She doesn't know much about it but she can try to share what she knows! Maybe they should try to talk Leareth into a Healer exchange program.

Calib will bring it up to Leareth! 

Eventually he excuses himself, apologetically, says that he has work to catch up on now. 

"Of course."

The next few days are uneventful. The gossip about Valdemar trails off once it's clear that diplomatic relations have settled into a holding pattern. 

Leareth approaches her again four days later. :Is now a good time to talk?:

Her schedule isn't very busy. She spends her spell slots on exploding things and works on a nicer headband for herself and a design for an item with flight. She tries not to spend all her time obsessing over their last conversation. 

:Now is fine.:

Leareth sits down. :I - have been thinking, and I am still very uncertain, but. If I am going to trust you, I think it matters to me that I understand your thinking, and that you understand mine. ...And that you not be afraid of me. If - reading my mind would help, you can do that: 

:I don't think I'm afraid of you. I'm - confused about you, and reading your mind might help with that, but - I'm really not afraid of you. 

You can read my mind, right? And I still confuse you?:

:- I think you, per se, confuse me less now. I just have a great deal of uncertainty on - how to interact with you as an equal, given our different backgrounds and ways of thinking: 

:It seems - like a mistake to want to interact as equals if we....aren't? Maybe I'm thinking of different things than the things you mean by it, but - you have more resources than me and are better at magic than me. I am not sure it would be useful to - pretend that wasn't true.:

:- No, I think I mean a different thing. Something that is compatible with that. In the sense that I mean, Nayoki, for example, is my equal, and I know how to work with her on that footing: 

:Nayoki is....not someone you need to carefully manage in order to get her to work on your goals? Nayoki is - able to take care of herself? Nayoki is - likely to sometimes think of things you missed?:

:Yes, all of that sounds right. I - do not see any reason why the same could not be true with you? And yet it feels very different, right now: 

:...I think all of those claims sound true to me about me? I give you advice less than Nayoki, I guess, but that's mostly not being caught up on things...There's - I am deferential to you in the sense of expecting you'll do what you want and I'll build around it, and I don't think all of your people think of it that way? Is that part of it?:

Leareth nods. :That seems right. And - hmm. It may be partly on my side, too, if - I became used to working with you back when you were even more deferential, and I have not yet made a deliberate effort to shift that pattern: 

:I don't really see why you would want to but I also haven't seen why you'd want various things you've wanted and it has usually turned out to make sense eventually.:

Leareth sighs. :Usually I could be clearer! I am still figuring this out too. But - I think Nayoki is right that I am lonely, and - that thinking of someone as an equal, in that sense, is necessary for it to help at all with that: 

:Huh. In, like, the same spirit as it's sort of pathetic to have no friends or lovers who aren't your slaves?:

:...Whenever you use the word 'pathetic' I am not quite sure how to unpack what you mean by it. Anyway, if someone were my slave, I - would not call them either a friend or a lover, to me those concepts require - not that. In practice, almost none of the people who work for me are what I would consider slaves - at least, not in this project and lifetime - but I am, nonetheless, apparently lonely. I cannot really tell; perhaps I no longer know any other way to be: 

:Uh, things are pathetic when they're about - living in a world that's nicer than the real world. So it's pathetic to believe that someone loves you or to imagine you won't go to Hell or to imagine you're so special you won't need correction when you get there or to imagine someone is your friend when there are obvious practical reasons they'd be nice to you whether they liked you or not. Building a god would normally be very pathetic but I think if you can actually do it then it can't be, really.:

Leareth laughs, short and harsh and bitter. :Trust me, building a god is the opposite of pretending I live in a nicer world. It is - something I accepted only once I could admit to myself just how un-nice this world is, that such a solution to its problems could possibly be justified. ...Sometimes it has been tempting to pretend that if I keep trying strategies with less horrific costs, someday they will work, but after eighteen hundred years of trying, I do not think it likely: 

- nod. :It's - imagining that you live in a world where you could change things, though. Which ...makes sense, you can, but most people who do that are kind of kidding themselves, I think.:

:...I do not think it is such a neat either-or as that? Most people can change something, if they take a small enough corner of the world as their own. Perhaps Cheliax is unusually broken in this respect, because it sounds as though your neighbours are by default your enemies and not your allies:

:I think certainly Cheliax does less encouraging the impression you can change something meaningful if you personally wish. I am not totally sure yet whether in discouraging that it makes people more accurate or less so. 

I do think it's different here.:

:...I think it is not about whether it makes people more or less accurate in the abstract? Since - expectations change behaviour, and obviously people will not succeed at changing things they would prefer different if they are too afraid to try: Leareth shakes his head. :And, again, this is a digression. The point is that - I think I will trust you more if you are not trying to stay small: 

:Huh.

I don't think I am trying to stay small, at this point. I might still - have most of the habits of someone trying to stay small? But my plan is to reinvent all of wizardry and become immortal and help you build your god, that's not very small.: