She takes her own notes in the morning, instead.

Leareth sleeps in a bit later. He yawns and sits up while she's still at it. "So? Any thoughts on how it went?" 

"He took it really well, I thought."

"Yes, I agree. And I think he was honest with us about his constraints around telling the King. It - is interesting, actually, that his Yfandes has had a Foresight sense nudging her not to tell anybody. That...hints at it accomplishing a god's goal, somehow. I notice this is confusing to me." 

"Are gods micromanaging them every time? Maybe telling would be good for the gods but have awful fallout for her personally, or Valdemar, and they can get what they want by another route or don't want to make the tradeoff in how Companions trust their senses."

"...I do not think the gods are micromanaging the Companions' Foresight sense constantly; I have not checked directly but it is most similar to human short-range Foresight, so I suspect it simply links in to the same Foresight-creating mechanism that the gods themselves use, though much more shallowly. I do think it would be a potential avenue of influence if They wished. But - yes, it does make sense that the gods might wish to avoid causing the Companions to mistrust their senses there." 

"So I guess we can tell Vanyel that if he seems nervous - if I were him I'd want to know what things were generally including by the gods' opponents to be trustworthy in various ways. ...the length of the dream is really limiting."

"It is inconvenient. We can cover things eventually but it means we have to be careful about cases where half of an explanation might be worse than no explanation." 

"It's weird that you've never established written correspondence."

"...I mean, I have recommended many books that I wrote in the past to him, as a way to cover material that would be difficult to fit well into the dreams. Aside from that, I worry that slow-turnaround written communication is more open to misinterpretation and misunderstandings." 

"I guess it could? I don't know, I'm imagining what if Vanyel had something very complicated to say and he could give us a two-sentence summary, answer whatever the most pressing questions were, and end with 'letter to follow'."

"Oh. I am less worried about that from Vanyel's direction, actually. It is more that he has not asked, and has - mostly been rather cagey about what information he offers me at all, understandably so." 

"Well, we could suggest it, it's not like there are twelve of him and if it hasn't come up it's definitely because they did think of it but decided it wouldn't be a good idea."

"Fair enough. I will make a note of it for the next dream." He does so. 

"The notebook makes me wonder what other information in the dream might be misleading. It presents us with, let's see, location, set of people, I guess a guess about timing based on everyone's ages and perhaps the season..."

"The location is one I had already chosen when the dream began, though I would then have been unlikely to use it in the event of an actual invasion since Vanyel also knows of it now. Vanyel's hair colour gives another hint at timing - it is white because of node-magic, his original hair colour was black, this was a strong hint of the dream being set at least ten years in the future of the time it started. It is less helpful now, of course." 

"Your hair isn't white in the dream and you've mentioned using nodes."

Leareth's face takes on a rare expression of very slight self-consciousness, maybe even embarrassment. "...Having white hair is conspicuous, and also tells everybody that you are an Adept mage with a great deal of time spent casting heavily. I dye it." 

"...pff."

"What? Is that so very shocking?" 

"It makes perfect sense! It's just, you have this very - put-together and dignified presentation? Which I only see corners of because it breaks down around me but I can tell it's there. Dyeing your hair is not dignified and being self-conscious about it definitely isn't dignified, I don't think I would have reacted like that if you'd said the same thing except the same way you'd explain having learned a language to blend in someplace."

Leareth makes a face at her. "Why is dyeing my hair so much less dignified than learning a language, anyway?" 

"I should have said, most people who dye their hair are not doing it for dignified reasons. Your given reason isn't the usual one but you were embarrassed about it."

"I have never been embarrassed about it before! Perhaps it is because I imagine you thinking I am vain or something, even though I do not feel that is particularly my motivation – though I also think it looks better on me than silver would." 

"I agree though I suppose I don't know what silver would look like on you without seeing it."