Belrun decides against a garlicky trout in favor of a lemony trout and also hooks her ankle around his under the table.

This is giving Leareth feelings. Mostly very confusing feelings about how he wants to touch more parts of her. He asks what her childhood in Haven was like instead. "Other than the nightmare horses," he specifies. 

"Honestly even setting aside the nightmare horses there was a lot I didn't like about it. Bards everywhere, a lot of people my age couldn't read, the winters were frigid and our house was drafty and for some reason there were not a normal number of contractors around and they were hard to hire so we couldn't get it fixed, and there's this hideously loud bell that goes off whenever a Herald dies, which you'd think would encourage them to find some way to get them killed less often and did not. It wasn't tortuous but I didn't exactly miss it but for the threat of getting Chosen."

"Huh, does Haven have a shortage of contractors?" I should tell Vanyel, is the thing he's thinking, but - that is a very high context conversation and not one to have in a public restaurant. 

"I don't know if it's actually a problem to do with how many of them there are, I wasn't mostly the one trying to hire them. It's possible they merely have a byzantine permitting process, or something, and Rana wasn't sufficiently on top of things to manage it - she's a scatterbrain sometimes."

"I suppose that is less of a difficulty when one teaches small children, since they are probably even more scatterbrained." Leareth is trying to listen but keeps getting distracted by the fact that Belrun's face is pretty. Probably he'll get used to it at some point? Right? 

She thinks this is funny. She thinks he is also very nice to look at but has more practice thinking people are nice to look at.

They can eat the rest of their dinner and talk about various random things and then - Leareth isn't actually sure what the plan is next. 

The plan is she takes his hand again, and they go out into the street where it's getting on sunset, and she puts her arms around his neck and stands up on tiptoes and kisses him.

...So many feelings SO MANY FEELINGS and one of them is that Leareth wants to pick her up and twirl her around for some reason so he does. So this is why people like kissing so much. He had honestly never bothered to wonder about it that hard. 

She wasn't expecting that but it's fun! She expects that she is not an especially good kisser but someone who discovered what it was like to have a crush on somebody yesterday cannot reasonably be disappointed so she is attempting not to dwell on it.

Leareth is definitely not disappointed! At all! He's probably also a bad kisser but honestly even if both of them are bad kissers he's not sure this is making the experience worse for either of them. It seems kind of maximally good. 

...Is standing around kissing outside a restaurant a done thing? Leareth realizes he's paid very little attention to whether this gets people frowned at. 

They should probably tone it down a little.

"Uh," she says, pausing to catch her breath, "my dorm has the single bed but the guest room at Rana's I used to live in has a double - she'll tease but she won't mind -"

"If you are sure?" Leareth is also a bit out of breath but in a weirdly good way. "I mean. Yes. I would like that." He hopes Belrun is aware that he has no idea what he's doing, but if they made it work for kissing they can probably make it work for, well, everything else. 

"I don't have a very specific agenda but I don't want to let go of you and don't expect that to change in the next twelve candlemarks."

"I also do not feel any urge to let go of you." What is the least letting-go-of-each-other they can manage and still walk? 

With some effort they can walk down the street with her arm twined around his and her head on his shoulder!

Which is kind of impractical but practicality is, for once, not Leareth's top concern. 

(He makes a halfhearted attempt to think about whether he should pass a message or something, but he just spoke to some of his people up north earlier today, they're not going to be expecting him back tonight, it'll be fine - he'll just have to un-distract himself long enough to do some discreet wards because he's pretty sure that while he is kissing Belrun he would miss any other magic happening nearby up to and including a Gate on the door to her room.) 

Rana gives them a knowing look but nothing more when Belrun tugs Leareth into the guest room, which still has a bookshelf in it but otherwise no longer looks much like Belrun lives there. And then she renders him unable to notice adjacent Gates.

Fortunately there are no suspicious Gates with assassins, because he stays distracted for a while. 

Eventually Leareth finds himself snuggling her and very sleepy and halfheartedly trying to check the wards one last time...

Belrun has no such tasks she needs to be doing and just wraps herself around him cozily and falls asleep.

And some time later they will both find themselves in a howling snowstorm, facing a pass carved through a very large mountain, Belrun standing a ways back from Leareth with a group of other silent dream figures and wearing lots of magic jewelry and sturdy winter clothing that keeps her cozy.

Leareth does not seem at all surprised. "Herald Vanyel," he says. 

A silver-haired figure clad in travel-worn Herald's Whites steps out at the mouth of the pass. "Leareth." He starts walking forward.

Huh. Lucid dream. She's too far back to hear the conversation and doesn't know its contents via Dream Subtext either. Weird setting for a lucid dream and she can't turn it into a nice beach even by concentrating but at least she's not as cold as it looks like she should be. Oh well.

She starts scaling the nearest cliff-face, propping herself up where it's slippery or sheer with Fetching that's just slightly too weak to hoist herself outright off the ground. The dream is allowing her Fetching to work normally, and at normal strength - though it's far too dangerous a hobby to entertain while fully awake - it does suffice to let her to, from a sufficient height, glide in a pleasing fashion.

Swoop!