"I run an organization based a long way from here that does various magic-related work. I was intending to visit the city only briefly for related business, but, well, then Belrun and I met. It ought to be all right to leave things for a time but there may be work-related emergencies." 

"We've got a good magic department here," coaxes the dean.

"I will keep it in mind." That is not technically a lie even if he's unlikely to end up deciding differently based on it. 

The dean accepts Belrun's suggestion about who could try to muddle through the rest of her lesson plan for the term, and tells her that he'd really appreciate it if she can stay out to the break, and shakes her warmly by the hand, and they are released from the meeting.

"It seems as though that went reasonably well?" 

"I think so. I don't love skipping out on them, they've been good to me, but."

“But sometimes circumstances change in ways that are neither your fault nor theirs.” He squeezes her hand.

"Yeah." Squeeze. "I don't actually think I should travel with the eggs unless you want to hold a Gate directly to wherever you plan to put me while I carefully Fetch them through one at a time, since, you know, they contain infectious diseases, so maybe I should try to wrap up the current phase of research and get it down to a small number that's practical to do such a thing with."

"That would seem wise, yes. Hopefully there will not be any emergencies and we will have the ability to do that – and, yes, I could definitely hold a Gate directly to your new lab, once one exists. I ought to at some point take down the setup you will need for it." 

"The one I have now is pretty good, though I guess it could stand to have more space. You get regular egg delivery up there? I go through a lot of them, one egg doesn't last more than a few weeks and I keep moving the microbes to new ones."

"I could arrange for there to be chickens kept? I mean, presumably not in the lab itself, but conveniently nearby." 

"That would do, sure."

"Should we go to your lab now and I can take some notes on the setup while you show me your work?" 

"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."