Well, mostly she'd been scared that she had travelled in time and erased Leareth from existence and was going to have to do it all herself, with baby Leareth and an actual literal baby, and was going to die and not get an afterlife. Ma'ar - she'd been obsessively trying to check if she was right that he was Leareth, and then trying to - figure out how to make him Leareth - in hindsight a kind of questionable thing to do but she doesn't regret it, either, he'd been old enough that he already wanted something more, even if he didn't have the skills or details yet...

"I like Ma'ar - your Ma'ar, who grew up here, I think Leareth and I were probably quite different. He is very...earnest." He closes his eyes. It's nice to watch and also sometimes it makes him feel even more tired in comparison. It's a stupid kind of tired, too, it has nothing to do with how much he's slept, it just happens when he thinks thoughts that hurt. 

He's a really good kid. She thinks they can make him the right shape for the tasks he'll be facing, even if it's a bit different than he'd otherwise be.

She wonders if Tadesse needs - 'a wife' is probably the wrong thing, and also the multiple people situation would make it hard, but - people who - well, he has Ekunde's family - she's not sure what Tadesse needs. She isn't even clear on whether this is helping.

It's hard for Tadesse to tell if it's helping either, but he does feel more like he's pointing in a direction and moving that way, now, even if he hasn't sketched out the final goal. 

"I - think I was lonely," he admits. "Before. I had them, and it was something, but." Another shrug. "I think my feelings now are - still catching up to the situation having changed." 

She nods.

She thinks Leareth was lonely when he met her even though he'd met Aroden and was in love with Khemet and was close friends with Vanyel, by that point? He was lonely as a habit instead of lonely in an acute sense. It seems like that might describe Tadesse, too.

"Maybe. I think I feel - a lot of things, as a habit." Tadesse looks at her almost plaintively. "Something is wrong with me. It was - I mean, I noticed, just, it was not as obvious from the inside..." His eyes are almost scared. 

- huh, that wasn't especially an outcome she expected from the mindreading. Hug? She does not normally hug people who aren't family but this is kind of also Leareth and Leareth has never evinced caring and Tadesse looks so - lost, and she wants him to be okay...

Tadesse also doesn't normally hug people - in general, he thinks, this lifetime is already an exception with Ekunde's family and that's still mostly Ekunde not him. But it seems like it'll help, maybe, and - he wants it, there's something he's grasping vaguely for and hugging Carissa isn't quite it but it's the closest thing he can pin down. He will take a hug. 

(He remembers sitting with Aroden in the metaphorical leaking cottage, in the dark - he assumes it was Aroden's memory...)

- and now for some reason he's crying again?? It's odd and confusing to notice how flattened and muted most of his emotions were, in recent years, and frustrating that the ones he's having now are all painful. 

She leans against him and hugs him. She doesn't know what he needs. She met Leareth once he already had pretty much everything he needed. He needed her in a practical sense, of course, he needed a Chelish wife and Chelish children, but he was all right, and clearly would be with or without her, with or without anything... Tadesse presumably would be too, since he becomes Leareth eventually, just, it'd take a while.

She is not accustomed to thinking that suffering is bad or ought to be avoided for its own sake, and isn't sure if crying is what he wants to be doing, but he can figure that out, presumably.

Whether he wants to be crying is a confusing question, but it sure does seem to be what's happening anyway, and given that he doesn't feel like fighting it.

Being held is nice. It doesn't make a lot of sense but he feels less tired, as though he can lean on her mentally as well as physically. 

He doesn't cry for very long, this time, it stops by itself after less than a minute and he feels somehow drained but clearheaded at the same time. 

"I thought I was all right," he says, softly. "Or - that I would be... I had not really been thinking about - trying to do things on purpose to make it happen sooner. Staying with Ekunde's family was a little bit that, I think, but - mostly I was just reacting. Which is - uncharacteristic of me." 

It sure is uncharacteristic of him! It was really worrying!

"I think it felt a little as though - every time I had tried to do things on purpose, to - have plans to fix things, they had ended up being for nothing, and caused harm in the process..." 

Huh. 

She tries to imagine that.

She can imagine thinking that you ought to be smaller because you are out of your league and inviting trouble you can't handle but that seems different. She can imagine thinking that you are very very stupid for having dared to do anything at all, but...that also seems different.

"No," he muses, "it was not really either of those... I - knew I needed to be bigger, in a way, or - at least to think bigger, and smarter, and further ahead. And - that I needed to slow down and not immediately execute new plans, for a while, until I understood the constraints..." Shrug. "Except, it felt - hard to get traction on that, I suppose, 'be smarter' is hard to just do on purpose as an action. And - I think I was scared. Of having to - go with the plan where I murdered so many people - of it turning out I was in the world where that was my best option..." Shiver. 

Well, right now people in Velgarths don't even get an afterlife, and he might be able to fix that. Carissa would of course probably still be upset if someone murdered her and her whole family but if it was to cause there to be an afterlife then it'd be - she'd mostly only be angry at herself, for not being valuable enough she could've figured out a way to be more useful to that project alive.

"I wanted to fix that. Or - at least make it so people can come back, as themselves rather than just - reborn as babies remembering nothing... I suppose Leareth would know more about whether he ended up believing that was possible." 

She hasn't talked about it with Leareth that much because it's temporarily not the top priority but resurrection is at least theoretically possible, because the nearby Velgarth gods agreed to let Golarion resurrection magic do it, if they didn't need the soul in question for something.

Nod. 

"I think it was not incorrect, to - take a step back from my plans. But. Hmm. Leareth thought I was probably - missing some sort of emotional coping mechanism that he learned later - possibly because of this, actually. And so I did not know how to handle that, or something." 

That follows? If she imagines Leareth somehow learning that everything they've been doing is a mistake and they need to - what would be actually horrifying to her, killing ten million people wouldn't be - they need to destroy Hell -

 - she imagines him being quiet and reflective and wanting lots of snuggles that he'd prefer to turn into sex but won't himself initiate - sorry, Tadesse, Tadesse probably does not want her thoughts about that - and she expects he'd spend lots of time practicing magic, as something generally useful to the project even if he hasn't figured out how it'd be specifically useful...

Tadesse is unbothered by her thinking about sex; he's mildly confused, mostly because he can't remember particularly wanting that at any point in the last century and his recent notes don't mention it either, but it mostly doesn't register. 

"I think I spent my last life mostly studying magic," he says. "And - trying to find the other continent was something that seemed worthwhile even if I could not guess how, I had hoped someone would know more of it, but we went all the way around the continent and spoke to so many people and no one has been there that anyone remembers, there are just stories and legends." Sigh. "I - was trying to do useful things, just, I suppose it did not feel like making progress - I did not feel excited or hopeful about it, I think maybe I have not felt those things in a long time." 

That doesn't seem at all weird in the context he was in but admittedly seems super weird in light of that context changing to a distinctly exciting and hopeful one.

"Maybe it is a habit? Like the habit of being lonely. It - is as though I have forgotten what hope and excitement feel like." 

That follows. And also sounds like it would be terrible. 

It's pretty terrible! And...he still doesn't feel actually-hopeful or optimistic, not on a gut level, but...at least he can notice that all the reasons to think hopefully and optimistically are there? Maybe the feeling will catch up eventually. 

"It is interesting that coming here seems to have made me feel worse in the short run," he says. "Aroden thought it might be a matter of - not having enough resources to adapt to it, especially right after the very stressful sea voyage, but I am not sure." 

Leareth had noticed that. It seems weird to her for not having the problem that made you sad to make the sadness worse but she's really not a sadness expert.