Ranara and her little daughter Azabel move to Urtho's Tower when the latter can say six words ("up", "mama", "milk", "no", "now", and "please") and hasn't started to walk yet. Ranara sets up to teach little children to read, ones who don't have evident Gifts yet - Ranara herself has Mindspeech, is all, with about a classroom's worth of range. Azabel sits in on classes, worn on her mother's back or later plopped in a corner with toys or, when she's only four, plopped in a corner with a book, younger than the other kids in the class. When Azabel has in fact sat through her mother's curriculum she is turned somewhat loose, to walk very carefully up and down and around the Tower, exploring.
"EEEE I had it for a sec - I'll try again, keep going, you can repeat stuff till I'm closer to having it down, it won't make a difference till then -"
“Eeeeee!!! That’sss sssso exsssiting!” Skan’s gryphon accent gets much more marked lately when he’s excited.
He racks his memory and tries to repeat things from before until Azabel tells him it matters again.
She lets him know, when she's got the hang of the blur to the point where she can pay somewhat more attention to what he's in fact saying.
Oh no now he has to come up with more ideas for truths and lies and in-betweens, this game gets hard after a while!
"- I read a book about a bridge that collapssed because the inventor wass drunk when he dessigned it." (Not quite true, the bridge collapsed and the engineer had been negligent but probably not drunk.) "My friend Latiksha likess the colour blue." (True.) "My father was sscared of the dark when he was little..." (False; it's his mother who was.)
She's catching nearly all of his lies! It's not as accurate as when she does it with Mindhealing yet, especially on the ambiguous cases; Skan discovers he can slip things through by thinking mostly about the part that is true and not the false aspects.
Then she needs more practice! (She has shorthand for various flavors of ambiguity and is working on having the same finesse with those in this mode as she does with Mindhealing-Sight.)
She can make a little more progress in the next candlemark of practicing, and then Skan begs off, promising that he'll spend some time thinking of LOTS AND LOTS of truths and lies for the next time she wants to practice.
"You're welcome!" Bounce bounce. "Obvioussly you figured it out, you're the sssmartesst!" He's so proud of his friend. "Want me to fly you home?"
She is very smug the next day; having gotten it down enough to avoid accidental mindreading even if she doesn't have her discernment perfect she spent all evening practicing on Ranara and thinks she has it perfect in both modes now.
Ma'ar notices this the next day when they're in class together. He arrives late, but can still reach out to her in Mindspeech.
:- You seem really happy about something?:
:I finagled Thoughtsensing-based lie detection! It went really fast probably because I knew the results I was looking for from the Mindhealing kind. I'll write a treatise on it as long as the book's on Urtho's desk for the time being:
:Wow! That's so impressive - good work!:
There is, perhaps, the very faintest hint of distance or discomfort or something in that neighbourhood, in Ma'ar's mindvoice, but mostly his praise is very sincere.
:Yeah, I beat Lionwind to it!: she says after a pause in which she decides not to pursue the discomfort.
:I practiced with Skan till he was sick of it and then Ranara once I had it down enough that I wouldn't read her thoughts accidentally:
Ma'ar is also going to focus on class.
He doesn't try to evade pursuit afterward; in fact, he sort of half-glances back at Azabel.