"Sure."

Her lab has a lot of eggs, painted with numbers, on lazy susans so she can rotate them to within range of Healing-Sight easily from wherever she puts her chair; a fire at the end of the room where she puts a pot of water on the boil for dispatching any eggs she's done with and sterilizing the racks on which the eggs sit; and a lot of notebooks, shelved under the counters where the lazy susans rest. She has a new delivery of eggs today on the steps to the building with her name on it and picks that up on the way in and paints numbers and invisibly Fetches tiny things from egg to egg to duplicate strains, painting new numbers and recording their contents in the notebooks as she goes. She doesn't touch the eggs with her hands once she's got them labeled and emplaced in lazy susans at all.

It's an impressively well-thought-out layout and Leareth does take some notes, but it's not the thing that jumps out to him most. "You have very good fine control with Fetching," he says, feeling a burst of pride. (It is objectively pretty impressive but the pride about it is probably a lifebond emotion. Not that he really minds at this point.) "Most Fetchers who are as strong as you do not also practice the delicate side nearly so much – particularly not if their primary work is Healing!" 

"Most Fetchers kind of don't think about how the Gift works, for some reason? I actually have the same complaint about Healers but I think it's more understandable when the thing they're doing instead is dealing with bleeding people right in front of them, that's definitely very distracting. The typical Fetcher has no such good excuse."

And that's it he is now completely drawn in and paying her full attention. "Fascinating - say more? I actually am not at all an expert on Fetching, at least not in this body and brain, so I am not even sure what the conventional wisdom is on training it." 

"It's got an Othersense, for one thing, it's subtle but it exists - I named it 'touchsight' and wrote a paper on it, I've got my copy in my room. Also it's possible to Fetch parts of things, although a very solid one will take a lot of force to take apart."

"Really!" Belrun is shockingly creative as well as clever, and Leareth is very impressed, and - now he wants to kiss her about it, which isn't where he's used to the feeling of being impressed ending up, but it's not unpleasant. "I would be delighted to read your paper. Vanyel has Fetching, also, so if you do end up in our magic dream again, he might be curious as well." 

"I do really need to know what he already knows and what he's allowed to know, I would not actually have guessed that 'guy you're trying to deescalate from prophesied war with' was someone you wanted to teach exotic Fetching technique."

"...I suppose I do need to consider whether he needs to know and not just whether he would be very satisfyingly impressed with you." Leareth sighs slightly. "I worry that wishing everybody else to also know how excellent you are is going to distort my thinking on this. That being said, I do often share magical lore with Vanyel. I advised him on some of the work that went into building the new Web in Valdemar; after all, I am trying to be on friendly terms with him." 

"And not just that - does he know you're immortal, can he know we're lifebonded and you didn't just pick me up somewhere, does he know about the whole thing where the gods are pretty down on you..."

"He knows about the immortality and the gods and a number of other facts about my past life although not all. I would have to go through a list with you. I - need to think about the lifebond. Probably it is fine. I hesitated in the dream because he lost a lifebonded partner in the past and is understandably very traumatized about it." 

"I didn't think people survived that."

"Neither did anyone until Vanyel, I think. It has been almost fourteen years. He manages it surprisingly well but it is a sore point." 

"I don't know how to mention it gently enough. There might not be a gentle enough."

"Perhaps not. However, it is - more difficult to explain why we are together otherwise, and he must be very suspicious that you were pulled into the dream at all, which I now suspect is due to the lifebond resulting in my being 'inside' at least one layer of your shields – do not worry! I cannot read your mind at all! Also it would be disrespectful to your preferences so I would not if I could, but in fact I cannot anyway." 

He looks down. "...I should tell you that one of my plots was involved in the death of his partner. It was closer to an incidental consequence than something I sent orders for someone to do - an unsavoury person who had been a sort of bounty hunter for Valdemaran mages decided to accept coin from a Valdemaran family to help with their feud against another family, and this resulted in some messy deaths. I think Vanyel is not angry at this point; his circumstances are very clearly part of a god's plan, and so likely the gods would have found a different plan if my bounty hunter had not been available. It is, however, still something where I bear significant causal responsibility." 

"He knows about that and he sings you songs. That's astonishingly forgiving."

"Yes. He did not speak to me for a long time - a year at least - but, I think eventually he concluded that he had already known of my activities of this sort, and that if it had not troubled him enough then that he refused to engage, it ought not be any different simply because my victims had included somebody important to him in particular." A slight, fond smile. "Vanyel is like that. He tries to be consistent. Also, in general, he is very forgiving." 

"...pity I don't know how to bring up how admirably reflective it is without being upsetting."

"Yes. Perhaps at some point I will think of a way to tell him that is - a minimal amount upsetting, at least. In the meantime we can go over the other facts that he knows." Leareth pauses. "...He does not know my actual current plan. Yet. I...have been working toward telling him, but it seems likely I will tell you first." 

"That would be nice."

"You have a right to know, I think. I had been waiting to - cover some more of the background for it, and for a good uninterrupted stretch of time to discuss it." 

"How long an uninterrupted stretch?" she asks, spinning her last lazy susan to check out egg 6-64-18.

"Probably it would not need an entire day, but several candlemarks at least." 

"I only have econ and not microbio or the healing lecture tomorrow, if it's too many candlemarks to fit in after dinner."

"Probably. We can cover some more of the background with the gods after dinner, maybe." 

"Sure. ...am I just effectively moving out of my dorm..."