:I think I will try talking to him a little, and if it seems obviously unhelpful I will just offer him some innocuous books to read - unfortunately it is hard to think of anything I find very interesting that is also useless to Melkor: 

He turns to his alt. "Leareth, if I were in your shoes right now I would be very confused about the situation. I am, in fact, quite confused about it! I had already known of the existence of other worlds, and I suppose so had you, but - this is an entire other level of strangeness." 

Leareth gives him a 'no kidding' sort of look. 

(Yep, that sounds like him. Faking someone sounding like him can't be that hard, surely, now he's imagining how Melkor could iterate running either half of a dialogue while Leareth himself– no, that doesn't actually work, Leareth is genuinely unsure he could imitate his past, non-tortured self at all, and now he's just thinking himself in circles and is going to stop because it's not like reasoning can lead to justified true beliefs anymore.) 

"I am not sure what to say, other than point out that certain other factors would at least be implausible for Melkor to fake, such as compulsions." 

He has not failed to notice that. It makes things even more frustrating, because now both the explanations of 'this is a hallucination' and 'this is real' seem really unlikely, but he can't actually think of a third one. This is way too long and coherent to be a literal dream he's having, and also his dreams nowadays rarely manage an absence of Sauron or Melkor or torture for more than brief snatches.

It shouldn't matter because he can't trust any of his beliefs in the first place, but he's still very annoyed about nothing making sense. 

:He is definitely confused and irritated about it: the local Leareth tells Bella. :I am not sure if my talking to him is contributing anything productive: 

I don't know either without reading him.

:You could ask if that is all right with him? He will probably say no or not answer, but - if he is willing to talk at all, I think I should stop agreeing to things on his behalf unless it is actually very urgent. Which this is not: 

"We're having some trouble figuring out how you're reacting to things. Is it all right with you if I read your surface thoughts and affect? I'll take not responding to the question as a no."

That earns her a very nonplussed look. 

Leareth's instinct is just to not answer, and possibly to go back to not interacting, but then he'll be bored again, and - well, answering one way or another is sort of an action, in that it has an effect on the world, but it's a very passive sort of action, it might lead to him being tortured again sooner but he can't see how it could even very indirectly end up with him damaging the wider world. 

(Although, if Melkor can actually do compulsions, then why isn't he doing that and making Leareth do whatever he wants...) 

Also his stupid brain is curious to see what happens in this version, even if it doesn't matter. 

"You can if you want," he says. 

"If you decide you want me to stop, I'll notice and stop," she tells him, and she reads.

He's wondering if she's doing it yet; he can't tell, nothing seems to be in contact with his shields, when the other Leareth was reading him it was very obvious. He's still frustrated, and also sort of panicky in the background; he hates being confused, it's stressful, and liking or hating things isn't safe but he appears to be doing it anyway. He's putting a lot of mental effort into smushing anything that looks even sort of vaguely like an urge to take actions. Some part of him is feeling, sort of petulantly, that it's unfair for neither of the possible explanations to make sense, it's fine if they're indistinguishable and impossible to reason about but this is just infuriating. 

"I am doing it, you won't be able to feel it when I'm doing things most of the time," she says.

Gah. Leareth's emotions can't decide if this is more or less stressful than noticing it, so he just goes with 'stressful', and he tries not to have preferences about that, and stares at her, waiting to see if she's going to do anything that will clarify things even slightly, or at least not be boring for thirty seconds. 

"I'm sorry this is such an implausible rescue scenario. Uh, I can tell you're very confused but that doesn't give me a good idea of what order to give more supporting details in, if you could be a little more precise -"

He's confused that - there are noticeably compulsions on him and he didn't think Melkor could fake that with a sense-hallucination alone. Maybe Melkor has Vanyel (fear, dread), but Vanyel is going to be bad at compulsions, and these ones actually just feel like his own work? He's...actually pretty confident he didn't do them himself and have the memory erased, to the extent he can be confident in anything, the missing-foundation sense that everything in his mind is untrustworthy is still there and that means he won't get to the point of taking actions. He's not even sure it would work to compulsion yourself into not doing magic, probably you would hit an inability to do magic before finishing it properly? 

Also he's confused that Melkor would put in so many details that would at least be annoying to fake this convincingly. Especially the other Leareth. It's so unnecessarily weird. 

It doesn't seem that bad to give Melkor any of that information, because it's not like it can possibly be news to him, which is also confusing. 

"It's very weird that there are two Velgarths and two Ardas and I'm afraid we don't know anything that explains that, it's just weird, but that's why the compulsions feel like your own, because your alternate self did them.

If you're interested in things that would be annoying to fake convincingly, subtle arts - my Mindhealing-like magic - has a lot of niche uses that pass for college pranks in my world, and I know how to do some of those. Synaesthesia's fun. Or assorted agnosias, less fun but more variety."

Sure, he's curious about the college pranks, they sound not boring. 

Well then, how about he can taste colors as a gentle starter.

Leareth's first response is fascination, and wondering if the other Leareth has tried it, if he's actually another Leareth. His second response, about a second later, is PANIC. 

- she undoes it. "Sorry!"

Leareth doesn't answer. The small non-panicking corner of him is kind of miffed about it, but it still takes him a minute to calm down enough that he can have thoughts. 

That was definitely odd. He isn't sure if Melkor would have a much harder time faking it than either of the senses separately, which he can obviously do.

He's kind of exhausted, and it's hard to think through it. 

"I don't want to wear you out. If you don't want to wait another week, I can come back tomorrow."

Sure, that seems fine (Leareth is still not really expecting anything observed now to correlate with events tomorrow.) 

She nods and gets up and goes, waving the local Leareth out too.

Local Leareth follows her. 

:Are you allowed to tell me about any of that?: he asks.