"- All right, can you not pick right now to do the thing where you stare at me and don't say anything for thirty seconds." 

"I am thinking how to order it, hmm... I received evidence that other worlds exist, at least two of them, with different gods and different magic from ours." 

"Wait, what?" 

"A person inexplicably appeared in a secure location, which should have been impossible for anyone to enter with our world's magic. He was in poor condition and thus we have limited explanations from him, but he claims to have been teleported here from another world." Maybe he'll skip over the snake monster bit for now, it just adds another layer of absurdist comedy to the whole thing. "In that world, according to his telling there is currently a war happening between an alien species he called Elves, and an evil god and his allies, including a species he created." 

"He was a prisoner of this god and - was tortured in various ways. He thinks everyone he interacts with here is a hallucination that this god is using to amuse himself and torture him further." 

"I realize this is very implausible, and am not expecting you to believe me, but - I will be taking every step I can to confirm or falsify it, and if it is true, then it changes my priorities substantially." He looks Vanyel in the eye. "I am even tempted to say our priorities." 

"What do you mean." 

"You know the values I claim to hold. We both know that words are cheap and cannot by themselves prove my true intentions, but - in fact, I am trying to save everyone, and...I would consider that to include those in other worlds. Especially people who are currently being horrifically tortured by an evil god, who if he wins this war will do it to all of them - and he knows that other worlds exist, now, because the young man he took prisoner was from yet a third world... I will go to great lengths to stop this. And if I do that, I would ask your help." 

Leareth waits. 

"I - um..." Blink blink. "If you haven't noticed, now isn't a great time to go help other kingdoms, or worlds or whatever, we kind of have a war to deal with." 

"Obviously I would try to help you end it, if I were asking your aid; I would not demand that you turn your back on your country, Herald Vanyel." 

Vanyel feels like if Leareth says one more word then his BRAIN is going to fall out of his EARS. 

Sigh. "I understand. I think you feel much the way I did when I first heard, and we both need time to absorb it." 

"I - thank you for telling me, I guess." Vanyel swallows hard. 

Leareth inclines his head slightly. "- You ought get more rest, Herald Vanyel. I worry that this war is very hard on you." 

Vanyel rolls his eyes. 

The dream ends, and Leareth wakes up, groans, rolls over and grabs for his paper, and takes some hasty shorthand notes before falling asleep again. 

He sleeps quite late, checks in with the Healers and confirms that there's been no real change with their rescued prisoner, and immediately dives into the thorny problem of trying to locate other worlds. 

Mara swaps off with another Healer in the late morning, and then Tarla is back that evening, bringing supper for him. It's chunky stew with meat, and buttered bread, and some cut-up fruit. 

:Hey: she says, in a friendly tone, and sits down with her book, not planning to interact further unless he initiates it.  

He doesn't. He isn't thrilled about the meat - he recalls, though he does not elaborate on, the fact that Maitimo became a vegetarian - but he'll eat it. He looks at the title of her book but can't read it and flops back into bed after he's put away all the food.

She manages not to roll her eyes; Leareth would probably also be un-thrilled about the meat, but her professional opinion as a Healer is that extremely malnourished recently-tortured-prisoners need varied nutrition and lots of protein, and she would be very irritated if someone tried to feed her six boiled eggs a day. 

:I could read you a book in Mindspeech: she offers, a while later, when he's flopped but clearly still awake. :If you're bored: 

He does not evince an opinion. It's probably a ploy to get him to have thoughts but even just letting all the words smooth away into noise is better than literally nothing and he can probably do that.

So she starts her book again at the beginning and recite it to him in Mindspeech. It's a book of various medium-length historical ballads about bizarre events which may or may not be at all accurate and involve a lot of magic; they're all written in blank verse, which gives the reading a soothing rhythmic quality.