"...I mean, not if she died of old age twenty years ago but yours was a baby who got murdered relatively recently!"

"- I think it's less sad because she was a tiny baby and not a person yet? And that's - sort of the point, right, if they'd waited until she had a name then my mother would've been attached and way more sad about it, and they already knew the clan couldn't feed another person..." 

"I guess if you're not sad about it that's fine."

"I'm...not not sad about it?" Now Ma'ar is feeling like there's something important here that he's failing to convey and he has no idea what it is. "Just, it's - I'm not more sad about her than I am about - all the women in the capital who'd had the King's guards do bad things to them, or - farmers whose children starved or died of the flux...or all the other things wrong in Predain..."

Shrug. "And - she didn't suffer much, right, not for long - he didn't just - leave her out to die of the cold, he clubbed her in the head until she wasn't alive anymore, and - and no one was lying about what they were doing, or - or pretending it was actually good and righteous..." 

Aza shifts a little uncomfortably. "I mean, objectively, yeah, lots of things are equally bad, but usually people specifically care about their families."

"That seems less good than - being able to do math and care about all of the people equally?" 

"Fine, I retract my hug." You could do math and also at the same time like specific people enough to have ever hugged a friend you've had for like a year before and mourn your murdered baby sister! These things are not in tension actually!

Ma'ar is now feeling even more off-balance and like he miscommunicated something even worse somehow. 

"No, I - didn't mind - I liked that you hugged me," he manages. "I...just don't get why you hugged me about that and not, I dunno, about the time the caravan guards I was with tried to rape me in the middle of the night and I had to run away and I probably killed one of them with magic–"

He cuts off. "...I guess I didn't. Tell you about that properly - felt like it'd come up but maybe it was just in hypotheticals..." Now he feels SO AWKWARD, which is a very unfamiliar feeling and he has no idea what to do with it. 

"You had not told me about that and I would ALSO have hugged you about that except now I am not clear on how to hug you about specific things and not about all of the misery in the universe without it being weird!"

"- Why can't you hug me about all the misery in the universe? That - seems like the most hug worthy thing, really?" 

"Well, it's always happening all the time and if you aren't partial to misery in the universe that happens to you then it seems weird to be partial about whether it happens to have come up in conversation so I would have to carry you around at all times and that would not work."

"- I don't have feelings about it all the time? That'd be - really counterproductive, then I wouldn't be able to focus on studying and getting stronger so I can actually fix it? ...Do you have feelings about it all the time, that sounds awful." 

"No, I do not have feelings about it all the time, but also I'm partial about it! Regardless of my ability to do math!"

"- Sorry? I didn't - I don't mean..." Ma'ar has no idea what thing he doesn't mean; he feels like Azabel somehow took his words and turned them into something completely different and now he's just confused and dizzy with it and it feels like all the words are quicksand. "Sorry. I - think you're good and I don't think you're bad and - I am going to go back to my room now -"

And he runs away before whatever incredibly stupid and pointless emotion he's having now has a chance to become any more inconvenient. 

Well, that could probably have gone worse somehow.

She goes home and practices magic instead of lie-detection all evening.

The next day when she sees him in class, Ma'ar is calm and smiles at her as though nothing unusual happened the night before. 

Okay, she can work with that. ...not without some disquiet but she's not going to try to hash that out in class.

(Ma'ar is also still kind of disconcerted by the whole thing, but he's not sure how to bring it up usefully at all, at least not until he understands a lot more things about other people which - are going to be hard to learn without mindreading, honestly. He wonders if he should try harder to make friends with some students other than Azabel so he can ask them without poking her on whatever made her upset earlier... Anyway this is not on-topic for class and he sets it aside and focuses on the practice exercise.) 

She does magic as competently as ever and proceeds to her Mindhealing lesson.

Lionwind is, as always, very perceptive. They're seeing a patient together first and he doesn't say anything during that session, and addresses Azabel in Mindspeech exactly as usual, but afterward, once he's caught up on the bare-minimum for his notes but before they discuss it fully, he peers at her. 

"Is everything all right? You seem a little preoccupied." 

"I'm a little preoccupied, yeah, I had a - weird conversation with Ma'ar yesterday? It wasn't really in a Mindhealing capacity - I mean, I was practicing lie-detecting on him at first but it wasn't about that."

"...Hmm. If it is still troubling you now, I am guessing this may be because it is - at least related to things that also came up in a more strictly Mindhealing capacity. Is that right, or is it something else?" 

"It's not unrelated, I guess."

Lionwind nods. "Well, I will leave it up to your judgement whether it is related enough to be worth us discussing now." 

"Um, he told me about how his baby sister got murdered when she was born because his clan couldn't feed another person, and I hugged him, and he was like, why did you hug me about that when I am equally sad about bad things happening to people I have never met, and I said most people are partial and he said it was better to be able to do math about it, and then asked why that and not the time caravan guards tried to rape him, which I guess he didn't see fit to bring up when I specifically asked about it because he was successful at self-defense and therefore it's irrelevant?? And then we got onto - whether either of us have feelings about all the misery in the world all the time, which we don't, and I said something defensive about being able to do math, and he, uh, apologized and ran away."