Alloran does this. It takes a lot of concentration but he does it.

Melody watches him from the corner of her eye. She's so proud of him already.

Also she is so furious with Visser Three right now. So furious. 

On the other side of a Gate is a big spacious field; it's late autumn headed into winter in Valdemar now, and much of the grass is brown. It's now dropping below freezing at night but only a few places in the shadows still have a rime of frost on them. 

The field is full of a dozen or so white horses, male and female, all of them people, who look up at Alloran and send a wordless mental greeting, apparently he's coming to stay with the herd which is really neat?

And a trio of foals are bounding over, nearly tripping over their own legs in their enthusiasm. :Hi hi hi are you the alien we're so happy you came what's your name–:

They are told off by one of the adults, and fall silent, but line up and look at Alloran with large, curious, delighted blue eyes. 

Alloran looks back at them with some of his eyes (the stalk ones are whizzing around trying to take in all his surroundings; to an Andalite eye, they are clumsy at it). <I am the Andalite War-Prince Alloran-Semitur-Corrass.> he says after a second. 

None of the Companions know what Andalites look like normally and they don't notice this at all. 

A stallion, a handspan taller than Kellan who originally brought him across, steps forward. :Welcome to Valdemar, War-Prince Alloran-Semitur-Corrass. I am Taver, the Groveborn and Companion to the King's Own; I am the leader of this herd: His mindvoice sounds different from the others. Less human; there's a brightness to it, and a resonance like ringing steel. 

And then one of the foals pipes up again. :War-Prince Alloran, is the sky blue on your world too or is it a different colour?: 

:Does your world have birds?: 

:–One at a time!: someone admonishes them. 

He bows to Taver. <I am honored to be among your people, and will serve you however I can.

..my world has birds. Not as many as many other worlds, because Andalites manage our planetary ecosystem, and started doing that a long time ago when we could not do it with very complicated ecosystems. Our sky is red and gold.>

:Oh oh oh can you show us a memory that sounds so pretty–:

:We have SO MANY birds. I think there don't need to be that many birds: 

:Do you eat the same things Companions do, we can show you the greenhouse that has nice grass even in winter–:

The foals are so curious and delighted to talk to him and ask a million questions; the adults give them periodic hushes and tell them to go one at a time, and they remember for a while, but they're so excited. They show him the greenhouse with grass in it (though the Companions mostly eat grain and stored hay, in winter, since they can, but they're not sure he can.) 

The Companions talk to each other constantly, in Mindspeech. Even the ones who aren't talking directly to Alloran don't bother to shield it out, so it's like being in the same room as half a dozen conversations, which can be ignored fairly easily but are there if he wants to pay attention. They're gossiping - about their Heralds, and the war that Valdemar just won with the Andalites' help, and Queen Karis, and whether it'll be a good harvest next year.

Emotions aren't hard to read, when everyone is Mindspeaking and leaking overtones, and none of them are at all resentful about his disability. They're very curious about his world and his people, and pleased to have him here. 

Perhaps it will be a good environment in which to relearn the things that he needs to relearn. He does feel slightly less at loose ends, answering children's questions. 

And grass is nice. He can eat pre-cut hay - the Visser often didn't find it convenient to have grass around - but he doesn't like to.

Back in the north, Leareth waits with Melody for the Gate back to the Dome ship.

He feels...tolerable. A little numb, and definitely - brittle, or something, his surfaces are holding together fine but his insides feel fragile. Metaphorically. It's inconvenient, that was one day of things going horribly wrong and he wasn't even conscious for most of it. It was very densely packed with things-going-wrong, though. 

Gate! 

Nayoki nods to Leareth, and stays back with the other humans and Andalites; they haven't coordinated on what the other Andalites want to do next, but it seems preferable not to fling them back into the Dome ship mid-negotiations. 

Melody crosses the Gate with Vanyel. :I'm back: she sends to both Matirin and Vanyel. :With Leareth and Emril: 

:Coming!: He heads over. 

He heads over too. He has morphed human for it. "Leareth. Welcome back."

Leareth is a little surprised to see him in human form, but he nods. "Matirin. Thank you." 

From the outside, he seems mostly calm, though there's tension in his shoulders, and he was noticeably a bit shaky on his feet when stepping across the Gate. He also looks pale and very tired. 

"I'm so sorry," he says quietly. "Why don't you sit down - have you had breakfast -"

...He should probably know the answer to that question, and doesn't, but he nods. "Thank you - I could eat." He sits. "Did the oth–" And then for some reason his brain decides to send another wave of adrenaline crashing through him, if anything that's happening more with his Gifts back and it's getting very frustrating at this point. Deep breaths. "Were there other deaths. Other than - the people in the mine, who..." No one actually told him much about what happened after his capture; he tried to ask Nayoki but she said she was busy, which was pretty fair. 

"Yes, there were. We asked for volunteers to summon demons and take the Blade ship." He can name them. "And we had someone Gate into your base and Final Strike, when we realized they'd been taken. And we lost three more when the Blade ship exploded."

Leareth nods. Looks down, a flicker of pain-regret-grief in his expression, and then breathes in and out and when he lifts his head he's calm again, though his eyes aren't quite focusing on Matirin, now, as though he's not entirely present in the room with them. 

(Leareth normally avoids doing quite this much internally-rough-shoving of his emotions into out of the way corners, he's very aware that it has downsides as a strategy, but there's way too much there to think through and dissolve the usual way in a minute or two, and he really needs to be focused right now. The glassy-brittle feeling is back, and his thoughts aren't quite as unimpeded as usual, there are some directions he finds himself flinching away from. He's pretty sure he can manage fine until tonight, though, and this is time-sensitive.) 

Melody is standing a ways off talking to one of the Healers, but her eyes flick to him and she purses her lips slightly before returning her attention to the conversation. 

"I'm sorry. Obviously if we'd known this - negotiated peace - were possible we could've kept more people alive. But it seemed very likely that we needed to win very fast."

"I suspect it was the right call given the information you had," Leareth says, without expression. "- Do you want to ask me questions, now, or should I try to explain in order." He lifts a hand to rub his temple, gives Matirin an apologetic look. "I can do that but I may be a little scattered. It has been a shockingly intense two days." 

"I can only imagine. I can provide what we know and you can fill in the missing pieces. We know that the Yeerks captured Emril in D.C. and our Farseers missed it amidst the evacuation. We know that they set almost all of their resources on this planet to gassing every mine in Alaska, which got your base but not the other two. We presume that they took prisoners and attempted to infest them as usual."

Nod. "Yes - though I think not everyone they got out alive, there were insufficient Yeerks for it. Hmm." Getting the order right is hard. "Some time before that, Enstat, the Yeerk they put in Emril, alerted the Visser that she thought I could be negotiated with. He was feeling very spooked and out of control at the time, I think, and did not act on this, but when I was in the gassed mine, he immediately ordered that I be evacuated first. I - woke up with a different Yeerk in my head, I think, while he was in transit from elsewhere, the Yeerk was trying to convey to him that he needed to see it for himself? That I was - complicated, he said. That is all I remember before Visser Three arrived, I was very out of it." 

He pauses, collecting his thoughts in order for the next part. 

"We think that they gassed people for longer than intended because of the scale of the operation, they were simultaneously trying to check the mines for people and didn't have enough personnel."