Vanyel arrives half an hour later, looking tense and worried. 

Somehow talking about feelings left Carissa feeling more stressed than before. She is flipping through letters and not really reading them.

Leareth ushers Vanyel over to the table and offers him a seat. He isn't, initially, even sure where to start. 

Teenage Ma'ar wanders out and joins them. "Hey, Vanyel. Did you hear about movies? They're a thing from Earth, the other me who's a brain slug showed us one -" 

And he can spend the next couple of minutes telling Vanyel about James Bond, while Leareth gets his bearings. 

How wise of him. She's very proud. 

Leareth glances around, puts up some additional magical privacy-wards despite the absurd number already on their suite, and finds a graceful moment to interrupt and take over. 

He tells Vanyel, quietly and seriously, everything that he learned from Mhalir about the war in the other Hell. And then switches to Mindspeech in order to mention the other Carissa's attempt to preventatively murder everyone on their ship, and Mhalir's reaction. 

Vanyel winces. :Gods. That's - it makes sense, I can see why she'd do it - I can imagine situations where I might do that - but. Gods. No wonder she's upset: 

"Anyway we don't really know what to ....do.... she snuck out of her suite as soon as we left her alone and when Leareth went and found her she wouldn't say where she went, and when he said we could put Mhalir back if we had to then she said that she injured her finger and went to find healing and she was sorry for scaring us, and - then she's just been sitting in her room ever since, declined meals -"

"Oh. I - wonder if she hurt herself on purpose." 

"If she what?" 

Now Vanyel looks incredibly self-conscious. "I, um. It - feels really rude to speculate about her like this, but...sometimes I do. When I'm really really upset about something." 

"- Why." 

"...It's distracting?" 

" - so is...reading a book! Or practicing magic!"

This is SO HUMILIATING why did he not think at all before he opened his mouth. "I, er, have you ever tried to concentrate on reading a book when you're really really upset, because maybe you can do that but I can't." 

" - no. Sorry, I don't mean to - I really appreciate you bringing things up, it's just - not something I've thought about very much. I guess that might explain why she wouldn't tell us what happened."

"I mean, if I were in her place I'd be way too mortified to! I - hadn't needed to do that, I have Healing, but Yfandes would still get so upset if she caught me doing it." 

"I'm surprised she doesn't have a wand of cure spells in her bag - I guess mostly they travel to other worlds where that wouldn't work -" Headshake. "I guess that makes me much less worried about last night. Thank you. 

What...do we do."

"I don't know. I - can talk to her, but, I mean, she doesn't have any reason to trust me, she doesn't know me at all." 

Vanyel still wants to melt into the floor out of sheer embarrassment, which is not making it any easier to think of ideas. 

"...And probably talking to Mhalir won't help given, um, their problem. Maybe the other Ma'ar is someone she'd trust enough to talk to? I mean, at least she's somewhat close with him, and he wasn't involved in the war." 

"Huh. Maybe. My read is that she tried reasonably hard, at not especially liking him.

Is this the kind of thing Mindhealers can fix?"

"Yes, maybe, but - it's not trivial and it also takes trust? I'm sure Melody would be happy to talk to her about her feelings - and Melody's very good - but Carissa doesn't have any reason to trust her either, right. And if I were her I'd be - really self-conscious and embarrassed about people making a fuss, and wouldn't want to keep feeling like everyone was making a big deal of it. Although that's just me, maybe she'd feel differently." 

"I really really doubt she wants everyone making a big deal of it. If it's Ma'ar it's less - that - because he has a reason to want to spend time with her anyway..."

"That seems right. Given that I - don't really want to press her to talk to me, although I'd be happy to meet her tonight. I guess you can tell Ma'ar that I'm, er, around, and then he can decide if that's worth bringing up to her later." 

Nod. "Thank you. That - at least is a plan. Which we previously didn't have at all. Should I be worried about her hiding in her room and not coming out?"

"- I don't think it's a reason to be more worried than you already were? I, um, spend a lot of time hiding by myself when I'm really sad. And...it's not ideal but I don't know that it'd be better if you were all on her back about things too."