Down at the end of the aisle between the tents, in the slightly wider open space, Lissa is doing some sort of sparring-practice with a blunted sword. She is very fast and ferocious and looks like she's having fun. 

Thellim watches this dance / morning-exercise in cheerful delight.  It's elegant and clearly purposeful, even if she has no idea what foreign sport the motions are meant to practice.  She'll wait for a pause rather than interrupt Lissa; it's nice to just watch something innocent and fun for a bit.

After a while Lissa fails to dodge a blow and is knocked down flat in the mud by the man she’s sparring with, who crows in delight.

He offers her a hand and she takes it and bounces to her feet, grinning and laughing as they shake hands. “Guess I’m very dead again!” There’s mud all down her side but she’s wearing very plain workout clothes and doesn’t seem bothered by this.

After a few seconds she spots Thellim and waves, jogging over. “Morning!”

:Morning!  That looked like an interesting sport you were practicing, there's nothing like it where I come from and we have a lot of sports!  Is the sport two-player, or is it more complicated and you were just practicing one particular role?:

:Huh? Er, I - guess the second? In a real battle you can’t count on just fighting the other side on one on: She snorts. :Of course, in a real battle I’d be hanging back with a Herald with Mindspeech personally guarding me and passing orders on. At my rank you don’t get to have ANY fun: 

That was a grimmer 'sport' than she was expecting.  Somehow she was thinking that battles would be fought with magecraft, or some local equivalent of chemical explosives, not by literally hitting people with blunt objects until they fall over.  Lower GDP per capita strikes again.  Maybe it makes battles less deadly than they'd be with explosives.

...Moving on, then.

:What's the plan / schedule on getting me to Haven?  And unless there's a new Mindhealer in Haven, and maybe if there is, I should maybe talk Melody into coming with me - could dangle the prospect of trying our hand at other untreatable patients, though I'm a little nervous about that - but I haven't unlocked my own Gift yet and the things I can do with Melody seem important.  And is Vanyel - nevermind, previous questions first.:  Thellim has always been called 'talkative', and is still having trouble with the part where Mindspeech removes her important pause-reminder of 'needing to breathe'.

:I sent word on the Mindspeech relay this morning asking for a Gate at noon, I should hear back soon if Savil's up for it. As far as I know there's not a Mindhealer in Haven right now but I'm not the one who does their deployments. Sounds like you should talk to Melody directly about it?: Lissa bounces a little on her heels. :Want to go grab some breakfast first, though? Oh, and Van's not up yet, as far as I know: 

:Breakfast it is!:

Lissa leads the way to the mess tent; her cheerful expression is already fading back into grim seriousness. She stops several times as various people call out to her, and barks what are presumably orders to them, in the local language.

The mess tent is serving pease porridge and tea. 

:What is 'tea', actually?  I didn't ask last time because there were other things going on, but I was curious.  'Pease porridge' also, come to think, it looks like a random carb-fat-protein caloric soup but I don't actually know.:

:Tea is, er, tea? It helps you wake up a little - some people notice it more, honestly it's never done much for me. Also it tastes good. And covers up when the water you're drinking tastes bad even once you've boiled it: She frowns. :Pease porridge is mostly split peas. If we're lucky they'll've cooked it with a ham-bone in the pot: 

:Meaning no offense, but I'd rather deal with bad-tasting water than sample your world's version of mind-affecting drugs, at least until I get to Haven and have some spare time to check whatever assurance process 'tea' went through before being approved.:

Pease porridge sounds fine, at least.  She'll have some of that.

It's actually unclear whether the mess tent currently offers any water which is both safe to drink and free of mind-altering substances! Beside the tea stop, soldiers are serving themselves from jugs of what seems to be mildly fermented, slightly fizzy apple juice. 

(Lissa does not think to warn Thellim that the cider is also alcohol-containing; she doesn't think of it as very meaningfully different from water.) 

Thellim takes a sip of the fizzy apple juice.  :Huh... slightly bitter taste like figs left past their expiration-date?  Is that deliberate?  What's in this, actually?:

Lissa is mostly distracted answering a question from another of the kids in the paler-blue uniform. :Apples: she thinks back. 

Expired apples, then?  Thellim supposes it's a better bet than 'tea'.  She has a cup of the stuff.

The cider is not very alcoholic, maybe 2% or 3% - Lissa's been drinking it since she was old enough to leave the nursery - but, since Thellim, unlike Lissa and almost everyone else in Valdemar, has no previous exposure to alcohol, she's going to notice some mild effects. 

Mostly the world seems slightly brighter and warmer, and she's a little something-like-lightheaded though not in an inherently unpleasant way, and she's going to feel a bit more scattered and uninhibited than usual. 

Thellim has a lot going on and is in a very strange new environment and teenagers are not introduced to drugs in this particular class in dath ilan, since it's not especially similar to any common syndromes.  She is also unlikely to suspect Surprise Drugs! as a source of any psychological oddness, since she is no longer a teenager and getting the Surprise Drugs! class of educational-pranks.

Lissa doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary! She shovels pease porridge into herself (it turns out to be...very bland, not quite salted enough, but fairly edible), and then she gives Thellim an apologetic look and allows herself to be dragged out by another officer in a blue uniform. 

Conveniently, though, Melody hurries in about thirty seconds later, making a beeline straight for the tea table. 

Thellim feels a weird impulse to run over and hug Melody, but openness to that varies even in dath ilan so Thellim suppresses the impulse.  :Melody!: Thellim thinks, maybe 10% louder than she should have, and heads in that direction.  :I was just thinking last night - can I talk you into heading to Haven with me?  I suspect I'll be more effective with Vanyel and possibly other problems if I'm in the company of a Mindhealer I know I can work with.  Also, who knows how many other intractable cases in Haven we might be able to manage?  Though we've got to be more cautious about that, I worked out last night that I'd phrased my formal inquiry to your Gift in a very silly way, but your Gift seems to have followed what I meant instead of what I said so that all worked out fine.:

Thellim probably still has her cup of bitter expired apple juice, if Melody happens to notice that?

Melody acknowledges her in wordless Mindspech, waits out the speech in a half-preoccupied way while she pours herself tea and heads over, and then does a sort of double-take just before she sits down. 

:Hmm. That's - certainly very rushed, assuming you mean heading to Haven with you whenever you leave, which as far as I know is today? Normally it'd be a flat no, but I confess I'd already been musing about it last night, and it's not actually the worst time for it - I reckon we can re-deploy Terrill out here within the week, and no one on my waiting list desperately needs a Mindhealer today. And I can sell it to Aber at Healers' on the grounds that working with you will actually add to our total capacity, in the long run...: 

A pause. She blinks owlishly at Thellim. :...How much of that cider have you had: