...Wow.
It's not true, Leareth has to remind himself, it's just a feeling, an instinct generated by this morphed body. But it's also not not true. These are the people he won a war with. They're not perfectly aligned with him in all ways, most of them, but they are his allies. And - it feels like this is probably something he needs.
He lets the feeling envelop him as he drifts into sleep.
...
Leareth does quite a lot of things over the next few days, talks to Vanyel and Cayaldwin and Mhalir, catches up with his staff who he left in charge on Earth and on Velgarth, but it's at a pace that feels lazy and luxurious and actually quite restful. Settling back in often is, for him. And things on Earth have been going so well. Not perfectly, of course, there are plenty of snags to be dealt with, but the overall trajectory is one of improvement, and that in itself is soothing to hear updates on.
He talks to Melody for several hours, as soon as he can muster the energy for it. She agrees with his overall assessment that he's exactly the predicted amount of tired a person would be from the pace of the recent war, and that pushing through was a pretty reasonable choice - except for the time he passed out in orca morph, she looks so disapproving about that. She thinks the emotional side effects he's noticed - the dullness and lack of motivation or enthusiasm for his usual interests like research, the difficulty in feeling curious, the sense of narrowing and tunnel-vision and only the next day and the next battle quite feeling real - are all very much to be expected. Especially when he was working through the first month in a semi-constant state of magical exhaustion; she doesn't disagree that his starship-Gates were a key factor in their victory, or that it was worth it, but she still purses her lips.
He's been very consistently getting enough sleep and meals and such. Melody praises him for that. She guesses he'll be less physically fatigued once he's not needed for ridiculous Gates, which should help his mood, though she's planning to check back in a week. More than just rest in the usual sense, Melody thinks he needs a few months of not being constantly responsible for the fate of the world. (She makes such a face when she says that phrase.) Presumably this is doable, since Earth and Velgarth have chugged along just fine in his absence. Her orders are that he do whatever he feels like doing, which will probably end up being insanely valuable to the world anyway because he's himself, but that shouldn't be why he's choosing to do it.
This seems workable. Nayoki is back and Leareth tells her she's in charge.
Four days in, he visits Velgarth, and while he's there he might as well see if Alloran is available and up for Gating north to spar? (Leareth is a little irritated with Melody for volunteering him for this, he's - pretty sure that the difference between his sparring and fighting-for-real is grounded in whether he actually intends to kill someone, he doesn't know if he can manage the headspace and attendant signs of it without the intention, and it would be so terrible in every way if he killed Alloran while attempting to do therapeutic sparring with him. Maybe he'll discreetly put a shield on him or something.)