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When Vanyel is ready for the mad science tour, he shows him the monkeys. "They're monkeys," she feels it necessary to clarify. "I know they look very human at this point, because the whole point of them is that I'm going to move into one if I ever die, but they're not people, and I have forbidden the staff to name them. I could move into one now if I had to but I'd like to get one actually looking like me in particular first, and I want to stick more Gifts into them, I got Fetching out of some Changesquirrels but further work is needed." She shows him the mice, too. "Do you suppose Jisa'd like a winged mouse? What's her favorite color?" She shows him all her microbiology eggs. "That's a flu sample from the recent plague! I remembered to take one. Those there are other flus. The white eggs have more-alive microbes and the brown eggs have less-alive kinds - there's a cold one of the staff mages had a few months ago, there's food poisoning, there's the most common kind from healthy intestines - you could get your Sight this fine, you know, I don't do heavy Healing-Gift use apart from Sight for this work."
Being Fetch-carried by Belrun is a lot pleasanter than walking and Leareth appreciates that.
"Well," he says as they reach his tent, "I think that went about as well as we could expect."
"Of course it will be! I am so curious to see what Valdemar will be like in ten years, when anybody who wants a Gift can have one."
A little while later, there are footsteps at the opening of the tent. "I'm looking for Belrun?"
"Don't you think that's being really horrible to them? They have feelings too."
"...well, I wouldn't do it for fun, but it's pretty normal for Healers trying something new to them, especially if they haven't seen it done by someone with experience, to start on animals. I did mice first, that's where your mouse came from."
"I didn't know you were doing experiments on them that were dangerous and might hurt them! Besides monkeys are smarter than mice and have more feelings so that's worse."
"That's why I started on mice. I only moved on to monkeys when I was pretty good at mice and all my monkeys are still alive last I checked. If you want to return your mouse and not get made a mage when you grow up in protest I will understand, though the mouse will not be priority cargo for Gates north while they're scarce."
"I don't want to return my mouse, I love it and it would be sad and miss me." Jisa is now looking very off-balance and uncertain.
"Well, I killed some sparrows to make the first batch with wings - though yours was born with 'em - and some mice were harmed when I started turning them colors and stuff. But now I'm better at a lot of fiddly Healing work."
Jisa nods, though she still seems unhappy. "It doesn't seem fair to do it when you can't ask them if they mind, but - I guess Healers have to do research somehow. Do you have rules about when it's important enough to do or not?"
"I've been doing it more case by case than that. I do try not to have them conscious for uncomfortable parts if it's avoidable."
"Oh. That's - good of you, I guess." Jisa seems somewhat placated by this, though still uncertain. She shuffles her feet.
"No! I haven't eaten meat since I was seven and I found out from my friend who's an Animal Mindspeaker that animals have feelings."
Jisa nods, seriously. "I think eating eggs and drinking milk is okay because my friend says chickens don't mind having their eggs taken away, and you can't let all of them hatch, there'd be way too many chickens then. But I did go to the barn at the Palace to check that the baby cow was getting enough milk and they weren't giving it all to people instead."