded-up sections are active again.

The half that had previously been cut-and-stitched-and-patched is... The best way to describe it is that all the artificially imposed stitching has been picked apart and it's all been splayed out in a chaotic three-dimensional formation, vast quantities of it that must have been previously layered or buried underneath new patches. There are a lot of very small sections of weave that aren't attached to anything else next to them. They're not completely detached; when Melody goes in closer, he'll be able to see that there are still threads from the deeper layer underneath, linking them to the non-memory portions of Leareth's mind.

They are all sorts of colours and patterns and many of them are VERY BRIGHT relative to the older, less damaged memories. In a few spots, it's obvious from the pattern that two segments belong next to each other. 

Wow, that's a mess.

So the problem is - it's hard to linearize because there's so much - branching? Trying three different things from the same point?

"I think that's right. And - I can take a few shortcuts, by noticing similarities from this vantage point and using that to figure out how to arrange things, but we don't have cues about the order other than similarity and events weren't happening in a coherent causally-related order even at the time. Also - huh! What's this?" 

She goes in closer. It doesn't stand out that much from a distance, aside from being a bit duller and somehow flatter than the rest, but from a nearer vantage point, it's obvious that it isn't tapestry at all. It's...painted to look like it, but on a surface with a texture more like parchment or paper. It's very halfheartedly threaded to a different square of memory via the deeper layer. 

" - huh. Not experienced at all, you think? Inserted as - backfill?"

"Seems right. Those ones at least should be pretty easy to scoop out from the rest and - I don't know, maybe just block off somewhere in a corner for a bit – sorry, Leareth, what we're talking about is..." She explains all of what she's seeing to him in detail, and her interpretations. 

"I'd rather not poke too much at the content of the memories today," she says. "They're going to feel very fresh and vivid and it'll be more stressful for you than I think it needs to be. My inclination for right now is actually to block off as much of the emotional-associations layer as I can, and leave it like that for a few days to a week so you can get caught up on sleep and be readier for this, and then come back to it. Doing that is going to hit all of your emotions to some extent, though, not just negative ones related to flashbacks - is that all right?" 

"If you could cause me to have zero emotions at all for the next week that would be perfect," Leareth says wearily. "I am tired of them." 

"Does not having any emotions have any side effects we should look out for?"

"I'm not even going to try for zero emotions, but at the extent of block I'm aiming for, hmm... He's not going to be inclined to do much. He'll likely need prompting to eat and drink, let alone get out of bed, but you should make sure he does anyway. He's - going to have a really hard time noticing what he wants or prefers in a situation, let alone articulating it. If you try to ask him to make a decision he's going to stare blankly at you about it. This will probably go smoothest if you can arrange for things to happen predictably and with minimal effort on his part. Er, if it seems to be causing problems more worrying than that, call me over and I can undo it some." 

"We can work with that, I think." But he will have to reschedule visiting Vinyamar until Leareth is less vulnerable.

"All right. I'll get started – this is going to take a while."

Grab a bunch of cross-threads, tuck them around and under, knot them there so the pathway is blocked off. Repeat. She can hit mostly just threads coming from the scattered and too-bright squares of disconnected memory, but in order to do it in a reasonable length of time she has to be kind of messy. It won't be too hard to put it back the way it was, later, and then figure out something more precise. 

"Thank you."

Leareth waits for her to be done. It's pretty noticeable that she's doing something to his mind, and more forcefully than before, it's giving him a lot more of the visual-distortion side effects. Also he feels weird, more and more numb and distant and like nothing is quite real, but right now he will take that over rattling around constantly between panic and bursting into tears. 

He will hang out and keep Leareth company, maybe sing so he's less bored, check in on other things in Tol Eressëa, wish Melkor even deader.

Maitimo singing is - something. It's hard to tell what the something is because Leareth is mostly incapable of having emotions. It turns out that this also makes it hard to think. 

He can stop and see if the something that is not Maitimo singing has any better qualities?

Meh. Hard to tell. Probably he is more bored now? 

Well, then he'll sing, for his own sake.

I have been assuming, he says to Melody, that he is going to be a lot more reliant on people for the next fifty years or so and that it is appropriate to help him out as much as feasible? If there is actually some circumstance where that'd be counterproductive it'd be good to know.

:Hmm. I think if he tells you to bugger off and leave him alone, probably do that? I reckon he's less likely than, er, other people I've known to tell you to do that when actually he still needs a lot of help. It might be good eventually to encourage him to be independent in more ways, just so he can feel more like himself, but - six months or a year from now, not now. Also, wow, I am still trying to get used to the thing where Quendi think fifty years isn't that long. It's a very long time for humans. Maybe less so for Leareth in particular, I guess: 

That's the time period during which Quendi make most of their progress. I guess it might go faster for humans. 

:I certainly hope so! I mean, I guess I wouldn't put it past Leareth in particular to still be making progress decades from now, I do not get the sense he tends to - decide something is good enough and stop trying: She stands up. "I'm all done. Leareth, you doing all right over there?" 

"Hmm?" 

"Sorry, that's probably a hard question. Does it seem tolerable to feel this way for a week?" 

"...Yes." 

"I'll see you in a week then." :Tell me if anything is worrying you, all right?: She heads out.