"Was what, being - suddenly done? I didn't expect it right at that moment but it's not surprising it would happen sometimes."

"I mean, that, but also the extent to which he seemed to be - having plans and preferences about things." 

"I've never seen a human come out of a torturefortress before! It's faster than Quendi."

"I feel bad about the compulsions, even though I think it is very justified and as far as I can tell he agrees. I would be finding it so obnoxious." 

"It does seem very obnoxious. You could ask him if he'd eat on his own now, he's making a lot of progress."

"I will do that. Also, Nayoki said you had some other kind of block? She was not sure if it would be less obtrusive than our usual compulsions; she did say it took you all day, which I suppose is a significant cost. Nayoki would also be delighted to hear from her older self about research progress." 

"I can do action blocks. They're time consuming and not risk-free but I do know how."

"What are the risks?" 

"When I do anything complicated, I might misstep and do something else. Usually I'd be able to undo it right away, or undo it after whoever I was working on noticed if I didn't catch myself at the time, but that's not guaranteed. Also, it's harder to do something that's intended to be temporary but isn't intended to be allowed to wear off within a few days. Usually I can either do something gently enough it'll knock loose soon after I stop actively pushing on it, or hard enough it'll stay forever. Side effects are generally going to be at least loosely related to whatever I was trying to do - if I stop him from doing magic he might wind up generally catatonic or unable to think effectively about magic or something in that vein but would not wind up compulsively, uh, singing or anything like that. I have never actually made a mistake like this and going slowly makes it less likely. I don't know how likely it is a Mindhealer could fix an error I couldn't."

"That makes sense. Nayoki thinks that anything done by a Mindhealer, with the exception of literally burning out areas of a mind - which is impossible to do by accident - is straightforwardly reversible by another Mindhealer, if they have good enough control. She is not sure that she does, yet, she is very young and has not been here that long. Mindhealers cannot easily undo mage-compulsions, however, though they can reliably find them." Frown. "It is probably not worth risking potentially irreversible mistakes, at this point?"

"Probably not. In principle we could just present the question to him but I don't think we should be asking him to make important decisions right now."

Nod. "You think that you can contact the other Nayoki?" 

"It shouldn't be harder than contacting the other Vanyel, since I've met this one."

"Right. So our plan now is - you will help him sleep, if he is ready before you go to bed, and you will try to reach the older Nayoki, and you will ask Vanyel if he is willing to speak with Leareth?" 

"Right."

"Thank you. Again. For everything." 

"You're welcome."

She decides she will ask the local Nayoki for tips on how to address her counterpart safely - "it closes distance both ways, if she decides I'm scary I might have a problem."

"Does the other me know about your existence? If I am startled I might react with hostility." Nayoki thinks. "I wonder if it would be safer to contact a different person on Leareth's staff first. Probably Tadri is not, in the other world, he only ended up working here due to circumstances around your arrival, but I could ask around and probably we can find someone who is likely to still be here in fifteen years' time."

"A couple of them, maybe, in case the first doesn't work. I'm not actually clear on how good lines of communication are between older Vanyel, who knows about me, and his Leareth's staff."

"It is quite possible they are not in direct communication. You could ask him?" 

"Yeah, I'll do that too. But knowing who else I could try to talk to first in case they're not can't hurt."

“If you can wait a few minutes I will ask around now.”

"Thanks!"

Nayoki is back twenty minutes later. “Do you need to meet them in person? I have some candidates but they are among the mage-scholars who we moved to elsewhere when we decided to keep the other Leareth here.”

"Talking to them for a few seconds by earcuff would do."