They do not have any surprise shared magic dreams and Leareth wakes up with a pleasant armful of Belrun. He still instinctively checks all the wards first before anything else, but after that, he stays there snuggling her rather than getting up. 

"Liquid. Butterfly. Soapdish."

Adorable! 

"Cactus." Squirm. "Cloud." Yawn. "Good morning."

"Good morning." Snuggle. "Were you aware that you talk in your sleep? I am rather curious what you were dreaming about, if it is has any relation to that at all, it might just be random." 

"I don't remember what I was dreaming about and was not aware that I talk in my sleep! What did I say?"

"It seemed to be mostly disconnected words." He thinks back. "'Liquid', 'soapdish' - no, you also said 'butterfly' in the middle there - 'cactus', 'cloud'..." 

"It would have to be a weird dream! Maybe Rana knows." She sits up and stretches.

"Should we grab breakfast before we talk about gods? Oh, and I forgot to ask about your class today. I assume your eggs will need tending at some point also." 

"We have all morning but should eat breakfast, yes. We didn't sleep in as late today, I think I hear Rana, maybe she fixed extra -" Belrun leans over to kiss him and then gets up, steps out, talks briefly with her mother. Rana can be heard laughing.

If it's the sleeptalking then Leareth is very curious what the verdict ends up being! Actually he's curious either way. Everything about Belrun's life is very fascinating. 

(Much of it would be fascinating anyway, but the lifebond is probably responsible for her sleeptalking being interesting as well as her research.) 

Breakfast is porridge again; Rana made them some extra and put apples in it but is on her way to work before Leareth emerges. "She says I've done it since I learned to talk and seldom to never have relevant dreams," Belrun reports.

"Ah. I suppose it is likely sleeptalking has come up at some point in my past but evidently I did not think it relevant enough to make it into the summarized records that I actually try to re-memorize, because I currently know very little about why it is a thing." 

"I bet that's true of lots of things. Caterpillars, for instance, I bet they're totally irrelevant to whatever it is you do all day." Om nom.

"That is true! I could tell you almost nothing about the life cycle and dietary habits of caterpillars. They eat...leaves?" He eats. If they can get Mindspeech working they can eat and talk at the same time that'll be convenient. 

"I have seen them do so, yes!"

"Did you study them in your training as a Healer? Or have you just...watched caterpillars, sometimes? I suppose that is the sort of thing children probably do. I have not been a child myself in a very long time so I would not know for sure." 

"I didn't decide as soon as my Gifts awakened that I was going to specialize in diseases! I think it was the right choice but I considered other things and caterpillars are interesting because they turn into butterflies. I did a term project on that once. I also seriously considered going into plants! Mages make new species sometimes, I hear, but they're always animals and often people and that seems like it's, I don't know, chasing glamor at the expense of value, sure, it's cool if you can smush a parakeet and a snake together or whatever but why hasn't anyone smushed together a dandelion and wheat. But I can just, you know, tell bright young Healing students they should consider doing wacky things to plants, whereas my specific Gift combination is especially useful for the disease angle."

"Because of the safety aspect, I imagine? That makes sense. And, fascinating - which traits of a dandelion and wheat would you be wishing to combine, in that example? The hardiness and, well, weed nature of dandelions with the edible grain?" 

"Ideally hardiness, self-reseeding, and speed of growth - wheat grows on a stalk yea high, and we don't eat that part, why bother with it. I suppose if you had wheat dandelions someone would need to invent a novel form of scythe, but that doesn't seem intractable."

"That makes sense. Have you been able to direct any young students toward this project yet?" 

"Couple of them are maybe thinking about it." She finishes her porridge. "So. Gods."

Nod. "Do you have an order of questions to ask?" 

"I'm not sure whether it makes more sense to have you go through all the facts you learned about gods - ideally all the reasons you came to believe any such facts instead actually - in chronological order, or if it makes sense to get your grand theory and then point out where it doesn't seem to hold so you can explain why you think so anyway, but I'm leaning the first because it was sort of frustrating when you were like 'well maybe Astera doesn't think her church is her stuff but she's at best neutral' instead of, I don't know, 'Astera murdered me in cold blood in 207 and I then stole her church in a clever heist which is why it's my mail service now'."

"That makes sense. It is not - stored in my head in this order, mostly, but I can go in chronological order through all of the things that I observed and how confident I am in those observations, and what my interpretation was of which god acted and why. And if I am being frustrating you can tell me so."