:Oh? I - feel like I ought to remember why, but the memories are sort of hard to access even when I have them? Vanyel, Vanyel, what did I...: 

:Uh, he said that couldn't be right because Taver was Lancir's Companion, and - I said 'remind me what Tantras's Companion situation is' -:

:........oh: 

:That must have sucked so much! I doubt he'd be stupid enough to try but if Rolan attempts human-theft can I tell him to go fuck himself before he gets that far?:

:If you want, I guess! To be fair to Taver, I think there were very solid strategic reasons for - what he did. And I knew them at the time. It still would've sucked, of course. And I bet the worst part is that I couldn't even notice that fully, because of the mind control: 

:Ew:

:I know! ...Wonder if I had an easier time of, er, breaking it, because I'd been near the edges of it so often. I remember noticing that I seem to think a little differently from most Companions, this time around: 

:How does that manifest?:

:I was thinking of the conversations we had before I Chose you - some things made me uncomfortable but it wasn't even hard to just sit with that and keep talking anyway. Oh, and maybe the fact that I could ignore the Call as thoroughly as I did? It was a bad idea to Choose you when you'd specifically requested not that. But I think a lot of Companions would've found it hard not to anyway: 

:I would have been so upset!:

:I know! It would've been awful! I was so confused why I was getting a Call at all, it made no sense. I mean, aside from the part where you're amazing, that makes sense, but there are plenty of amazing people who don't get Chosen: 

:How come you didn't tell me you were getting a Call, would that have made ignoring it harder?:

:...Honestly I was worried you'd panic and stop talking to me entirely, and I liked talking to you. Also it seemed like it was pretty important you had a window on the Companions: 

:That makes sense. I don't think I would have panicked and stopped talking to you - I guess unless I said 'uh is talking to me making that more likely' and you said 'yes' -:

:I mean, talking to you didn't make it less likely, and it'd be a little surprising if it made no difference, but I was pretty confident I could keep deciding to not Choose you and that if I somehow screwed it up by accident you'd just be like 'hells no': 

:Would that work? I have never gotten the impression that it's normally optional on the human end, that's why I was asking if it would even be possible for me to tell Rolan to fuck off if he decided to be a humanthief:

:It's possible. It's not - widely known, really, and most people wouldn't be attentive enough to their own minds to notice that moment of having a choice. You did: 

:This is such a poorly understood process in common knowledge, it's really remarkable that Valdemar's muddled along with it underpinning the national government for this long:

:...I mean I think the poorly understood and mysterious part is deliberate. Not by us as by individuals but by - whatever Power was guiding this in the first place: 

:Honestly I'm still leaning toward the interpretation that it was designed by committee and they have some difference of opinion now. Like, the lifebond, the dream, those are both obviously divinely mediated, but then I show up and have a not particularly targeted conversation with the King's Own for a candlemark and she winds up repudiated, by accident, when she was Chosen one year ago so not too far out for god-Foresight to have a decent view of this time? That says to me 'not everybody's on the same page here':

:Seems depressingly plausible: 

:And kind of makes it more imperative that now that Valdemar is going to wind up contacting god plots whether it wants to or not that all the Companions get off the simplistic god mind control train sooner than later:

:...Right. Ugh. This situation is such a mess: 

:Rolan's... likely not to be fixable, if coming to that point with Dara didn't do it:

:No. That's - not great, is it: