Yfandes is soft and snuggly and warm and she suggests Vetareh could braid her mane if she likes? 

She’s actually wondering if she should be here at all, maybe actually being crammed in a room with Yfandes and the Had A Shit Day brigade is a bad idea. But snuggles are so nice and she’s actually very lonely, and the prospect of going out to meet new people is so much, and...

Yes, she’ll braid Yfandes’s mane. Yfandes will have the prettiest mane, Vetareh knows this trick that’ll let some of her mane weave through the braid to waterfall freely down her neck, it’ll be gorgeous. Yfandes will make all of the other quadrupeds so jealous and it’ll be great. The fact that Vetareh is quietly crying the whole time is not going to affect the fantastic end result.

Yfandes is pleased and sends her gratitude and reassurance (she wouldn't normally do that for anyone but her Chosen, however, her Chosen is drugged to unconsciousness right now and Vetareh is not and also Yfandes likes her a lot and she clearly needs it.) 

Eventually the most recent dose of argonel starts wearing off and Vanyel stirs, grimacing in pain even before he's awake. 

Tylendel, getting a faceful of pain along the lifebond, winces and grips Vanyel's hand tightly. 

She has by this point in time finished braiding Yfandes’s mane, and has moved on to adding little illusionary flowers to it. While she’s not put together enough to make them look like real flowers, they don’t have to. They can faintly glow in various shades of blue that’ll go well with Yfandes’s eyes and look lovely and ethereal.

When Van stirs, Vetareh looks up from her decorating, then reaches over to touch him and cast Blackout. No complicated spell chain, she’s not in the mood, just a few seconds of not-pain, maybe he might go back to sleep.

He does, on this occasion, settle back to sleep. 

:Unfortunately we ought to let him wake up at some point: Savil tells Vetareh. :Healer says it's important to get fluids into him: 

:Yes, of course. I don’t expect him to stay asleep forever even with blocked pain and while being drugged, it just seems kindest to let him sleep as long as possible. When was the last time he had fluids or food?:

:I don't think we've managed to get food into him since the thing happened. He drank some water, hmm, five or six candlemarks ago: 

Vetareh makes an unhappy mental grumble. She’s not a healer, but even she can tell that this isn’t great. Not anyone’s fault, but not great.

:Okay. Damn. I can keep him cut off for a little while once he’s a bit more awake, and we can use that window to stuff him full of water and - probably some kind of broth? Any calories is better than none at all:

Whoops she’s involved again. She’s not very good at this ‘taking breaks’ business.

:That's a good idea, I can send Lissa to get him some, or ask at Healers' for what we should give him. He was refusing before but maybe he'll be feeling a bit better now: 

Vetareh nods, firmly.

:Do you know what his drug schedule is? Ideally I think we should do this shortly before his next dose, so he’s clear headed enough to follow directions and so that we can let him be once he’s off with (Lyssa/goddess of dreams). We can also take the opportunity to have you check his Gifts, since I’ll be blocking him anyway to (proverbially) shove food down his throat. I don’t know what I’m looking at but he’s got got quite a lot of... something.... going on:

:Gemma had wanted to hold off on giving him more until a candlemark before sunset, though if he's burning it off really fast, they can send someone to check if it's safe to dose him early. We're giving him argonel, which is a somewhat risky drug, it's just the only one strong enough to touch this sort of pain: 

:Okay. Well. Scheduling and balancing that is not my area of expertise, but I don't mind getting pulled in regularly to block him for (short periods of time; half a candlemark/half an hour at most). It's (unpleasant for her/skirting close to her traumas/not the kind of thing she's going to marathon for hours again without 'He's literally dying' reasons) but less so for short bursts for a reason:

:Of course. I think it'd be kindest to him to do a few minutes at a time while we make him eat or drink, or anything else he needs to be awake and lucid for, but we won't ask you for long blocks: Sigh. :I suppose let's try to get him another candlemark of sleep, and then hope to get some nourishment into him along with his next dose of argonel, and I'll test his Gifts then. I don't actually need him awake for it but I'm not sure he would sleep through it even with you blocking: 

:Oh? Why not? What does testing his Gifts involve?:

:Hmm, bit hard to describe to someone who's not a mage, but - going into his head and poking around. I think he'll feel some of the poking even if he can't feel his channels. Though of course I've never tried it, er, under these conditions: 

:Huh. Okay: Mostly she was asking on account of being a massive nerd who is very curious about how all of this weird foreign magic works, but hasn't had time to pin it down to study it in depth because this has been a stressful time. It's been very annoying. :I'll defer to your expertise:

:I suppose if he's drugged he might well sleep through the poking: 

Sigh. Savil watches her nephew sleep. :Poor kid. Never thought he'd end up Chosen, or with Gifts. I...don't think he even wanted it, really: 

:What does being Chosen or having Gifts involve? I assume for Gifts he'd need to train control, and for being Chosen he has Yfandes (the best quadruped) as his friend/cuddle buddy, but I'm missing context on anything that comes with that:

:It means he'll be a Herald. Part of Valdemar's government, and - given his Gifts, likely sent into danger to fight threats to the Kingdom: 

:... Does... he not get a choice in the matter?:

:Same amount of choice we all do, I guess. But - I'd dreamed of being a Herald my whole childhood. Used to pretend I was one, but never thought it'd really happen, it felt like something that didn't happen to people like me - but I was still ecstatic about it, and I think most of us are. Don't know that he'll be: 

:Okay, but - are there cushy bureaucratic jobs while being a Herald? Would he be free to do whatever he wanted when there wasn't something that only he could do? Does he have space to refuse?:

She doesn't send this part, but in the back of her mind she's thinking that this makes her earlier conversation with Lancir way more disturbing, what the fuck.