"I mean, I used to skim surface thoughts a lot? That's fine. I'm just really bored of people having the same feelings all the time that this is embarrassing or too hard or they feel awkward. You don't really get emotions as a Thoughtsenser unless you're in a meld, I think, but - they get repetitive." 

"That sounds more like Empathy than Thoughtsensing."

"One of the books I read in the library thought that maybe they're not as distinct as everyone says?" Ma'ar says, thoughtful. "Mindspeakers get overtones, and good Empaths can get images and bits of memories, which is content not just emotions. They're just - focused differently? Specialized differently?" 

"Lionwind and I were talking about that the other day, about how it could be hard to tell apart some Gifts... it's probably not the case that they're actually the same Gift but I do wonder what else there is to know about how they all relate to each other."

"Hmm. That's interesting. Why were you talking about that?" 

"Oh, the Haighlei apparently don't let anyone use Mind-Gifts for anything except truth checking, and have a way to do it with any Mind-Gift, and me and Lionwind are having a race to see who cracks doing it with Thoughtsensing first. But anyway that means they don't really know over there how many Gifts there are or which ones are the same versus different."

"Wow. That...seems like a waste of Gifts, really, but I guess it does mean they're not going around mindreading." Ma'ar has spent long enough around Azabel, at this point, to at least slightly feel like this is, perhaps, arguably, an advantage more generally and not just something that would appease her. "Oh, did you figure out how to do lie-detection with just Mindhealing yet?" 

"I can sometimes do it but I don't think I have it completely down yet, in practice people get past me if they tell me things that are kind of arguable."

"Huh! I guess the thing you're measuring is - intent, or something? Whether they're meaning to lie? And if they're only sort of meaning to then it's ambiguous?" 

"Yeah. But I think I can get more precise about it. Do you want to practice? Just tell me stuff and some of it can be true and some of it can be false."

"All right! ...Um, what sorts of things, I guess it has to be things you don't already know about me -?" 

"I mean, I can try on things I do know but it makes it harder to be sure why I know."

"Right. I - can talk about things from Predain before I came here, then." 

And Ma'ar starts attempting this. He thinks he was thirteen winters old when he left the Plains. (True.) The roads in Predain are red. (False.) The first town he passed was called Three Mills (arguable, it depends how you define 'town' and whether the settlements he passed before that were closer to villages...) 

Aza finds practicing this really fun. She notes her hit rate on a little graph.

Ma'ar is glad that it's useful! He can keep going for a while until he's out of ideas for true or false or arguable things to say. 

It's a fun game for him, too, and he's more relaxed after a while and also running low on content. 

"- And the chief of my tribe killed my baby sister before she was a person because there was a drought and too many cows'd died that summer," he adds. 

(This is true. Ma'ar says it very matter-of-factly, like it's exactly the same level of salient as 'I met a person at an inn once who had red hair.') 

They have probably been friends long enough that their relationship could withstand one erroneous hug, and if it is a non-erroneous hug it should happen. Aza hugs him.

Ma'ar is so startled! He goes rigid for a moment, holds himself perfectly still, then very deliberately relaxes. 

:What?: he asks - in Mindspeech, both because his face is currently sort of smushed against her which will muffle talking, and because it means her answer, if she follows his lead, will have Mindspeech overtones that might help him figure out WHY she picked this exact moment to do this unexpected thing. 

:- I can stop if you want?: Inconveniently for Ma'ar her Mindspeech is very low on overtones in general.

Ma'ar has to think for a moment about whether he wants her to stop. 

:No, it's fine, it's - nice - I'm just confused...?: 

:You just told me about your baby sister!:

:...I've told you about lots of things? I - it's sad, but - so are a whole bunch of things...?: 

:Well, that one was hugging-sad:

Ma'ar is still confused but he's not complaining. He will let himself be hugged. 

Eventually she lets him go.

Azabel's reaction to all of that was disconcerting, even if he wasn't originally upset about it, and Ma'ar doesn't really feel like continuing the practice. He feels very off-balance. 

"Is someone's sister being dead - normally the sort of thing you'd hug people about?" he says uncertainly.