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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."
You are welcome, Belrun.
:Apparently lifebonds are less interventionist than I thought - we were engineered to meet but could not have met without it happening - and also if I'm careful I will be able to work on putting Gifts in Companions without killing anybody but I still shouldn't start with you because if I did fuck up with you I'd worry about being too freaked out to fix it:
:It'd be soooo useful! I reckon a lot of us will want Healing, too, it's so stressful if our Heralds get hurt and we can't do anything ourselves:
:I didn't, like, go shopping for them, but I think I make good use of them:
:I'd say so!:
Amshalan's call for volunteers turns up a couple of young, unbonded Companion stallions who would LOVE to be the first test subjects to get Fetching.
She will give them the screening quiz just for completeness and caaaaarefully Fetchify first one, and then, if nothing seems wrong, then the other.
Fetching Fetching Feeeeeeeeetching!!! Nothing seems to go wrong and they're picking it up faster than humans tend to, absolutely DELIGHTED by their newfound ability to throw windfall apples at each other.
Adorable. She'll let that sit for a couple days and check back to make sure they don't have brain cancer and then go full speed ahead.
:Yes please!: Amshalan is practically vibrating with excitement! :I'll be able to braid my own mane! Not that I don't like it when you do it, but you're so busy and only going to get busier, and it's weird having anyone but my Chosen do it:
:I'd say that might take a lot of practice but the way those two are throwing apples around maybe you'll have it down by tomorrow: She gives Amshalan her own Fetching. And rebraids her mane while she's there.
Awwwww. :Yay!!!:
It turns out that braiding requires much finer control than apple-throwing, but Amshalan joins the apple match and expresses firmly that she's going to practice so much. By the end of that day she can turn pages in a book by herself, though her attempts to write with a pen still look like a toddler did them.
Leareth wanders out to watch Amshalan reading a book in the Companions' Field. "Amazing. Honestly I am not sure why the gods did not give this ability to Companions in the first place."
"I could! It becomes a little unsatisfying when the answer to half of my questions is 'I cannot convey that in human concepts' or something extremely cryptic."
"I think maybe the kinds of questions They get informs how to spend effort on concept crystallization or something, but yeah, I wouldn't call it satisfying."
"Oh, yes, it still seems worth asking, I just wanted to complain." He squeezes her. "I hope all the builders are listening to you?"