:I can hear you: He tells Amanda that he'll have Visser 3 back either late tonight or possibly tomorrow morning if he's too tired to Gate by the time they finish, and then he Gates them back to the Andalite base. 

:Cayaldwin? Here with him: 

<I will pull up the research. You figured this all out yourself?> he asks Mhalir. <It took my father a decade.>

:Yes: And he had to do it mostly in his head and lock Alloran out of his senses for any practical work, but that's the worst idea to bring up to another Andalite so he doesn't. :I had been thinking about it in the abstract as soon as I knew morph existed at all, and - I had twenty years and was very, very motivated: 

<Huh.> And he can dive into what he's worked out so far, from the notes his father left behind.

Mhalir orients to it reasonably fast, and starts adding in commentary in Mindspeech. Which is pretty indistinguishable from Leareth’s mindvoice, except for the occasional word-choice more appropriate to Earth than Velgarth, and slightly more use of Earth idioms.

Leareth can kind of follow for a while and then they’re into morph theory he hasn’t covered and way ahead of him. 

If Yeerks hadn't killed his father this would be so much better but he's not going to refuse help piecing it together. And that's objectively kind of impressive. And it's not the Yeerk's fault he's a Yeerk, really. He'd be quite a good Andalite, if he'd been born one.

Aww, Leareth is pleased (and not all that surprised) that Cayaldwin actually gets along fine with Mhalir. 

He lets them go at it until very late, and eventually overrides and begs off, his brain is so exhausted right now. :Cayaldwin, do you think you got enough from him? I suppose he can stay a little longer in the morning, just, I really need to sleep: 

<Oh, of course. We can keep going in the morning.>

Oh gods is he ever going to separate them, Leareth is thinking. 

<I heard that> Mhalir sounds amused. 

:He approves of you, I think. Anyway, I am far too tired to Gate, so I suppose I will send a message to your host that you will be back later tomorrow morning, and you can - sleep in my head? Since the alternative is putting you in a fishbowl or something, that seems silly: 

<Sure. I cannot control your body even if I wake up before you. ...I suppose I could have a Mindspeech conversation with Cayaldwin from bed.> 

:I am pretty sure that if you start Mindspeaking using my brain, I will wake up: 

<Fine, I will let you sleep as much as you need even though I am very impatient.> 

Leareth flops into bed and is asleep within a couple of minutes. He does wonder, half-awake, if he'll have the ice dream, that would be kind of hilarious to explain to Vanyel, though in general he hasn't been having it while they're in the same place and talking every day. 

He doesn't, and sleeps very well albeit with weird math dreams again. 

Mhalir is awake when he is, sort of mentally bouncing. <You have very fascinating dreams. Can we go back now?> 

:Yes, all right: And he very gently Mindspeaks Cayaldwin to check if he's awake, but avoid waking him if he's not yet. 

...Meanwhile he's going to do his morning waking-up ritual, which is morphing Andalite and galloping around the field very fast. 

Cayaldwin is doing the more traditional morning Andalite waking-up ritual, and catches up to him after that. <Once we fix the morph limit are you going to have a reasonable number of legs all the time?>

:Probably more of the time, anyway! I think I appreciate the more reasonable number of eyes even more than the legs, I am so much less antsy in open spaces in this body: 

<That is also one of the things I hated about being human when I tried it> he agrees. 

:Andalite bodies are better in many ways! So far as I can tell, the main advantage I have as a human is that I can morph two dozen times a day:

<Are you doing it more efficiently or are humans just really really good at exertion or something?>

:I think I have gotten more per day by training something efficiency-related, but humans also have good endurance, I think. And, who knows, perhaps being Gifted helps: 

And he lets Mhalir have his Mindspeech again. 

:This is Mhalir now: Mhalir clarifies, sounding exactly the same as Leareth. :Shall we resume where we left off?: