(to Yfandes)  :Glad to be of service.  I've never in my life helped any one person that much before,: assuming it did in fact work permanently and without significant negative side effects, :and it's a very good feeling.:  That will feel much more solid once she's sure that it was in fact a good deed.

(to Lissa)  :If the wait is a candlemark I'll wait, if not - then I guess realistically I should take the bump, given that I'm trying to juggle some important work and I may need to talk to Very Serious People tomorrow.  But goodness does it feel awful to admit that I need the bump, and I understand Vanyel a little better now.:   Valdemar Syndrome, she's guessing, happens in part when people don't put enough prices on aspects of their social organization; they feel socially awkward asking for special treatment, instead of just paying more for it.  :Also if you have paper and pencil, that isn't too horrifically expensive, that would be helpful for organizing my thoughts.:

:I think right now the waiting list is at least three days. I don't feel bad about bumping you. And, sure, I can get you paper, and a pen. What's a 'pencil'?: 

:A pencil is a pen that writes using solid ink that stays on the surface of the paper, so an eraser can wipe it off if you make a mistake!  We use graphite but I've got no idea how to manufacture particular molecular structures of carbon in a low-tech economy.  I'd expect the idiom to extend to other substances, though, we've just got to find something cheaper that can be rubbed off from paper without damaging it.  Meanwhile I'll take a pen and think more before writing.:

:...and I'll take the bath, I guess, and the borrowed clothes.  It'd be good if my otherworldly clothes can be laundered before the Gate?  It'd diminish the burden of credibility I have to shoulder without Vanfandes present.:

Lissa will cheerfully arrange this! The main effect of her copious wine consumption seems to be that she's having more fun. 

The clothes she's lent are plain homespun linen, dyed brown, and somewhat too big. The bathtub is copper and not that spacious, but it has a pump and a tank heated over a boiler, rather than requiring buckets of water to be carried in, and the water is plenty hot. 

Thellim lowers herself into the... passable attempt at a bath... and finally takes a moment to stop and think to herself, as she tries to scrub dirt off her skin in the presumably-limited bath time she has available.  She's more used to thinking in the shower, but, well, low GDP per capita and heating water costs energy.

If Thellim hasn't forgotten anything, her current list of issues looks like:

- Figure out what Valdemar can sell fast enough to become rich rapidly enough that the children don't starve in winter.
-- Maybe nobody has developed pencils and maybe other countries would pay a lot for those?
-- Maybe this line of thought really should mostly wait on her getting to Haven, a city large enough that it will no doubt have market research specialists.
- Figure out everything she did wrong procedurally while she was doing Manic Science to Vanyel.
-- This item seems relatively more urgent, in case there's anything she can do to remedy that afterwards before Vanyel and her and Melody all split up.
- See if it's possible to help Vanyel more by just talking to him from another world's standpoint?
-- More generally, check Vanyel for additional quests in a quest chain now that the last one has been semi-completed.
- Figure out what form of mind control is on Yfandes, possibly other Companions.
-- After what, the next question is who and why, followed by whether the mind control can and should be partially or wholly broken.
-- Even if Yfandes isn't unique in being controlled, this project might go better with a Mindhealer and not just verbal probes from Thellim; so maybe Thellimelody has to do it tomorrow?
--- Unless Melody follows Thellim through the Gate.  Which might be a sellable idea given the effectiveness of the Thellimelody merge and that Haven may have other previously untreatable cases to do Manic Science to.
--- Or unless Thellim can unlock her Mindhealing potential, which brings up:
- What's the usual way of unlocking Mindhealing potential, and any other latent Gifts Thellim proves to have?  Thellim forgot to ask how to do that, and Melody seemed to think Thellim had the Gift but it wasn't open.
- Review recent events to see if they hint at an Improbable Hand organizing Thellim's arrival towards some decipherable later purpose...

Actually, even on preliminary review, events rather seem to hint that way?  Thellim arrived near the most powerful mage, in a country where children would otherwise starve to death in winter.  Thellim had an active Mindspeaking gift, powerful enough to reach non-Mindspeakers like Lissa across the language barrier, and/or powerful enough to hold up Thellim's end of concert-work.  Shortly after, Thellim and Vanyel ended up near enough to a Mindhealer that she and Melody together could significantly help Vanyel.  Thellim had her own Mindhealing potential, which may have contributed to that success, but not open potential.

This could all be coincidence, but it sure looks like a teleological strategy by an agent with superhuman forecasting ability, but a limited resource budget for things like giving Thellim Gifts that are already open.  Maybe Thellimelody should take a stronger poke at seeing if Vanyel has meliorable Gate issues, just in case that's part of the Plan?  Thellimelody wouldn't necessarily have to tell Vanyel right away what they'd done, before his rest was over; but Vanyel would still have that resource in emergencies.  Thellim will have to think about the ethics of that.

Wait, now she's starting to go depth-first instead of breadth-first on her list of issues.  Also she's slowed down too much on scrubbing herself, there are people waiting.

Thellim starts in on her hair.  If Haven doesn't have more advanced bathing technology she'll probably end up cutting her hair.  The thought feels sad, sadder than Thellim would have expected, but Thellim's previous decision to grow long hair was premised on access to more technologically advanced haircare and also generally lower opportunity costs on her time.

Adaptation is a virtue.  Not always a happy virtue, but a virtue nonetheless.

- Make Vanyel eat more food.  No, more food than that.  Make him keep eating until he stops looking like he's going to die.

Thellim's just going to keep thinking that until she gives in and explicitly adds it to her mental list of open tasks, isn't she?  Fine, consider it added, silly brain.

Vanyel takes a long bath, reheating the water with magic when it starts to get cold.

Alone in the privacy of the bathhouse - well, bath-tent - he spends a while poking at the broken lifebond.

It does, in fact, still hurt when he thinks of Tylendel. But only for a moment; it's no longer the constant, sucking vortex of pain always tugging at the back of his mind.

And...in a way, it hurts less now than quite a lot of other thoughts. 

Killing a thousand Karsite soldiers in a single moment of incandescent rage. The shame he felt after. Normal people, people who aren't him, can't do that much damage. 

Riding through burned fields - or, somehow almost worse, not burned at all, just abandoned, empty, the crops rotting in the autumn rains with no one there to harvest them. 

The time he stumbled up to an abandoned cottage, too tired to pitch his tent, and looked inside in hopes of finding a place to sleep, and instead found the shriveled bodies of two children, maybe eight and ten, curled up alone on a straw mattress. 

Eventually, when dusk is falling outside, Yfandes reaches out with a gentle Mindtouch. She keeps her mental distance, leaving him the privacy of his thoughts, but probably she can sense his mood.

She doesn't comment on it, though. :Chosen, you should get some sleep: 

:I guess: 

Of course, the problem with this plan is that he needs a place to sleep, and he's way too tired to even think about the prospect of putting up his tent. 

An affectionate mental pat. :Lissa thought of that. You can go here: She flashes him an image and sense of direction. 

:Oh. Can you - thank her for me...: 

Swaying with sheer exhaustion, Vanyel hauls himself out of the bath and puts on the robe that someone appears to have thoughtfully dropped off for him - Lissa, maybe, he'll try to remember to ask her... 

He makes his way to the tent, half asleep on his feet, and vaguely thinks that he has no idea where his saddlebags are and should probably do something about that, but the narrow folding cot is singing a siren song of temptation to him. Also there's a pocket pie laid out for him, the kind with a pastry layer tough enough to hold together so it can be eaten on the run. It's still warm. 

He manages to eat half of it before his eyelids start sticking shut, and he gives up and flops down on the cot and is asleep within thirty seconds. 

And then, some time later, there's a frozen wasteland, snow blowing in a bitter wind, and a man dressed in black with an army at his back, facing Vanyel across fifty yards of empty white. 

"Herald Vanyel." 

Wow he is incredibly not in the mood for this. 

Vanyel does his best to keep his face perfectly level and uninformative. "Leareth." 

Leareth takes a step forward, his eyes widening very slightly. He looks Vanyel over head-to-toe. 

"- It appears I am missing some context." 

It is UNFAIR how Leareth is somehow the most perceptive person in the entire history of the world and can always tell when Vanyel is hiding something. 

"Maybe," he says, as neutrally as he can manage. "I'm not sure why I would tell you, though." 

Leareth inclines his head a little in acknowledgment. Keeps looking at Vanyel in that uncomfortable way that makes it feel like he's seeing right through Vanyel's skin. 

"...I think I am pleased for you," he says after another long silence. 

What in all hells is THAT supposed to mean. 

"Er, thank you, I guess?" 

Leareth nods fractionally, and then goes on LOOKING at him, his eyes calculating and otherwise unreadable. 

"I imagine you have found a new Mindhealer," he says finally. "An exceptionally skilled one." 

Goddamnit this is incredibly awkward. 

"It's not really any of your business," Vanyel says tightly. 

Leareth's eyes narrow slightly. 

"Indeed. However, I am curious." Another long pause. "And...surprised. Was there - a string of odd low-probability coincidences involved?"

There's an odd sort of emphasis in his voice on the 'coincidences' part. 

"Huh?" 

Vanyel is so confused, and kind of scared; he can't figure out how Leareth is guessing all of that just from his face - or does he have way better spy-coverage of the Valdemaran camp than Vanyel had thought - it doesn't seem likely that he can actually read Vanyel with Thoughtsensing in the dream and has concealed this for a decade -

He's even more baffled as to why Leareth cares so much about whatever change he's apparently noticing, and in particular why it matters to him if there were 'coincidents' involved. 

Distraction, distraction, he needs a change of topic... Unfortunately, just about everything on his mind is Thellim-related and Leareth absolutely should not know about that. 

Is there anything he can think of that at least won't be an obviously bizarre non-sequitur from their previous conversations - 

"Leareth, I do have a question for you." 

Another long, piercing look that makes Vanyel feel like his skin is transparent and Leareth is deducing way more than he has any right to - and not saying any of it which is even more unfair - but he nods. 

"Er, if you had, hypothetically, thought of a method that might make it way faster and easier to copy books, if it worked, and...were considering whether to build it and try to sell them... Where would you start? If you wanted to, say, sell a thousand copies of a book, is there a government that'd pay for that, and - what book or books would you start with -?" 

Apparently, this isn't quite as innocuous a question as Vanyel had been hoping, because Leareth blinks, his eyes widening slightly. 

"My advice," he says, slowly, as though picking out each word, "is that this project will likely be harder than you expect, and I am not sure I can in good faith recommend it. However. The Eastern Empire is among the wealthiest governments on the continent, and with the best-educated population. Trade with them is - complicated in some ways, but they would perhaps pay to have copies made of existing books." 

"Oh. Er, thank you for your advice." 

A flicker of a raised eyebrow. "I am rather curious what has you thinking of this. I thought you would be rather busy, in the middle of a war."