"It worked!" Vanyel shouts in triumph from the distance, and starts running toward their position. 

"It has been a ridiculously eventful few days but I'm all right and I love you hi!!!"

Leareth doesn't even try to speak more until Vanyel has caught up, just holds Belrun tightly. 

Vanyel casts a heat-spell and, glancing sideways, makes a mage-barrier that blocks the worst of the wind. He makes a chair for himself. Casts a nervous look at Leareth. "We, er, should - explain some news... Belrun?" 

"Yeah, uh, ridiculous events have... occurred. There's... not really a gentle order to present this in that doesn't kind of bury the lede. Uh, you have to share me now, nobody was listening to me and it seemed like a good idea at the time to get a Companion so I did. On purpose. She's great, I like her."

Leareth knocks over the chair he was starting to build in a burst of accidental magic that turns it back into powder. 

"What?" 

"She waited till I asked for her. And then she was like 'are you sure that's a good idea'. She didn't jump on me and do it without permission. I think it'll be fine, and I am way more credible to the Heralds now."

"I am still very concerned about the part where Companions have mind-affecting magic and are also the creations of a god who we have no reason to think is on our side." 

She whispers in his ear. "Don't tell Van yet, things're delicate with Yfandes, but the god mind control took about fifteen minutes to shatter once we started talking about it post-Choice."

"Are you - you truly - I cannot..." Leareth stops trying to say words for a minute and just hugs her again. "I am very impressed," he whispers in her ear. "I wondered if something such as that was possible, but - I did not think a Companion would be on board to actually do it... You are rather incredible, Belrun." 

Vanyel waits patiently and without any noticeable suspicion regarding their conversation. (From his perspective, they have a lot of catching up to do and it makes sense that some of it would be private.)  

"Yes I am!" she agrees. "Anyway, her name is Amshalan, she's lovely, it turns out she doesn't remember much about being a human except while doing - weird Foresight stuff I don't fully remember - damn I forgot her original name, that's going to bug me - anyway between then and now she was another Companion, belonged to somebody named Lancir -"

"Oh did she take you to the blue place too, Yfandes did for–" The last part hits him. "Wait, what? That can't be right." 

"- can't it? I suppose I could have misremembered but that wasn't in the blue place, she told me that in normal Mindspeech."

"Maybe there were two Lancirs in our history? That'd be very weird, it's not a common name, but - well, I knew a Lancir and he was bonded to Taver, the last Groveborn, he was Queen's Own to Elspeth." 

"Remind me what Tantras's Companion situation is?"

"He was Taver's Chosen right after Lancir, King's Own to Randi for four, five years, then Taver died and he got - his old Companion - oh." 

"Ouch okay that explains it. I mean, or it's a different Lancir or I got the name wrong, but uh."

"...Ugh." 

Leareth finally seems to have absorbed the news about Belrun's Companion enough to speak. "So. You said eventful. What were the events that led up to this? It must have been - rather extreme, for you to genuinely see it as the best option." 

"Uh, the Groveborn's Chosen thought too hard about what I was saying and they had a fight and he accidentally repudiated her - I told her I was going to ask you to pay her way to school someplace, she didn't deserve that, she's a good kid."

Leareth actually looks visibly startled and disturbed for a moment before his expression goes back to pleasantly neutral. "Is she all right? That - is not generally something Heralds would survive, I was led to believe." 

"She told me she was going back to her hometown and snuck off because she wasn't sure she'd be allowed to leave. I can't guarantee she didn't decide to kill herself on the way but she seemed to know what she was doing and it seemed to not be that."

“I’d believe it,” Vanyel adds. “Dara is - unusually sensible.” Sigh. “I’m really going to miss her. In general and also for the talks, it seemed like she was making everything go better just by being around.”

"She was. I think the Groveborn is unusually - brittle - but some caution is going to be required going forward."