"Sorry!" Leareth says. "I did not do it very well. Are you all right?" 

- he shakes his head for a second and then bounces his impression of what happened to Leareth. 

"I did it badly," Leareth says apologetically, rising from his stool and going to him. "Maitimo, are you hurt?" 

"I don't think so! Just distracted - you warned me that might happen -"

"I think that I did not do it very skillfully, and it was holding by itself, but then you noticed it and put strain on it? If it had been better done it would have lasted through that. And been less noticeable in the first place, probably." 

"I was trying to check my theory that you can test whether a desire is a compulsion by trying to stop making progress on it for a few seconds."

"I see. I think that would definitely work for an immediate action-type compulsion - you could do the action in a different way but not cease it to do a different action instead. I think that if I had done the desire-affecting type more effectively, it would not be as obvious, but it might still behave differently than your own native desires when you try to delay them." He shakes his head. "Making compulsions invisible to someone who actively expects and is looking for them is a much harder problem." 

"Yes, sorry. ...I could forget that this is what we're doing, though I worry that might lead to very confusing conversations or something."

"What, you can cause yourself to forget this deliberately?" Leareth frowns. "I had been thinking that it could be easier if we are engaging in some other activity and I try to slip a subtle one in without interrupting or telling you what it is. If I can get to the point that it is difficult for you to recognize them and recognizing them does not break them, I will feel much more comfortable that I have the skill to make them subtle enough for, say, enemy soldiers who are not expecting it." 

"You can use oaths to forget things. I considered doing that strategically when we had just met but it's a dangerous thing to be doing in a genuinely adversarial context. It's probably smarter to just talk about other things and you can try to slip them in without interrupting."

"That is...very disturbing, actually. I wonder if it would show up to a Mindhealer - and whether the memory would be retrievable to them. I am glad you did not do it when we had just met!" He frowns. "I wish to practice a few more just to get the stability side of it down, before I worry about the subtlety." 

"Yeah, oaths are scary. Part of why I didn't was not wanting to draw much of your attention to what oaths can do." He sits down. "Trying some more sounds good."

Then Leareth will try getting Maitimo to hop on one foot and spin in circles and sing a particular song and count down from ten backwards and various other silly antics. He tries both with the direct action version until he can do that very solidly, then tries with the one-step-upstream version that should act on wanting instead, and once he's more sure of that he asks Maitimo to try the thing that broke it before. 

He wants to pause before he claps his hands to check whether that's a compulsion.

The desire to handclap doesn't helpfully stop and inform him that it's a compulsion, but it does just sit there, not changing or shifting at all, in a way that feels a bit jarring. 

- he claps his hands. "Okay, I'm pretty sure noticing it doesn't break it."

"Good! Maybe now we can do something else and I will try to slip one in - hmm, what is a good diversion..." There isn't exactly a lot to do in the Work Room.

"I could sing something? Or we could go somewhere else - it's important to me that people aren't around but not how thoroughly shielded the place is -"

"I suppose we can go back to my room and maybe you can help me put some of my records away neatly, the library is still kind of a mess." 

"Sure." He pauses, makes a face, does nothing for a few seconds. "- yeah, sure."

"Are you going to be stopping and checking in every single interaction we have now whether something is a compulsion?" Leareth says, smiling. "I am not intending to use them on you without asking after this practice session." 

"I might see if I can trim it down to a not-externally-obvious form that still lets me notice? Not because of you, I trust you, but - it's a big universe, apparently, right -"

"That makes sense. It would seem like an important skill, being able to check." Leareth gets up and pushes his stool against the wall. 

"And I have a lot of attention, it is probably the wrong tradeoff with a human amount of attention."

"I have mental habits set up that would catch many external compulsions," Leareth points out. "In fact, that is how I eventually noticed Melkor's memory alterations, and would have remarked on it much sooner if I had been in any position to do my usual record-keeping and checking."