"Sounds good! You're safe near the cliffs, right?" They are not cliffs one could reasonably fall off accidentally.

"I see no reason why that would be a problem but if you would prefer I go with an escort I could do that." 

"I think it's probably good for you to be able to do things independently. Do call if you run into any problems, though."

"All right, I will." Leareth heads out, first to find some food, then to go walk around outside. 

Tol Eressëa is lit to Quendi standards but not human ones, which means it's mostly very hard to see more than a few feet away. There are beautiful stone paths connecting a few hundred stone buildings, many of them with lit windows. There are Quendi sweeping, doing construction, singing. There are cliffs, and near the cliffs one can hear the roar of the ocean below.

Leareth keeps instinctively attempting to make a mage-light and then obviously this doesn't work and it gives him a jolt of alarm every time even though it's not surprising. He walks carefully and stays well away from the cliffs, but he eventually finds a place to sit and listen to the ocean. 

It's very peaceful. Not one of his Angband memories contains anything close to 'sitting by cliffs under the stars, listening to the waves'. 

Once Leareth is doing a little bit better he is going to ask Vanyel for that Gate to Beleriand.

By the end of that week it seems clear that Leareth is doing a little better. He keeps copious records of what he does during the day, spends time every morning reviewing the previous day. A couple of days after the first session with Melody he asks about seeing her again, it's easier to go through the memories when she's there. She gets another hundred of the speeches lined up, it goes a lot faster this time, and then helps him go through a few. (It is honestly very repetitive, which makes it annoying that the emotions attached to each run are just as strong and he needs lots of hugs and singing from Maitimo to get through it at all.) 

He has a couple of especially bad nightmares that have him waking up in a panic, and a few other times that something random in his surroundings sets it off, and there are still far too many things that result in tears but at least he can start to map out why.

He spends a lot of time walking around under the stars. 

Vanyel gets a message out to Velgarth about the records; the answer he gets back at the time is yes they can find something, but it's going to take a while. 

"Is it an all right time for me to go visit Beleriand for a day?"

"Yes, of course. ...I assume Vanyel is going to do the Gate for you, but is he accompanying you or staying here? It is fine with me if he goes but I would want to arrange something very distracting for the day." Vanyel is the only other person he is even slightly comfortable asking to come sing to him if he starts panicking about something stupid. 

"No, he's staying."

"All right. Yes, you can go whenever you wish then." He'll ask Vanyel if he wants to go for a walk around the city or something. 

And he will ask for his Gate.

Vanyel can do the Gate! It's not even especially hard. He's gotten very good at efficient Gates. 

Off he goes.

Vinyamar is beautiful and coming along very nicely. He walks through the streets, talks to people, marvels at things. Relays updates from Valinor and from Tol Eressëa. 


Looks in his head for Findekáno.

Building a dock. 

He has had weeks to compose this in his head but still feels oddly tongue-tied. Pauses a moment. 

Hey. Can we talk? I - want to apologize and I need some advice.

He hits a piece of wood with a hammer. 

I didn't realize you were on this side of the ocean.

Just for a day. I asked Vanyel to Gate me. If I didn't have to ask I'd have come - sooner, I think, though not as soon as I should have. One of the things I want to apologize for.

What else?

I'm sorry that I put you in a position of - choosing whether to defend me to your family when we both knew I was not going to defend you to mine.  I'm sorry about the dynamic where the worse my father behaves the more definitively I side with him because the more I feel like will be lost if he decides he can't rely on me. I'm sorry that I - kept assuring you, not quite out loud in words I don't think but certainly in lots of other ways, that it wasn't that bad, it felt like it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy and I could pretend hard enough that it was fine that it would be but I think, in hindsight, it was very very bad, and should by rights have gotten much worse, and relying on - my general level of apparent concern would actually have made you and other people more wrong about that. I'm sorry that when Leareth arrived I gave you the barest shadow of a clue about what was going on, I had very good reasons but I always have very good reasons and I don't expect it to do very much good to sift through the reasons by goodness. It must've hurt. I'm sorry that - I keep trying to pull away as soon as I think I'm strong enough to function without you. You wouldn't do it to me and I don't - believe the thing I'd need to believe, to stop having the impulse, to stop believing deep down that someday there'll be no choice, but it's an awful thing about me, I know that, and I'm scared all the time that some day you'll take me at face value about it and leave, only I know I could just go and talk to you, and that's not fair either, right, that I can always just go and talk to you, that it's less than half the time you can talk to me even though you're usually right and I can always, always, go and talk to you. - I visited Lórien and I thought about it and I'm sorry for that too, that wasn't fair, and I don't know if it makes it better or worse that thinking about it just left me more sure that I can't, not until we have no choice, maybe not even then - I'm sorry for trying to run away and I'm sorry I keep coming back, it's pathetic, I know that, you'd have the courage of your convictions, if you ever did this -

How long did you work on that -

Couple of weeks.

I have a place up the quarry hill. He sends a picture. I can come by when I'm done.

- okay. Thank you. I -