The screech of tearing metal and the stink of things-burning-that-shouldn't-burn is replaced by...something indescribable -

- and then the snap-crackle of breaking branches. 

She finds herself sprawled on a cold, wet, slightly mushy surface. Above her, a few slivers of grey sky show through a canopy of denuded branches. She can smell rotting wood and dead leaves. It's suddenly very quiet.

Then a squirrel chitters, nearby. Cold drizzle oozes down through the branches and reaches her face as a fine mist. 

That is not how plane crashes work there has been some kind of MISTAKE.

Okay this is an emergency situation with a ton of unknown variables there is no time to think about 'impossibility' or 'am I insane' or 'updating on an event of probability zero' or how much the exact reaction she is having right now is exactly like the start of every cliche fantasy novel ever.  She needs to push herself to her feet and look around and look around some more and identify anything that could kill her in the next five seconds before she starts planning out the next whole minute.

It does not seem that anything is imminently trying to kill her! 

She's in a forest. Based on the cold air, leafless branches, and rain-soaked ground, it's either late autumn or winter in a place that never gets cold enough for snow. There's a brook nearby. There are no signs of civilization. 

....A minute or so later, though, a sound that might be hoofbeats is just barely audible in the distance. 

Thellim has totally been in a forest before!  Several times!  She's not much of a Nature person, but she has been to Nature ever.

That distant clop-clop sound isn't one that Thellim has heard before, even on Nature shows.  She'll shove aside all the stereotypical fantasy-novel-protagonist thoughts she's been having just to get them over with out of her head, and try to figure out whether this sound is like people or - should she be trying to get away from a... dangerous animal?  That happens to people when they somehow get lost in Nature without tools, right, they get killed and eaten by predators?  She should have instincts for this, it's only been a few thousand years.

Well, if she's wrong about needing to climb a tree, she can always climb back down again.  But figuring out how to climb trees might take time she won't have, if that's a human-eating predator.  So she should get started on that now.

Climbing trees is harder than it looks.  Maybe the adaptation has been lost to mutational noise over the amount of evolutionary time that has passed since the last time one of her ancestors had to climb a tree.

A white horse appears between the trees! It’s moving pretty fast, and stops rather suddenly, hooves skidding a little in the wet leaves and throwing mud-splatters at her and the nearby trees.

A dark-haired, somewhat starved-looking man dressed all in white - or clothing that was once white, at least, before months’ worth of exposure to the elements - is riding on the white horse’s back.

His head jerks around; he seems to immediately know where she is, and his pale eyes fix onto her. He raises one hand, his expression flat and hard.

Oh thank the random factors.

...maybe.

In fantasy novels the first person you meet isn't always a friend - but - but this isn't actually a fantasy novel - there are very few places in the real world where you shouldn't just tell somebody about the impossible thing that happened to you - except for the part where you'd obviously end up in psychiatric care, if you can't prove anything, but she's wearing clearly manufactured clothing with labels and tags from manufacturers that wouldn't exist in another world, not to mention there wouldn't be records of her - wait that person looks like he comes from a fantasy-novel-world with a lower tech level, that could change things -

Oh.  Right.  Thellim has to do the thing.  It's very sad, shameful in a way, but she's deontologically obligated to do it.

"Tsi-imbi," she says, very loudly and clearly.

(If she's hallucinating this entire experience, the code she just used tells anybody listening to her that she's experiencing things that conventional views say are very unlikely or impossible, and she needs to be taken to a psychiatric hospital, being subdued if necessary.  In dath ilani it would roughly translate as "This seems impossible, I may be insane."  One never says it as a joke or as an exaggeration; it's an emergency phrase only.)

Whatever the man was expecting, running in here, it seems like she isn't it. He and the horse stop, and he adjusts the rain-soaked hood of his (filthy, tattered) white cloak, and just looks at her for a moment, his face still and unreadable but his eyes baffled. 

After a moment, still holding eye contact with her, he slips down from the horse's back - moving quickly and lightly, like someone very fit, but also wincing as he lands as though he's hurting.

He takes a step toward her, smiles very unconvincingly, and says something in a language that she can't understand at all. 

Oh, poo.  Not one of the fantasy-novel premises where everybody just speaks Baseline, then.  Also and much more sadly, not a fantasy world where everything is going to be convenient for her.  This has many unpleasant update implications she will think about later.

Thellim widens her eyes, waves her arms, and says in very clear tones that attempt to convey confusion and haplessness, "LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY".

The man blinks at her, shaking hair out of his eyes. (At closer range, it's noticeable that despite his apparently youthful age, his black hair is streaked with silver.) He takes another step closer, making some vague gesture that's probably meant to be reassuring. 

He narrows his eyes, glances over at the white horse - whose eyes are large and blue and oddly forward-facing - and then back to her. 

Something tickles at - not her ears, exactly, it's like a voice but it's inside her head. :Can you understand me?: 

Wait what they're doing psionics now - she doesn't know why this is such a shock when interworld transportation is impossible anyways, but it implies further updates about exactly how weird her life is going to be like - how would telepathy work without a common language, what happens when she thinks a word for which silver-streaked-hair-man has no corresponding internal symbol, does it also convey something like contents of short-term loading of those symbols into working memory - she's been asked a question but how the heck is she meant to reply -

Thellim tries to think Yes... loudly?... in a way that she tries to make feel like how the question felt like to her?... and throw the thought at silver-streaked-hair-man?

(Incidentally, one would greatly overestimate Thellim's knowledge of zoology if one expected her to notice that the white animal is an 'unusual-looking horse'.)

The man watches her intently. Again, he seems nonplussed. 

His eyes play over her clothing. 

:How did you get here? You don't look Karsite: 

The last word comes across mostly just phonetically, like it would if this were purely a voice-in-her-head, but there does seem to be some additional conceptual context; she can tell that he's referring to a specific citizenship or nationality. And...not one that he has especially warm feelings about. 

Thellim's already-jolted thoughts start racing more frantically, spurred by that final note of potential hostility.  Silverstreak-guy thinks she might be part of a Bad Outgroup, with some flavor of what separates groups that she doesn't quite catch.  Literary premises of Portal Fantasies involve lone protagonists or small groups, so that they can be Unique and put their world out of its previous equilibrium; stories try to rationalize that by saying in the background that there are more destination-worlds for portaled people than there are portals, because portal-destinations have higher algorithmic complexity than portal-origins so there's more of them; but that doesn't have to be true in real life (if all of this is really happening at all).  Which means that Silverstreak's world could get a lot of people like her, which means that Silverstreak's world could be regularly invaded by non-cooperative interdimensional 'Karsites'.  How does she convey that her world is cooperative?  Any prideful interdimensional traveller could think that, no matter how relatively cooperative or uncooperative they were on an interdimensional scale, if they had no other world to compare themselves to - is her world even a relatively cooperative one, she doesn't actually know - well she'll just use the newspaper metric - does she need to think a thought loudly and throw it in Silverstreak's direction to reply?  Is he getting any of this?

:I apologize if I'm in a private area, I didn't decide to target this destination.  I experienced my airplane crashing and then I experienced being here.  Something to do with anthropics, if I had to guess?  You might know better than I would.  I'm not a 'Karsite', I come from a world that teaches reciprocation of game-theoretic cooperation and to quantify roughly how cooperative we are, we spend less than 3% of GDP on generalized cooperativity enforcement while maintaining over 6% annual real GDP growth.:

The man seems to be getting this! He tilts his head slightly, in a listening-esque way, and half-nods in a soothing way at the first clause, and then looks blank at 'airplane', and thereafter keeps listening but seems more and more dazed and off-balance. 

He doesn't interrupt, though, and waits until she's done to answer. :I – what...?: 

Wait, she's being silly, she needs to keep in mind the kind of tech level that might be implied by using an Animal as improvised personal transport.  :I'm sorry, was the part about 'airplane' not clear?  It's a flying machine - you can build those if you create a powerful enough engine.:

Vanyel's gotten that much - the word she's thinking at him is unfamiliar but he had a sense of 'airborne' and 'transport' and 'some sort of artifact'. 

Nothing about this makes ANY SENSE, which should perhaps have been predictable from the moment he sensed the Web-alarm, since that, too, did not make any sense. Also he's exhausted and cold and his heart hurts and it'll be dark in an hour. 

:This isn't a private area but it is a war zone: he says, more brusquely than he meant to. :I'm not, er, mad at you for ending up here by accident, you don't seem hostile, but - we shouldn't stick around, this is too close to the Border. Can you ride?: 

The overtones make it clear that 'ride' refers to climbing up with him on the white animal that transported him here. 

Thellim doesn't like the surrounding connotations of the untranslated term 'war zone'.  She does not like them at all.  Anger and death and danger to innocents.

"I think -"

No she's not supposed to speak, she's supposed to think loudly in this person's direction.  If any of that is actually necessary at all, but it seems to work so she'll just go on doing it until she has time for experimenting to see which parts are actually necessary.

:I think I could probably climb on top of the animal, especially if you give me a hand up.  Is it difficult to stay on it once you're on top?:

He smiles slightly. :Not with 'Fandes. She's a Companion; she told me once she could keep a toddler balanced in her saddle:

The connotations here are densely-packed and confusing. A Companion is a creature that looks like the white animal he was riding, but also a mentor/ally/friend - intelligent - something about leadership, duty - being selected, personally, for an important destiny... 

:Here: And the man plants a foot in one of the dangling stirrups and heaves himself back up into the leather saddle strapped over the animal's back, with a grunt, and settles himself before leaning down and stretching out a hand. :Just put your foot in the stirrup, like I did, and swing your leg over - you can sit on the pillion-pad right there and hold onto me: 

Aliens!  The Animal is a person!  She doesn't know why that would be at all astonishing at this point but maybe her brain is just very slow to update about certain basic facts.  Is a Companion psychologically unlike a human?  What is it better at than a human?  What do humans trade with them?  This is so exciting!

Thellim will very carefully attempt to climb on the Person, pleading to the random factors before she tries the 'swing your leg over' part as this operation seems to require momentum which means it cannot be slowed down.

It seems likely the man has helped people with this before, and he's stronger than he looks given his scrawny condition; he pulls her up expertly, and supports her waist with his other arm when her momentum threatens to carry her right over the other side. 

:There you go. Just sit tight and hold onto my waist, and, er, I'll be a little busy for this bit, sorry: 

He waits until she's settled and holding on to his satisfaction, and then they're MOVING. 

The Animal-Person is really fast! Trees rush past on either side, sometimes only a foot or two from her head! Some of those leaps over deadfall logs and soggy streams seem not very safe at all, but they seem to always land fine, and keep right on going!

Also the light is fading and it's starting to rain in earnest. 

Well, if she dies again, she'll probably just end up someplace else, so she should just relax and enjoy this BIOLOGICAL ROLLER COASTER.

She tries for the first time to throw a thought out without having first been questioned.  :Feel free to ignore this if answering would cause us to crash.  But can you say anything about where we're going, why I'm not just dead, what happens to me now, and what in general is going on?  It's my first time doing this and my world doesn't have any... doesn't have any public knowledge about how this works.:

:It's fine, I'm not the one steering: The man seems faintly amused, and to the extent there's any hint that the interruption bothers him, it's just because he's clearly exhausted. :I'm taking you back to my camp, for now – I can bring you to Horn tomorrow, I was just recalled anyway so perfect timing, but it's too far for tonight: 

From the connotations, Horn is a place, probably a town or village. 

:I don't know why you aren't dead, since I still don't really understand how you got here. And I don't know exactly what'll happen in Horn, but we aren't going to hurt you - honestly you're lucky you landed on this side of the Border. What's going on in general... I'm a Herald of Valdemar. Oh, and my name is Vanyel; this is Yfandes:

'Herald' bundles in some similar associations to his early mention of 'Companions', but leaning more heavily on the 'duty', and also there's a background sense that he has very mixed feelings about it. 

:We're at war with Karse, the neighbouring kingdom. And I'm afraid I don't really have answers for you - I've never heard of this happening either: 

So this world doesn't get a lot of should-be-dead visitors, at least not publicly known ones, which matches up to the fantasy novel premise of 'more portal-destination worlds than portal-origin worlds'.  Thellim wonders if that's pure coincidence, or if the Keepers of Harmful Truths know something infohazardous that they've quietly communicated to fantasy-novel authors in an effort to mentally prepare people like her for situations like these.

:You seem tired.  Should I not be psionicizing at you?  I have - a LOT of questions - but I don't know your capacity for answers.:

He sighs. :I am tired. Can't blame you for having questions, though, and I've got some of my own, too: 

(Or he will once he's had some sleep, at least. This is...probably a big deal? But the flat grey exhaustion of months on the Border makes it hard to really feel that way.) 

:- Have you had any actual Mindspeech training, by the way? You're, er, a bit sloppy: from the overtones, he is trying to be diplomatic and in fact it's worse than a 'a bit sloppy', :and I don't want you to leak and let anyone know we're here: 

:Mindspeech is not a thing where I come from, or if it is, it's supremely not-public knowledge.  It doesn't fit with the character of reality where I'm from.  I know nothing about it except what I picked up from the overtones of the word when you thought it.  Be warned: my intuitive guesses about anything remotely near this subject matter may be incredibly surprisingly wrong from your standpoint, because it has such a different type signature from all phenomena in my prior experience.  So, um, how do I not leak?:

This situation has officially passed the level of confusing-inexplicable-details where Vanyel's brain is no longer even managing to register the ones that don't yet fit into a coherent picture. Which is most of them. Fortunately, Yfandes is a Companion and has an eidetic memory, and she's listening in on his thoughts. 

:I guess I need to teach you to shield? I can put my own shield on you while we're riding, if that's all right, and walk you through it once we're settled in for the night. ...Oh, and just to let you know, Yfandes is listening in on this too, um, I hope that's all right: 

It's nice, actually, having her in his mind again and NOT having a stupid fight about anything. He's spent most of the last few months evicting her for the crimes of nagging him and getting on his nerves. It's been a wearisome stint on the Border, for both of them. 

:Does putting a shield on me while we're riding - or me giving my consent for you to do that - have any kind of big consequences I should know about, like destroying all of my childhood memories or inverting my utility function?  Hi Yfandes, I have infinity plus one questions for you if you're in a mood to answer those.:

:Hi! It's lovely to meet you, but I am kind of busy right now: And they leaaaaaaap over an impressively large rock. 

:I - what - no! It shouldn't do anything to inside your head at all, it's more like - hmm, I don't know, like putting a raincoat on or something. What does 'inverting your utility function' even mean?: 

Right she will not distract the Fast Alien then!  And - have they not worked out utility functions here?  Wow that's really low math.  She's specialized in a field with very little specialized math but she knows the universal basics.  If they name theorems after people here, she will get all of the theorems named after her.

:Put the psionic raincoat on me, then, I guess!  And, uh, inverting your utility function is a colloquialism, it's like - imagine that you wanted things coherently - and then suddenly you wanted all of the opposite things instead.  It's more or less among the obvious worst things that for all I know could happen by accident if somebody started doing weird things to my brain, reversing everything I thought was good or bad.  Also, if nobody here knows what a 'utility function' is - and it's really the sort of thing where, once one person figures it out, everybody ends up knowing it - then I have a lot of super valuable basic mathematical knowledge to give you all.  Like, the kind of knowledge where a 0.1% patentgratuity means I end up personally owning 0.01% of this whole world's economy.:

Vanyel spends a long moment not saying anything. It's a very loud-and-marked sort of not saying anything. 

(He's quickly running through his mental list of every single math-related book recommended to him by a particular immortal mage who's personally responsible for at least one in five of the scholarly treatises he's read in the last decade, but also this isn't something he especially wants to tell Thellim yet.) 

:That does sound really awful!: he acknowledges finally. :And - I'm curious, but while we're on the Karsite border isn't the right time to ask you about math: 

:I'm guessing you mean that it's the wrong time because things are busy and dangerous, and not because thinking about math doesn't work on the 'Karsite border', but I'm going to mention that I'm not actually sure just to emphasize how very little I know and how easy it would be for me to make a mistake.  But I can also just deduce things quietly to myself if you'd rather wait to hand me over to... the largest universitorial truth-inquisition commission and/or venture-capital syndicate in the history of time?  That's not how things would go if this were a story, but it's probably how people ought to handle things in real life, right...  I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't be asking you all this.  I have no idea what's going to happen to me and this has not been my least exciting day ever, but you come across in Mindspeech as deeply tired.  I do understand that in all principle-of-mediocrity probability I just landed on some average random typical resident of this world who isn't specialized for handling my situation.:

:No, no, this seems - really important. Maybe even more important than the war: 

There's a burst of complicated emotion behind those words; it's tangled-up and doesn't all make it across, but there's hope - on some level it seems Vanyel is desperately hoping that this is, in fact, more important than that - and more important than some other thing that he isn't saying...? 

Also he has some sort of strong, messy, mostly negative reaction to 'random typical resident', but Mindspeech overtones don't make the content of it clear. 

:Er, what is 'venture-capital'?: 

She is going to end up with a LOT more than math theorems named after her.

:Venture capital is professionally-specialized investing for creating new businesses!  I don't know whether the laws of physics are the same between our worlds and I am unfortunately not specialized myself in things like knowing How To Build Mechanical Clocks, but going on the sheer lack of overlap between our concept bases, I should have knowledge enabling the creation of lots of new businesses and wealth that didn't exist before!  Except that... uh... somebody's going to have to put wealth into the process in order for lots of wealth to come out.  And while I'd expected my manufactured clothing and the theorems I know to establish the basic truth of what I'm claiming, having to also create the business of venture capital is beginning to make me worry a little bit about... exactly where I'll end up having to start.  Do you already have 'money', 'debt', 'equity', and 'stock markets'?:

Vanyel chuckles slightly. :We have money! And debt is a concept I'm familiar with. 'Equity' and 'stock markets' are...well, I'm not sure it maps to anything we really have in Valdemar, but I think I mostly recognize what you're talking about. The Eastern Empire has some similar practices. They're, er, more advanced than this region in a lot of ways: 

And worse in some other unclear way, or at least the overtones hint at that.

(Also Vanyel is trying very hard to be curious and enthusiastic, this seems important - possibly the most important thing that has ever happened - he's pretty sure that's what Leareth would say, anyway, though at this point it's unclear whether that's a recommendation...)

:If you're not too tired, can I ask about the dire doomy hints of mass global coordination breakdown?  Is the world ending?:  It would be ending if this were a story.

:- Hmm? I, er, I don't know what your world is like, and things are definitely...pretty bad right now. But, I mean, this isn't the first time my Kingdom's been at war with a neighbouring one. Not sure how much it changes the big picture, two countries fighting, out of dozens on this continent...:

He definitely feels doomy about the situation. The world could well be ending right now; it would suit his mood. But probably that's mostly the tiredness talking. 

(Also this would be a relevant time to mention the IMMORTAL MAGE who is raising an army north of the mountains to conquer Valdemar, but it doesn't seem like he can justify trusting her that far, yet, and also it feels hard and awkward to explain, and so he doesn't.) 

:Why is everything bad?  Why are interactions between individuals and groups settling at a point so far off the Pareto frontier?  Is there a known reason why everything is going much worse than theory indicates it should, or should I be on the lookout for some anomaly on the order of alien parasites infesting your Very Serious People?:

Thellim is still feeling unsure how far she should infer from the marked resemblance between this situation and the situation a lot of fantasy protagonists end up in.  Quietly influencing authors of fantasy novels to reflect forbidden knowledge in a helpful way is exactly the sort of thing that the Keepers of Harmful Truths are supposed to be doing.

Vanyel takes a long time to answer. 

:I don't know why things are bad: 

(SOMEONE he knows has a lot of opinions on the matter. He has no idea whether any of them are trustworthy.) 

:It seems - complicated. And I don't know the 'theory' you're talking about, so I think I'm missing a lot of what you're even trying to ask: 

Is this world falling to ruins because nobody knows what a Pareto-optimal outcome is, and all she has to do to fix the entire place is tell them?  Nobody would buy that fantasy novel but, Thellim has to keep reminding herself, this is real life.  If she can just fix this whole world very easily, and then live happily ever after collecting 0.1% patentgratuities on all Pareto-optimal transactions after people find out what those are, she should just do that.  It doesn't matter how much her brain is going 'Nooooo, that can't be right.'  She should check.

:One foundational concept in the analysis of human interactions - sorry, Yfandes, I should've said agent interactions - is getting to an outcome that can't simultaneously be made better for all parties.  Let's say you have an orange and I have an apple, and I really like oranges, and you really like apples.  If we trade my apple for your orange, we're both better off.  It's not that one of us lost and the other gained, we're both better off.  Every time a potential 'Pareto improvement' like that exists, it's like a path of - lower potential energy? I don't know if that idea made it across, if you know about that part of physics or if that part of physics even exists here.  It's like water flowing downhill, to puddle at the bottom.  Everybody has an incentive to move in the direction of an outcome that's better for everyone.  If they can't agree on which of the better outcomes to aim for, they all have an incentive to form an agreed-on group process for dividing the gains; the incentive is reproduced at the meta-level to universally incentivize creating a coordination process.  If I'm understanding you right, you're talking about massive groups of people who've decided that other groups form hindrances to them, who try to destroy and injure and hurt those other groups as much as possible.  I have the approximate concept because of very shameful events where individuals or even small groups start relating like that to each other without caring about how it looks.  I have the approximate concept because I've read stories about very alien aliens who don't care at all about the same things we do, who try to trick us into destroying ourselves so they can consume our whole world and its resources.  But why does that much water flow uphill in real life?  What happens if you sketch out on paper a situation with the factions not at war, present it to the factions, and note that all factions would be better off if they simultaneously adopted the new arrangement?  I'm not saying everybody would necessarily accept the first offer, of course, but why wouldn't they look at that and go, 'Oh, gosh, let's figure out a protocol to pick up all this free wealth'?:

(Thellim does not, of course, think 'out loud' about her private suspicions that if emotions like 'hatred' have been baked into the human brain, the analogous situation between individuals must have arisen much more often in humanity's environment of evolutionary adaptedness, sometime back before the obscuring curtain of deleted prehistory.  Obviously nobody ever publicly speculates about why dath ilan's pre-modern history has been deleted or hidden to the best possible extent, but it's presumably an infohazard; one doesn't talk about infohazards with non-Keepers, and Vanyel doesn't act like one.  But individual situations in the ancestral environment don't seem obviously relevant to the question of how larger and better-resourced groups could end up failing in the same way.)

:...The concept makes sense. I think: 

Again, there's a definite sense that Vanyel is holding back quite a lot of what he's thinking and feeling. 

After a very long pause: 

:I don't think it'd - work. I'm not sure I have any logical argument for why not, just...it wouldn't. Not here: 

He's never thought to feel embarrassed about that fact before. 

(He wonders how Leareth would feel about it, and then shoves that entire train of thought aside.) 

And then Yfandes slows to a stop, in a clearing. It's nearly dark now. 

:Er, we're here now. I need to set up camp, get us something to eat - here, I'll help you get down...: 

From the overtones, Vanyel is not especially in the mood to continue their discussion. 

Thellim is very grateful for help in this regard.

After she's down, she forces a smile, and tries to summon up some of the verve of her favorite fictional protagonists to animate her Mindspeech.  :Well, for what it's worth, now that I'm here, I'll fix up this world I've found myself in.  Any dath ilani would.  Uh, you don't need to answer that.:

It's way too embarrassing now that she's actually gone and thought that out loud.  How do fictional protagonists pull off lines like that?  Right, because the author rules by fiat that nobody laughs at them.

He doesn't laugh. 

He just goes still, gives her a piercing look, and then smiles a tired, sad little smile. :I know you'll try: 

Then he turns and hefts down the packs strapped to Yfandes' back. :I'm guessing you haven't camped much before. I, er, sorry, sleeping arrangements won't be as nice as you're used to: He seems sheepish about this fact. 

That sad "I know you'll try" would be ominous as a line of dialogue in a story, and would indicate either a convoluted time-travel plot, or that the speaker was secretly an immortal who'd already lived 144 lives failing to fix his broken world.

Thellim wants to ask about this, because she doesn't know it can't be true.  But she has a feeling like she might be babbling too much already.  One ought to be compassionate to oneself as one is compassionate to others, and her situation would make it very sympathetic and understandable if somebody else in it asked a lot of questions.  But Vanyel feels tired.  He feels like he's not doing as well mentally as her, even taking into account what her day has been like.  He looks like he's eaten a lot less food over the last year.  Thellim's private conception of her Virtue, in respect to those Virtues that people can't all have simultaneously because there are tradeoffs, leans less to the side of 'prioritize sharing burdens with others and being stronger together', and more towards 'prioritize not being a burden to those who seem to have it worse than you'.

So instead Thellim replies, :I'll try to show due-gratitude-and-reciprocation for whatever marginal-added-utility-interval -:  Wait, if they don't know about utility functions, that's probably a much longer sentence in Vanyel's native language than it is in hers.  :Er, rephrase.  I'll be grateful for any improvement of sleeping arrangements over lying huddled to myself on a cold rock, waiting to be eaten by predators if I fall asleep.  If you have any tasks that can be safely done by somebody with sub-zero skill, like standing very still holding up a pole for ten minutes, or my acting as a passive thermal source, don't hesitate to ask me.:

Vanyel blinks at her first sentence again, a flicker of curiosity that doesn't make it past his fatigue to become an actual question. :Right. Er, I'll do a weather-barrier first. In the meantime if you can find us a couple of saplings - go for about as thick as my wrist, and at least as tall as either of us - that'd be really helpful. I don't bother hauling the tent-poles with me, saves on weight to just cut new ones when I make camp: A pause. :Oh, sorry, some light would be helpful, wouldn't it: 

He lifts a hand, and a glowing point of steady warm-yellow light, like a disembodied lamp, appears a few feet above their heads. :Good enough?: 

She caaan't.  She can't not say it.  She can't help herself.

:I can walk around for as far as the light reaches, looking for saplings like that and noting their location; I don't have tools to cut them down, if that's what you mean.  Also I'm genuinely ashamed about burdening you with so many questions, but while I'm walking around looking, can you Mindspeak something about WHAT is that light ontologically speaking.:

:It's a mage-light. Do they not have mages either where you're from?: Vanyel yawns. :I'll cut the trees myself. After I'm done this: 

He raises both hands, staring with intense concentration at a point in midair, and...the air starts to shimmer. For a moment, something like a giant suspended soap-bubble glints in the odd light, and then it's invisible again, but the chilly breeze coming from that angle is suddenly cut off. 

Who needed RULES?  Not her!  She doesn't need to know ANYTHING WHATSOEVER about what reality is or isn't allowed to throw at her in the next three seconds!

:There's no public knowledge about anybody who can do anything resembling what you just did, just like there's nothing resembling Mindspeech and no persons shaped like Yfandes.  I'm about to walk out of the volume where that bubble just was, to look for saplings; stop me if that's not okay.:

If not stopped, Thellim will duly search for saplings as requested, and be only slightly surprised when the 'mage-light' follows her.  Does she find two saplings, roughly as thick as Vanyel's wrist and taller than the maximum of their heights, before she would have to lose visual lock on the campsite to search further?  She's not going to lose visual lock on the campsite without checking in about Safety and How To Not Be Lost Forever In The Forest.

(Vanyel is not about to lose his mysterious and inept-but-friendly guest by accident, that would be mortifying. He's keeping half a mental eye on her, with Thoughtsensing, and trying to make sure the light stays nearby though he's tired and distracted by the weather barrier and sometimes it lags. She gives the strong impression of being someone with NO wilderness survival training at all, and he'll feel terrible if she trips on an unseen root and breaks her ankle or something.) 

It's noticeably chillier and wetter outside the half-formed barrier. 

Near the remains of a fallen lightning-struck tree, which opened a gap in the forest canopy to allow new growth, she can find a couple of saplings that meet the description! Mostly! They're slightly skinnier than a wrist, and one of them isn't perfectly straight, but they seem springy and sturdy enough. Also, with the branches no longer overhead to diffuse the rainfall a bit, she's rapidly getting soaked.  

So kind of Nature to provide her with a free shower, but next time she'd prefer a heated one.  :I found two saplings that imperfectly meet the description, slightly skinnier than your wrist if I'm remembering its diameter correctly, and one isn't fully straight.  No problem if you want me to search further, but I can show them to you now if it's better to have imperfect goods now than perfect goods later.:  She won't mention the rain; Vanyel can see it too, and taking on some discomfort to help Vanyel will probably make her feel better about all the unreciprocated help she's getting from the already-tired person.

:That'll do fine - I'll be right over: 

It's really nice to have help with this, actually. Usually he's left to make camp by himself, using Fetching to hold parts of the tent he can't reach. And...it feels good to see another human face, even a stranger. 

Vanyel heads over to her, and then notices her soggy clothing - she's much less prepared for the weather than he is - and tosses up a mage-barrier over their heads before he squats and, moving his hand but not actually touching the sapling in question, hacks through the base with a burst of focused mage-energies, catching it as it topples. He's tired enough that he has to find and tap a node to get the second one, which is a little embarrassing. 

:Can you manage carrying them?: he asks Thellim. 

Well, can she?  She'll definitely try.  Thellim does standard exercises-for-health; does that suffice to carry two saplings?

They're not that heavy, and if she's reasonably fit she should be able to manage, though the uneven and slippery ground adds an extra challenge. 

Vanyel leaves her the light, but strides off ahead back to the clearing and weather-barrier, where he detaches a rolled-up bundle strapped to the saddlebag and starts shaking it out. 

When she catches up, she can slightly feel the discontinuity as she steps across his invisible barrier, and the air inside is now noticeably warmer and drier. 

:- Here, if you can hold the first pole at an angle...: Vanyel frowns at her clothes. :Er, just a minute - want me to dry you off?: 

:With a towel, or with processes I don't understand?  And in the latter case, is it dangerous to me or expensive to you?  Being wet won't kill me, if the water here is the same as the water in my world.:

:Er, with magic. It won't hurt you, I've done it before to my friend's toddler. It's...a little tiring?: Maybe more than a little, in his current depleted state. :But cheaper than having to Heal you if you get sick: 

Yfandes whickers, nosing at his shoulder and looking at him in a way that somehow conveys fondness mingled with disapproval, even though horse facial expressions should not really be able to do this. 

:Wish you applied that reasoning to yourself, ever: she sends privately. :How's that sore throat doing?:

:It's fine:

Vanyel scowls, then quickly smooths his expression out and smiles weakly at Thellim to try to show that the scowl wasn't aimed at her. 

Thellim is not totally oblivious to what sort of person might help a stranger from literally another world, and not bring up remuneration at any point.  It's not the kind of person whose private Virtue leans toward 'will work diligently for sufficiently generous compensation' or 'properly paces himself for the long term'.  :I'm in generally good health, Vanyel.  Did Yfandes by any chance just say something about how you're pushing yourself too hard already, and don't actually have the energy to do this even if you would feel bad about not doing it?:

:.....Um. Sort of: Vanyel looks self-conscious and a bit irritated. :Let's just get this tent up, then: 

He's clearly done this a LOT of times, and has an efficient process worked out; he gives her terse Mindspeech instructions for what to hold where, and within three minutes the bundle of canvas has been turned into shelter, with a waterproof sheet of leather rolled out inside to cover the damp ground. It's not a big tent; there'll be enough floorspace for both of them, but it's going to be cozy. 

Vanyel tosses the saddlebags inside, ducks in, and settles himself cross-legged at one end, beckoning for her to follow. He lights the space with another tiny mage-light, and digs in the saddlebags again, emerging with a smaller cloth-wrapped bundle. :Here. Eat: 

He tosses her what seem to be a hunk of hard cheese and a strip of dried meat, then uncorks a floppy leather bag that gurgles with liquid inside and takes a gulp before offering it to her. :Er, it's safe to drink, I made sure with magic, I'm sorry about the taste though: 

(The water inside is slightly gritty and does, in fact, taste like something scooped up out of a swamp.) 

Thellim takes several gulps of swamp water, then tries to hand back the food.  :No, you eat, I'm not taking away your food.  It looks like I have more reserve calories stored in my thighs than you have in your entire body -:  Oops, she didn't quite mean to think that 'out loud'.  It's a little harder to stop yourself from thinking something than it is to stop yourself from saying it.  :Sorry, I honestly didn't mean to think that at you.  But my skipping a few meals until we get to town and higher authority should be fine.:

Instead of seeming offended, though, Vanyel chuckles. :That's kind of you. I've got enough to feed both of us for tonight, though. Er, I'm sorry it's only Guard rations:

He starts gnawing on his own portion, with the lack of enthusiasm of someone who's been eating the exact same tedious food for months and can barely bring himself to choke it down one more time. Despite the moderately strenuous activities she's seen him get up to just in the last hour - riding is a workout in itself, as her thighs are now informing her, and magic looks tiring as well - he doesn't appear to be very hungry. 

:We'll have to share the blanket: he adds, apologetic.

(And he is going to check and reinforce his shields SO THOROUGHLY before going to sleep, because this would be an especially humiliating time to accidentally project at her during a nightmare.) 

Thellim goes on looking at the chunk of hard cheese in her hand.  It's very clear that Vanyel is acting like she is Expected to just eat the food, despite her moral discomfort with the act.  It will be very socially awkward if she refuses.  The peer pressure to transgress against her deontology is practically a tangible force in her mind.

This about Thellim:  She has been in that situation before.  When she was eight years old, there was a teacher in her school who smiled at her and acted friendly with her and shared snacks with her, who one day started asking Thellim for help with minor pranks on other teachers, acting like of course Thellim would reciprocate.  The pranks escalated, bit by bit, little by little, over the course of months.  The point where Thellim finally balked was when she was asked to put a caltrop on a student's chair, something that would actually deal a physical injury.

It was all a test, of course.  And Thellim didn't do too badly!  A few generations earlier, her performance would have been excellent and entitled her to subsidized childcare to encourage her to have more kids!  They have to keep making the test subtler and subtler, and perform it on younger and younger children, or else everybody would pass.  It's something Civilization can take pride in, that they have to keep making that test harder.  Thellim's score in the 45th percentile of moral integrity was barely below average.  Well within a standard deviation of statistical noise.  Slightly less than half the planet will get a score no better than that, by design, because they keep making the test harder.  A 45th-percentile score is definitely not at the point where you should start thinking that you shouldn't have children, if that's your only flaw, if you have other virtues to make up for it.  Almost all of the reason why Thellim doesn't intend to have children is that the people around her seem happier than herself and like they'd enjoy having kids more.  Her remembering her 45th-percentile score for moral integrity has practically nothing to do with it.  Almost zero.

But Thellim will not overlook that there is an atmosphere of taken-for-granted social expectancy pressuring into doing something that the back of her mind - or front of her mind, in this case - feels to be wrong.

:Vanyel, I'm sorry and I don't mean to force you to explain things while you're tired, I know that there's all kinds of things I don't understand about your world and that I might be misunderstanding - but the way things look - is that your world has lower technology and much less wealth per capita than my world, and people here are living on the brink of starvation.  Anyone who visibly looked like you, in my world, wouldn't be taken to a restaurant, they'd be taken to a hospital.  Even if you have enough food for today, do you have enough food for tomorrow?  For one month later?  If I take food from you today and it contributes to you falling over dead from starvation two months from now, when I have plenty of caloric reserves myself, that's - that's something my people would consider - worse than an innocent mistake.  A foul act.  I am not certain that I will be able to repay you myself.  I don't need you to politely reassure me that things are okay, I need a serious not-polite factual statement that authorities will reimburse you for whatever food you spent on me so you don't literally die.  Yfandes, back me up on this?:

Thellim glances at the 'Companion', hoping that her pleading expression translates across the species barrier.

:Oh, and sharing a blanket is fine: she adds as a quick afterthought.  She's slightly uncomfortable doing that with a strange man, in fact, but that mental twinge is nothing she can't just ignore.

The look Vanyel gives her is even more baffled than before. 

:...I, er, thank you for - explaining...?: The overtones indicate that he's not so much actually thankful, on an immediate emotional level - he's too tired for that - but he's vaguely impressed, and thoughtful, and curious. :I - I mean, Valdemar isn't doing great on crops right now, all the blood-magic the Karsites are doing is terrible for the weather, but personally I don't think I'll go short on food later? I'm, um....: 

A long hesitation. 

:- I'm the most powerful mage in the entire Kingdom and they aren't going to let me go hungry. I - just -: 

:If he looks half-starved it's because he is: Yfandes adds helpfully. :But mostly it's on him for not prioritizing re-supplying at main camp. ...Also tapping nodes for mage-energy suppresses the appetite. And Van's never been good at taking care of himself: 

Vanyel glares at her. 

Okay that is a different scenario than the one she thought was developing but fine.

Thellim wants to display her ability to update and respond to reasoned argument, so she immediately and without delay tries to take a bite of the cheese.  Taking into account that she is trying hard to mentally brace herself for the result of extrapolating technological progress backwards by centuries and applying the resulting transformation to cheese, is this edible if she tries to power through?

It's...fairly effortful to eat; it feels tough and dried-out and the taste is pungent and quite salty; but it should still taste edible, it's not spoiled. 

:- Sorry, I did say I'd teach you shielding, but I think I'm too tired: 

Vanyel unrolls and shakes out a wool blanket, and stretches out on the floor of the tent. 

:If I - throw my thoughts at Yfandes? and imagine them missing you? - can she and I talk without that keeping you awake?  'No' is fine, I'm mostly expecting 'no', and it's also fine if Yfandes needs to rest.:

Yfandes is the one who answers.

:Probably that’ll work? I should rest too at some point, but I need less sleep than humans do:

:This is a test of whether I can direct my thoughts to Yfandes only.:

No answer. (Vanyel's shields are fully up; he's especially unlikely to pick up any leakage right now.) 

:I can hear you. I don't think Van did: 

:I have many many questions, but...:  So many that even among the meta-questions, it's hard to figure out which to ask first.  :You should please let me know if you're as tired as Vanyel, but I can't tell through Mindspeech because we're not the same species, for example?  More generally, some of my questions are how you're different from a human.  But the most urgent questions of that kind are probably - if there's any way I should speak with you differently than I would with a human, to avoid hurting you or hurting your feelings, or make my thoughts easier to understand.  And I ask for your understanding and forebearance, if I make a mistake anyways.  Meta-issues, communications protocols, those should probably come first.:

There's a long pause. 

:We don't usually talk to anyone except our Chosen and the other Companions: Yfandes sends eventually. :Obviously nothing about this is usual, though. I...can't think of any particular advice we give human Herald-trainees on how to talk to their Companions, so I'm not sure what to say there? And I haven't got any experience introducing people from other worlds to this one, but I'm sure you can guess that already: 

:Is your kind - at least as mentally resilient, or more resilient, than a human?  If Van had seemed less tired I would have been asking him for forebearance, just from expecting friction between different cultures; but by the time I was less - mentally busy - on my side, I'd noticed he was tired to the point of not seeming to want a lot of communication-protocol overhead.  But I'm worried... no, it seems very likely that at some point I'll say something that hurts or offends him or you, without my having wished at all to do that.  If you don't know any better than I do how to avoid that, that's... the best we can do, I guess, but it seems good to say explicitly before going on.  If you'd rather not deal with so much meta, I can skip to one of my object-level questions.:

:- No, no, that's very proactive of you, wanting to sort out cultural differences first! Hmm. I - think Companions are more mentally resilient than humans in general, yes. And you're not wrong that Van is very tired. Curious too, and he may have more questions once he's a little caught up on rest, but...: 

Yfandes trails off, and pauses. Again, there's the sense that she's holding something back. 

:...Most things you could bring up about romantic relationships will cause Vanyel pain. This isn't a general thing, to be clear, it's just a Vanyel thing. But it's something you should know: 

:Understood.  Or at least, I hope I understand, and I'll try to be conservative about how widely I avoid the topic...:

:I really have way too many questions.  Pick one, if you like?  Either 'Am I right that Companions are native to this planet and evolved alongside the humans here, rather than being travelers from elsewhere?' or 'If Vanyel is a world-class professional in a key profession that tends to reduce appetite and make it difficult to eat, why isn't he buying or being issued much more palatable food?'  Right now I have very little idea how much of the apparent insanity of this world I should chalk up to facts I don't know and reasoning I haven't worked out, versus how much insanity is because people haven't worked out what a utility function is or how to get more utility.:

:- Wow, having some kind of system to get Vanyel better food would be SUCH a good idea! I don't - I'm not sure why no one thought of that - well, Vanyel wouldn't ever want to mention it, obviously, he hates feeling like he's demanding special treatment... Using node-magic burns a lot of energy but we know it also suppresses appetite in the short run, it's unfortunate: 

A pause. 

:On your question about Companions: neither? I don't have firsthand knowledge, it was eight centuries ago, but the histories say that King Valdemar, the founder of our country, prayed to all the gods he knew for a miracle to help hold his new kingdom stable, and then we - the Companions - turned up: 

They have publicly known history from eight centuries ago with people's names in it and everything?  Thellim wishes she knew exactly what the Past Infohazard was in her own world - well, not really, but same energy - so she could figure out if this is deadly insanity or a perfectly normal response to different circumstances.

:Can you expand on 'prayed', 'gods', 'miracle', and 'kingdom'?:

Yfandes feels decidedly nonplussed by these questions! 

:Hmm. Kingdom seems easiest - do you have countries where you're from? A country is, er, a certain land area with fixed borders, controlled by a particular state government, and a 'kingdom' in particular means it's ruled by a king - or sometimes it's a queen - usually monarchies are hereditary, though Valdemar is a little more elaborate than that: 

She pauses, thinking. 

:Gods are - very large, very powerful beings, who exist mostly outside of the material plane but have some investment in the mortal world and mortal lives. People worship Them, and often that involves prayer, which is basically just...trying to communicate with Them? Though, honestly, I'm not sure how often They're listening. A miracle is an act of magic that the gods provide, one which should be impossible based on the way things normally work. Does that help?: 

:It helps somewhat?  It raises an endless series of other questions that I should set aside for now, because breadth-first search seems wiser than depth-first in this situation.:

If this was a story, the bizarre way that everything here (down to the cheese issued Vanyel) is so far down from the Pareto boundary would be... well, on a Doylist level, it would be a moral homily about the importance of paying coordination costs or just plain checking for better ways.  But on a Watsonian level... one of the factors present in this world, and absent from her home, would be secretly responsible for why things are so much worse here.  Some consequence of Mindspeech, Companions, Vanyel being able to make a glowing light, the existence of gods and prayer, or the peculiar sourness of the cheese, which would be destroying their ability to coordinate as easily as just-humans do under just-physics.  The destructive factor wouldn't necessarily have to be introduced in this first chapter because that rule would make the puzzle too easy, but the key factor would have to be introduced early on.  And the book's literary merit would increase monotonically with how hard the reader kicked herself afterwards for not seeing the consequences right away.

If this is some form of generalized book, obeying standard book-patterns, her Story is going to be About cleverly deducing the factor that prevents this world's civilization from developing the way regular humans do without interference, and reduces it to weird warring kingdoms instead.

If this is generalized reality then that kind of thinking will not work at all. She would have put a higher probability on that before Vanyel turned out to be the top professional mage.  Sure, there could be a reason for that, but books have rationalizations too.  That plot development fits a pattern, is the thing.

She's just going to have to try to extrapolate it both ways, and keep track of the difference.

She isn't going to say all this to Yfandes, yet, though, because the Companions are one of the differing factors that got introduced in metaphorical chapter one.  Gosh, she hopes she doesn't start leaking all this stuff through the psionic transmissions.  Which reminds her.

:Do you also know how to teach me shielding?  Or can you tell me things now, so that Vanyel doesn't have to tell me them after he's rested?  He seemed to think it was urgent, if I can learn it now; and even if my practicing has to wait on him, saving him explanatory effort later seems good.:

:I'm not as experienced a teacher but I'm happy to give it a try! Van was mainly worried because Mindspeech can be detectable, that'll be less of an issue once we're back in the main camp tomorrow, but I might as well walk you through how to center and ground and see if you can pick up shielding tonight: 

If this was a story, she wouldn't be as good at psionics as the natives despite her initial enthusiasm; and the homily would be that your extraneous weird powers don't define you, how well the inner you thinks determines whether you win or lose.

But those, on reflection, are all stories written for the benefit of readers who are never going to get actual psychic powers in real life.

In this generalized story, or generalized reality, whichever it is?

She is totally going to see whether she can be the Even More Powerful Psion and blow away all the natives using her knowledge of linear algebra, which will turn out to be super useful for psionics.  Like, she'll be fine if she can't, but she's sure going to try.

School mode on.  Psionic Mistress Thellim is go.

:I accept you as my teacher.  Let's do this.:

:Wait.  I mean, I, Thellim, accept you as my teacher.  Because my name is Thellim.  Have I actually forgotten to say that this whole time?  Anyway, I'm Thellim and I accept you as my teacher.:

She's going to be so much smoother the next time she dies and finds herself in another world.

:- Well, Thellim, it's nice to meet you: Yfandes' mindvoice is fond and amused. :All right. To start, you need to focus on your breathing, feel it in your body, and try to find the place inside you that holds steady and doesn't move with your breath...: 

And Yfandes tries to talk her through the basic trainee exercises for Mindspeech shielding. 

There will be a number of inevitable initial questions along the lines of "Do you mean that I should look for a biological part of my body that doesn't move when I breathe, or do you mean that I should look inside my kinesthetic sense for an extrabiological sensation that remains still while I breathe?" but Thellim will do her best to do whatever the answers indicate she should do.

Is she shaping up to be the Most Powerful Psion Ever or what?

She's doing somewhat above average for a student with newly-awakened Mindspeech! Yfandes praises her accordingly. Maybe she's picking it up faster because she's a little older? Most trainees get their Gifts around age twelve or thirteen. 

(She's vastly easier to teach than Vanyel was, but Yfandes does not say this.) 

Yfandes still gives a moderate amount of polite correction, and suggests some exercises for her to keep practicing until she gets it down on an instinctive level. 

That's fine.  Thellim didn't have her heart set on being the Most Powerful Psion, she just thought it'd be stupid not to check.

Thellim will do some exercises, have a surprising amount of trouble recalling her infinite questions list in anything that seems like a reasonable priority, and realize this means she should perhaps try to actually sleep.

Yfandes arranges herself next to the mouth of the tent. :Goodnight!:

Vanyel is already asleep, but he's smushed himself right up against the wall of the tent and left some trailing blanket for her to slip under. 

:Oh, sorry, one last thing.  Yfandes, your recommedation between the two bad options 'Wear my wet clothes under the blanket and risk getting the blanket wet' versus 'Take off clothing to underwear level, risk triggering romance-related issues' versus 'Obvious solution silly outworlder didn't think of?':

If Vanyel is a world-class professional in his field, Thellim probably doesn't need to worry about being pretty enough that Vanyel's future mates will be compared unfavorably to the sight of her form unconcealed.  Rules like that are for less drastic situations anyways.

:- Oh. You...don't need to worry about romance-related associations with that. You're, er, not exactly his type: A mental chuckle. :Honestly, he might not even notice. He tends to be preoccupied, lately: 

She'll remove an outer layer of clothing, slip under the blanket with a minimum of Vanyel disturbance, and endeavor, with surprising success, to nod off.

By now the area inside the weather-barrier is fairly cozy. Eventually, the rain stops, the wind slows, and the night outside is quiet. 

- About a candlemark before dawn, Vanyel is wrenched from an uneasy sleep, and lurches upright in a single motion, his eyes half rolled back as he reaches for the Web and his Farsight even before coming fully awake. 

:Thellim! Wake up! Karsite raid - Van'll hold them off but we should move–: 

Awake awake scrambling for her clothes if she's not told otherwise :awaiting instruction: once they're on

:Just hang on a minute - Van's casting at a distance right now: 

Vanyel is holding perfectly still, not visibly doing anything, except for the part where he's breathing hard. 

- Eventually he shifts position. :Ugh. I am SO sorry about that. This border is goddamned crawling with scout parties. Think I scared them off, but we'd better pack up and go now - sorry...: 

Anyone from dath ilan would recognize Thellim's stance as awaiting emergency instructions from whoever has assumed responsibility for coordinating response to this emergency.  It takes her a conscious second to override the fact that Vanyel isn't talking in the way that she's been trained to expect commands, during emergencies.  What a stupid flaw to instill in people who might be transported to other worlds.

:Command me in any unskilled ways I can help you pack.:  She's got her clothes on, that's her own private property done.

:Um, all right. We'll just need to get the tent taken down and packed–: 

Vanyel balls up the blanket, shoves it roughly into the saddlebag, and tosses the bags out the door before worming his way after them. During the two minutes or so it takes them to disassemble the tent and fold up the canvas part for transport, he barely says a word to her - just a couple of Mindspeech instructions, but mostly he covers that with gestures. He replaces his Companion's saddle with minimal, practiced motions. 

Again, he offers her a hand and helps pull her up onto Yfandes' back behind him, and this time doesn't wait for confirmation that she's holding on before they gallop away into the darkness. 

It's very unclear how Yfandes can see where they're going enough to avoid head-on collisions with trees! Maybe Companions have better night vision than humans. 

Thellim will be still and quiet again!  It got her killed last time, but that probably was associational rather than causal, and anyways her final outcome there was well above the 99th percentile of her expectations.

After ten minutes or so, presumably once they're out of range of the immediate danger, Yfandes slows to a more reasonable pace.

Dawn is on its way; the sky is distinct from the branches over their heads, now, grey against black. 

For a while longer, Vanyel is moodily silent. 

:You can ask questions if you want: he says finally. :It'll be another few candlemarks before we reach Horn: 

:I have a number of questions but first - should you be eating something?  I will literally prechew food for you, if that will help you make it to Horn, where there is, I hope, much better food.:

:- Ha, I've decided I like you: Yfandes sends privately to Thellim, with a mental chuckle. And to both of them, :Van, she has a point. It won't delay us much to stop for breakfast: 

She appears to have made this decision for him, since she's slowing to a halt between two arching tree-trunks. 

Vanyel grumbles something at her, but sighs and slips down from the saddle, offering Thellim a hand again. 

Thellim continues to be grateful for such assistance.

She'll wait until food is distributed and then dual-send to only Vanyel and Yfandes, on her best novice-psion form, :Yfandes, can you give me the rundown on the drastic coordination breakdown with Karse?  Including your best attempt at passing their Imitation Game test for how they'd describe the conflict themselves?  Vanyel, you still seem not in great shape and just did 'mage' stuff on top of that, I'd suggest letting Yfandes take the lead during this conversation and chiming in with your diffs.:  It's a weirdly micromanagy thing to suggest but Thellim simply does not know what isn't obvious to this world's natives.  :Oh and by the way Vanyel, surprise, Yfandes taught me some Mindspeech exercises last night!  I have no idea if I've made enough progress that you'd notice at all, but if you did, that's why.:

:I was wondering! It's definitely noticeable - good work: 

Vanyel leans against Yfandes' flank and gnaws on more jerky. 

:All right. I don't know what you mean by 'Imitation Game' but I'll do my best to explain how the war started. We don't know, because they attacked without a formal declaration of war first - and because they keep murdering our envoys when we send them - but my sense is it's mostly a war over territory triggered by some internal politics, but with some religious pretext. Valdemar has always had a very firm policy that our citizens can worship whichever god they like; it dates back to the Founding, right, and King Valdemar praying to literally any of Them who'd listen? But Karse has a state religion around Vkandis Sunlord, and they go through periods where the dogma is that everyone in the world needs to be converted. By force if necessary: 

The disapproval in her mindvoice is clear. 

:- Then again, like I said, I don't know how much it's really that. The King is unpopular and apparently seen as weak, and - for some stupid reason - starting a war can be a way leaders try to show everyone how tough they are? ...And also they have more total mages than us and probably figured they could win it easily: 

A pause. 

:Unfortunately for them, they didn't know that one of our mages is Vanyel: she adds, with pride. 

:Sorry, there's - a lot of unfamiliar concepts there - not so much the words, as the states of the world the words are talking about - so much to untangle - I'm trying to analyze this inside my own theoretical framework, trying to figure out which step of the proof that this shouldn't happen, is failing.  Why the absence of war isn't a simultaneous improvement for all the agents.  So far I've got possibilities that look like 'The absence of war isn't an improvement for an alien superbeing called Vkandis Sunlord', 'Karse thought they could consume all of Valdemar's resources, Valdemar thought Karse couldn't, and there was some prior breakdown of the theorem against common knowledge of disagreements' - though I don't see how it could still be that, presumably they know Vanyel exists now and that they aren't conquering Valdemar that easily?  Or do they still think they're about to win?  And a third possibility is that this war improves the position of the 'King', so it's good for the King but not for the rest of Karse's faction, and Yfandes knows this but the rest of Karse doesn't.  Does any of that - sound correct?  Or does it all sound equally like a clueless outworlder talking?  And are you certain that Karse is murdering envoys and Valdemar isn't doing that?:

Murdering envoys sounds really bad.  Like there's no way that could be an honest mistake or even a... she doesn't have words.  It's like a vicious assault, but taken up to the level of assaulting the meta-level where peace could happen if there needed to be peace.  If she talks to a Karsite and the Karsite plainly confesses that yes, Karse is doing that and Valdemar isn't, that's more than enough for her to side with Valdemar outright, unless there's a really big factor Yfandes isn't telling her about.  As could easily be the case, of course.

Vanyel winces, straightening up a little; this time he does seem somewhat offended. :Gods! No, of course Valdemar doesn't murder envoys - or wouldn't if the Karsites had sent us any, as far as I know they haven't yet. And I would definitely know. Er, the King of Valdemar is one of my close friends: 

Yfandes seems...thoughtful, mostly.

:I - don't think I really understand why you're so surprised by this happening? So maybe my explanation is missing something basic enough that I take it for granted. I...do think it's plausible the leadership of Karse had different beliefs about our relative strengths, at the start – for one, we were deliberately secretive about the strength of Vanyel's mage-gift, so they couldn't have known beforehand, and...just, in general they weren't going to have all the information on us, it'd take too much work for their spies. They did time the war for when Queen Elspeth died and King Randale took the throne; he's very young, it's not an unreasonable expectation that he'd be inexperienced at leading a war effort. And I think the last point is a good one, too: 

She doesn't mention, or acknowledge in any way, the comment about Vkandis. 

:This doesn't happen in my world.  Not since the start of safe-to-know history.  Something must account for that difference.  It's just - so much is different - it could be that I'm mining completely the wrong resources, because this is real life, and the actual key factor is that everybody in my world knows how to prove this doesn't happen to dignified agents, and the real difference I should be looking at is something that made mathematics progress more slowly in this world, nothing to do with Karse or Valdemar in particular.  Or we could just be earlier in this world's history, before people prove the key theorems, and that stage of history looks completely different because of mage-lights and Mindspeech and gods.  In a much more practical sense, I'm trying to decide if I believe the story where, roughly, Karse is wrong and Valdemar is right.  It sounds like Vanyel is confident that he has full access to the relevant information, and he seems like a dignified person who keeps to universal Virtues, but good practice really says that I should talk to at least one Karsite about this too.  Why don't all the other factions - countries? - come in on Valdemar's side, if it's that clear-cut?:

:- I think they mostly are? Rethwellan's allied with us, and they're sending us some non-military aid like food; I figure they're not doing more because they share quite a long stretch of border with Karse, and don't want to come under attack themselves. Hardorn is in a bad enough position right now that they're asking us for aid we don't have to spare - they're getting a lot of weather disruption from the magic we're throwing around down here, it's causing crop failures. I suppose that, where was it again - Ruvan - is loaning gold to Karse to fund their war effort, but they're on the opposite side of Karse from us, they've got a lot more trade with them so I guess it's in their interest. And Iftel is technically allied with us but they haven't expressed an opinion either way. They usually don't: 

:This sounds like a genuinely awful mess.  I don't know whether I should react by thinking that I shouldn't walk away from it, because it's the biggest problem and the most in need of my help.  Or if I should react by asking for transportation to - to a faction without big ongoing conflicts, that's widely acknowledged as a good exemplar of virtue, that has best-in-class thinkers and builders to take advantage of the knowledge I carry.  It might depend on whether this war is the kind of problem that has a solution or if it just has to be - outgrown, by your whole world.  And if this war has a neat solution, it wasn't obvious to me inside the first few minutes of hearing you describe it.  For which I am sorry.:

Vanyel turns his face away, silent. 

:- I think we should get you to Horn: Yfandes says after a long pause. :And maybe to Haven after that, so you can, er, talk to people who know more of the big picture right now. And after that... I don't know. Rethwellan might be a better bet, they're a bigger center of scholarship and they're not currently at war: 

He should tell her about Leareth he should tell her about Leareth Vanyel is absolutely not going to do this without a lot more consideration of whether it's actually a good idea or a terrible one, but it's very very tempting. 

He's so tired of feeling like he has to deal with it alone. 

:Not alone: Yfandes reminds him, privately. :Never: 

...This is now a long enough silence to be awkward. 

:Are you done eating?: Vanyel asks her, curtly. :Let's keep moving: 

She obeys the emergency command, even if it's not phrased in the expected format for one.

Why does she feel bad about the state the conversation got to?  Oh, right.  Because her brain thinks she's not supposed to decide that, just because their problem is hard to unravel, it's okay to go to a neutral university instead.  She's supposed to understand what's really happening here, and why, and then she can decide whether this world can be helped most effectively by working inside Valdemar or outside it.

She just doesn't know whether that's sane non-suicidal reasoning in real life.

Her fiction-pattern-recognition center is likewise raising questions about how likely it is that she landed next to a very powerful and self-sacrificing mage by pure coincidence.  And also likewise she doesn't know if that, either, is good reasoning for her life now.

:Talking to people who know more about the big picture sounds like a good idea,: she sends after she's had time to think that far.  :I shouldn't make any big decisions until I know all the info that's cheap to obtain and maybe a bit more.:

:Mmm: 

And they ride on in silence, while the light slowly creeps into the forest. It's not raining yet but the sky definitely seems to be considering it. 

Neither Vanyel nor Yfandes seem to be in a very talkative mood, right now. 

She's got plenty to think about.  Or for that matter, dreamy half-pseudo-dozes to go into to catch up on interrupted sleep.

Yfandes provides a very smooth ride, especially now that she's only moving at a trot and the forest is thinning out a bit; Thellim isn't in much danger of slipping off even if she does doze. 

It's about noon when they reach the outskirts of the forest, and ride into a trampled-down field of mud. There are tents visible, and hastily-raised log buildings, and further off, a road and signs of more permanent settlement. 

People, mostly in blue uniforms but some in the same white garb as Vanyel and a handful in green robes, are milling around. A couple of white horses, resembling Yfandes, are grazing on some sad-looking grass a ways off. 

Vanyel, who's been dozing as well, blinks fully awake as Yfandes comes to a stop. :Ah, we're here! Thellim, welcome to Horn: 

He dismounts, more stiffly than before after a full morning in the saddle, and helps her down. :Want me to drop you off in the mess hall while I go get Yfandes settled?: 

Yfandes whickers at him. :Van, love, go eat your food. I'll get one of the stablehands to look after me: 

:I'll go wherever you think best, or wherever I'm needed.:  Thellim may still be feeling guilty about even suggesting that she not help them with their mess.

Yfandes nudges them both in the direction of one of the ramshackle log buildings; this one is mostly just a roof and two walls, its open sides half-draped with canvas. 

Vanyel leans her in. 

Inside, it's simultaneously drafty, and smoky from the braziers burning in the corners for heat; it doesn't seem to be either heated or lit with magic. There are long tables with benches, currently about half-full, tired men and women – mostly men, but a solid twenty percent of the blue-uniformed people are female, and for the handful in Vanyel's style of white uniform it's about fifty-fifty.

There are also some children hanging around, tidying up or carrying plates and drinks to the adults, one of them accepting a rolled-up message of some kind. Some of them have a paler blue version of the uniform; others are dressed in ragged, random clothing. 

Vanyel sags down onto the nearest bench with a groan of relief. 

"- Vanyel?" A voice from across the room, then running footsteps. "Van! Gods, it is you!"

The words, of course, aren't understandable to Thellim, but Vanyel's name is. A few seconds later, a tall woman in the standard blue tunic, with some extra decorations around the shoulders, is pulling him into her arms. Like most of the others in the room, she looks tired and somewhat underfed, but not nearly as starved as Vanyel. 

Vanyel gives an embarrassed grunt, then sighs and relaxes into her embrace. 

:- Oh, sorry. Thellim, this is General Lissa Ashkevron. My sister: 

Thellim is trying to take in much information from which important deductions may be made, mostly having to do with a visceral shock of what the phrase "lower GDP per capita" actually means that's making her feel like something just hit her hard in the solar plexus.  What a nice town this is!  The barely-transformed raw materials composing it might cost six whole months of her earnings!

...children have to live here.

They're living here right now.  Look, there they are!  Right in front of her.  Children who either can't afford the raw materials for clothing, or can't afford to transform them, including whatever resources their adult relatives are willing to spend on their behalf.

If the whole world is like this, there can't possibly be any priority higher than more economic growth NOW.

She manages to turn her attention away from the children in ragged clothing and pay attention to the Vanyel grabber, enough that she's focused when she gets the Mindspeech.

:Hello.  'General' Lissa Ashkevron - that sounds like authority?  Your brother is literally starving to death due to 'magic' making it hard for him to eat, and him having only what I'm guessing are standard emergency rations.  He needs something much more palatable.  I'm -:  What level of restricted information is she?  She forgot to think about this, so will default to 'high'.  :- not from around here so I may have had an easier time of noticing this.  I'm sure it would have been nice to meet you if I'd met you under kinder circumstances.:

Mindspeaking her is noticeably a little harder than doing it with Vanyel, as though Thellim needs to handle more of the work herself, but it seems to get through. 

Lissa blinks, taking a step back with her hands on Vanyel's shoulders and turning to nod at Thellim before looking her brother over. "I was wondering what you'd gone and done to yourself out there! Wasn't sure if I ought to go smack 'Fandes for not taking care of you, or if it's your own damned fault."

Helpfully, she thinks the words loudly as well; it's a bit murkier to pick up the response but Thellim can manage.

"Well. If you want palatable, don't start here. The cooks do their best and it's better than travel-rations but not by much. Come on, let's go back to my tent and I'll get us some real lunch." 

Vanyel squirms, clearly embarrassed. "Liss, you don't have t–" 

"Van, please let me abuse my rank just this once. I bet I can wrangle getting us some venison, special. And fresh bread, and butter..." 

She takes her brother's arm and starts leading him off at a brisk walk. 

Despite all of the horror around her, accomplishing her long-held goal 'insert food into Vanyel' feels surprisingly good!  If she keeps up this trend of accomplishing her goals, she will be able to bring peace between Karse and Valdemar, and then multiply global GDP by a factor of... 40?  40 sounds about right.

If Lissa or Vanyel doesn't explicitly try to bring Thellim along, she'll try to figure out how to get food inside this hall.  It wouldn't occur to her to be worried about going unescorted; she can tell people she's Vanyel's charge, and the world is full of sensible cooperative people.

Vanyel does, once they reach the door, catch up mentally enough to glance back and check if she's following. :...Oh, sorry. You should come too - I meant to introduce you to Lissa later anyway, we can cover both at once: 

They walk down a muddy aisle between rows of canvas tents. Close up, the camp/town is in some ways slightly more impressive than from a distance; the tents are made from fabric that sheds water in beads and looks very durable and tough, if not pretty, and are cleverly designed, with long double-stitched pockets to hold the poles, eaves to catch and shed rainwater and openable 'windows'. But it's also much more noticeable how everything is various degrees of damp, or muddy, or just generally grimy. Most of the people they pass have their hoods up and their eyes on the ground, though nearly all of them recognize Lissa and nod or salute her. 

Lissa's tent is twice as big as most of the others, and proves to contain two 'rooms', the back one separated by a hanging curtain; it also has actual furniture, for some definition of 'furniture', all of it is clearly built to be lightweight and portable. There's a rug laid over the usual sheet of canvas on the ground, a mat by the entry-flap to wipe their feet, a folding table with an array of stools, and even a bookshelf.  

A child of about eleven - probably a girl, though it's hard to tell with her short-cropped hair and grimy face - jumps up, and Lissa smiles and politely asks her to please bring something over for lunch. "For three people. Thank you, Sheri." 

Lissa hastily rolls up the map spread out on her table and stows it away on the bookshelf, then pulls out some stools and pats them. "Have a seat!" She pulls down a jug from on top of the shelves, and retrieves a stack of ceramic cups from lower down. 

"Van, gods, it's so good to see you, you have no idea. And your friend, from 'not around here'...?" She pours a cup of what looks like somewhat-diluted wine, and plops it in front of Thellim. "I'm very curious!" 

Vanyel, unsure how much of this Thellim can possibly be getting given that Lissa isn't a Mindspeaker, relays a translation. 

:...You can tell her: he adds. :I trust her. Er, or if it's too tiring I can explain - I'm impressed you can Mindspeak her at all, it's a lot harder with someone who's not Gifted and most Heralds can't: 

Oh, really?  She'll worry later about whether Psion Mistress Thellim is going to be a thing again, or not, and whether anybody has previously checked whether Lissa is unusually receptive to Mindspeech in general.  For now, Thellim focuses her thoughts the way she was taught, pushing harder than she does when it's just Vanyel or Yfandes.

:I'm from another universe, likely with different fundamental laws of physics and not contiguous with this spatial metric at all.  I was in the crash of an aerial transportation device that almost certainly should have killed me, and found myself here instead.  I don't know how it happened - I wasn't expecting to come here - and Vanyel says it's unprecedented to him too.  So I never get to see any of my friends again, but on the plus side it looks like I can do far more good here than I could ever have dreamed of doing in my homeworld.  We know some things you don't, methods that should also work here - truths closer to mathematical ideals than local facts, or tricks that could take advantage of the apparent macroscopic similarity of physical laws.  It is not an exaggeration to say that this might be the most epochal event your world's economy has ever experienced.  This event has larger metaphysical implications too, obviously, but I think we've all been tacitly agreeing to talk about that part later, and keep the current discussion more to Mindspeech how-tos and the issue between Valdemar and Karse.  Oh, and if that all sounds insane, a close look at my shirt ought to show that it was manufactured by techniques unfamiliar to you and which would obviously be in wide use if they were known here?  If that doesn't work I can prove some clearly important novel theorems.:

(Thellim has yet to make the connection between per-capita real GDP and the average level of mathematical discourse people can handle.  You don't need material resources to do math, that's the whole point.)

Lissa listens intently until Thellim is done, and then leans back on her stool and crosses her arms, frowning to herself. 

:- First of all: she says finally, :you'd best keep in mind that I'm not as smart as my brother here - maybe all that made more sense to him, I don't know. If Van believes you, then I believe him. And - wow. Just. Wow: She turns on her brother. :Van, why is your life always so bizarre?: 

:It's not my fault!: 

:Anyway. Van, are you dumping her on me to figure out what to do with?: 

He shoots an apologetic look Thellim's way. :We were talking a bit, I thought it might make sense to send her to Haven. Randi's going to want to know. ...Gods, it'd almost be worth Gating, except -: 

:Except, don't you dare: Lissa rolls her eyes. :Do they have Gates where you're from, Thellim?: 

The context coming along with the word indicates that a Gate os like a doorway, but also a kind of long-distance transport - instantaneous transport? And definitely magical. 

Thellim can't even imagine how much money that's worth aside from 'all of it'.

:No.: she manages. :We have no public knowledge of INSTANTANEOUS LOGISTICS.  Or glowy lights that follow people around.  Or that thing I'm doing to talk to you right now - Yfandes trained me in Mindspeech on the way here... wait.  Vanyel, there are non-Mindspeakers?  I missed that greater implication the first time, and I don't think anybody mentioned that to me before.  What else does it mean that I'm a Mindspeaker?:

:...Come to think of it, that part's especially weird? Because it's new, right, Mindspeech doesn't exist in your world - how does that even work - gods, I should've noticed sooner that it doesn't make any sense. Er, you presumably also have Thoughtsensing - you wouldn't have noticed as much with 'Fandes or I because we shield ourselves, and then she taught you shielding, but you could read other people's minds if you wanted– er, not Lissa either, she has a talisman to block it: Having important military commanders be vulnerable to spies with Thoughtsensing is a terrible idea. 

:Also you'll be able to tell where other people are, within your range - which we can test - oh and maybe I ought to test you for other Gifts too? Have you noticed anything else?: 

:I haven't noticed anything else yet, but I haven't been instructed to look for anything either.  'Gifts', they're called?  Does somebody usually Give them?  And... I feel guilty about possibly disrupting food conversation over this, not to mention disrupting the food itself.  But if you need to slap some precautionary psionics-nullifying bracelets on me to prevent me from exploding in case I have the Gift of Detonation, even I will admit this to be a higher priority.:

:Fortunately: Lissa says dryly, :even if you are a mage you can't explode by accident. - Oh! And here's our food: 

She thanks the girl delivering it, flips the cover off the tray and basket she brought in, and starts distributing it between plates.

Vanyel seems a lot more enthusiastic about fresh bread with butter than he was about jerky and rock-solid cheese. 

Oh, they do know how to make passable food here.  One of her early, more worried hypotheses was that the stuff Vanyel had been issued was the tastiest stuff their tiny economy had figured out how to make.

:Sorry again for disrupting the conversation.  My beliefs are far out of equilibrium with this new world, so all kinds of discussions are Suddenly Happening just because there's so much changing inside my mind all the time, rather than small probability updates being localized to particular outside events.  I think - the last topic was about getting me to Haven, somebody named Randi would want to know, but we don't dare use the Gate?:

:I - react badly to Gates. It's inconvenient - it'd still get you there faster but then I'd be out of commission for days. But now that we're here, we should be able to get you a horse - it'll be about a week's ride: 

:'Horse' is - I'm trying to go by the image I got with the word - like a much less intelligent version of Yfandes?  I'm a little worried about that - do they ever take their riders to the wrong city by accident?  I won't know how to change its directions.:

Lissa is trying SO HARD not to snicker. 

:Well, we should send you with an escort. I don't think it's a great idea to send you up the South Trade Road alone anyway - er, I'm guessing you don't have much in the way of self-defense training?: 

Oh, that concept came through clearly!  :Yes!  Yes, we do, in fact!  People sometimes go literally insane and try to hurt each other no matter what kind of clever equilibria you construct, so I have Civilization's standard training to instill defensive-only reflexes against unarmed attackers or attackers with the most statistically common improvised weapons such as kitchen knives.  I can also coordinate with at least four other people who've had the same training in order to non-injuriously overpower somebody who needs restraining.  And on a larger scale I would have helped convert a factory near me into making tank treads, in case Civilization suddenly needed to defend itself against aliens or whatever.  Roughly, we've optimized for making people harder to hurt by defectors, as much as we can do that without amplifying the hurt from defectors.  Though... I have no idea what to do if I'm attacked by two people.  That's much more of a professionals-only situation.:

Vanyel sighs. :Your world must be...really something. Our roads aren't too bad - definitely safer than Hardorn - but I wouldn't recommend that anyone travel alone–: 

:You do!: 

:Hey! 'Fandes is also a person, so no, I do not travel alone! ...And Lissa could probably fight off a dozen bandits if she had to. We'll send you with someone. Ideally a Herald plus a few Guards: 

Lissa's eyes narrow. :You could go with her. I expect Randi's going to want to hear your accounting of things: 

:But I–: 

:Van: Lissa folds her arms. :I am going to pass a message to Haven and inform King Randale that he needs to give you a few weeks of leave before he works his most powerful weapon to death. You look terrible: 

:Van, there won't be a better time - the Karsites are slowing down for winter too. And pulling men off the border to get crops in down south before it's too late and half the damned kingdom starves. I could wish they were worse at planni–: 

She stops herself. :No, actually, I can't wish that: 

Vanyel closes his eyes. :There'll be children starving to death this winter in Valdemar too, won't there. Lissa, I've ridden up and down this stretch of border a dozen times - I saw the fields they burned...: 

If anybody's paying attention, Thellim folded over on herself shortly after Vanyel talked about children starving to death in winter.  She comes from a world where bad things have happened ever, but the televisions and radios don't make a habit of exposing a billion people to the mental image every time it happens once.  Televisions and radios try to expose people to statistically accurate shadows of reality where things are discussed about as often as the listeners are likely to encounter them.

Thellim has zero defense against words like 'children starving to death this winter'.

...this place...

...wouldn't be able to save their brains either.  They're gone.  Will be gone.  She has until winter to undo those burned fields or children will starve to death.

She tries to wake up.  She doesn't like this dream anymore.

Vanyel notices, and taps Lissa, who stops saying things. 

He...isn't sure what to say or do. It's oddly hard to put himself in the shoes of someone who - well - it's not that she has the wrong reaction, even, she has the right reaction - he doesn't want to keep whacking her with things that hurt but there are so many things she doesn't know, things that might be dangerous, if she keeps walking into situations all innocent and unawares, with completely the wrong reflexes for a world that's...normal... 

Of course, she thinks her world is the normal one. She must. 

(Vanyel is aware that intense embarrassment on Valdemar's behalf is not the most helpful way to feel about this, but he's feeling it anyway.) 

:I'm sorry: he says finally. :I was - I wanted to ask if your world...knew anything relevant to crops...but we can talk about it later. A few candlemarks aren't time-critical for this: 

:Crop rotation fertilizer artificial fertilizer plant breeding irrigation hydroponics root vegetables no there's no time not unless spring is just starting Vanyel you're going to have to trade for food from other countries there's nothing else I know that works that fast do you have already cheap books if books are expensive I can explain printing presses Valdemar can trade books for food but oh no no no does that mean other children just starve elsewhere there's got to be surplus in the system right there's got to be some slack in the system even here:

:I...:

The thing Vanyel is thinking is that Thellim, if she ever met Leareth, would have a fascinating conversation and he kind of wishes he could see it - but also this is almost certainly a terrible idea, she's so - unguarded - she's less prepared to deal with Leareth than he ever was. And also 'I know someone who wants to fix this stupid problem too, but he's intending to do it by conquering my Kingdom so I can't endorse his plan' is...not going to be reassuring. 

He takes a deep breath. :Maybe. Hardorn keeps leaning on us for grain that we don't have, and Rethwellan's already sending us food - maybe further south - it's nearly winter, it'll be impossible to cross the Comb soon, I think it's too late for a caravan from Jkatha or Ruvan or...: wow he's too tired to remember geography, :or wherever else south, to make it here - but if we had something valuable enough to pay for Gating supplies, and could arrange that fast enough...: 

He shrugs, helplessly. :I don't know. Hadn't even considered it since, well, we don't have the coin to spare. Didn't. I hope you're right, that your world's knowledge is worth gold...: 

:Get me to Haven.  I'll take responsibility.:

Vanyel exchanges a slightly shaky look with his sister. 

:I think this is worth a Gate: 

:Van, weren't you unconscious for days last time?: 

:I think I'm getting better with it! I - we could send word for Savil, ask if she's up for it - I want to be there but crossing someone else's Gate isn't quite as bad... It's worth it either way though: 

A long sigh. 

:...Tomorrow. You can get some solid meals and a night's sleep in a real bed and then be an idiot if you want, but not today: 

:You're not actually in my chain of command, and if you were I'd outrank you: Vanyel is smiling a little, though. :Fine. Stuff me full of food, we'll get word to Savil, and worst case scenario I'll Gate us at first light tomorrow and someone else will have to do the explaining: 

:I need to know how books are usually produced, how much they usually cost, and some idea of what the demand function for them looks like, so I can figure out whether I should be trying to build a printing press or something else.  If I should be building a printing press then I can start talking about that now with a local engineer, and if not I need to figure out the next most valuable thing I know how to create.:

Vanyel starts to answer, and realizes with a flash of fresh embarrassment that he doesn't have the slightest idea how much books cost. As a child, the house came stocked with his grandfathers' library, and as a Herald he just looks up books in the Palace library or else makes a request to the Temple of Astera - oh that's a good thought, actually, their order does book-copying, and there's even a temple in Horn, he can send her there and she can get all her questions answered... 

:I'm not sure, but I know where you can go to find out: He frowns at Lissa. :Do we even have long enough to get a message across the Comb, if I come up with something to write? I kind of lost track of the date: 

:- Ugh, just a second, I need to check - it's very rude how it keeps changing, you know...: 

Lissa tells him. 

:There are two things I need to know.  One.  Whether the best current method of making books creates a thousand copies at a time or one copy at a time.  Two.  Whether there's a book or class of books where, if you could produce thousands of them, you could sell enough of that kind of book to buy enough of the food you need.  If either of those questions has the wrong answer, I can try to remember half-remembered lessons on how to rebuild Civilization if it vanished overnight, talk to your metal-workers, and see if I can recreate the next step up from your current metallurgy.  Do you already have 'steel'?:

Vanyel is not answering. It's sort of unclear, at this point, whether he's even tracking the conversation anymore. 

Damn it is she going to have to answer this by HERSELF. She's also suddenly very worried about Vanyel, but that can wait thirty seconds. Probably. Hopefully. 

:Er, one copy at a time. And...gods...a thousand copies of one book is hard to even imagine, but - maybe there's something?: She bites back a wholly inappropriate snicker. :If we could sell the Karsites copies of their damned holy book. Imagine that. Van's the bookish one of us, though, and he...: 

She's really not sure how to explain, though, and also Vanyel might kick her if she tries, so she trails off awkwardly. 

Thellim has picked up on the sudden mental silence too.  Oh no, did this remind him of romance somehow?  Focus Mindspeech on Lissa only, calm down and remember the techniques Yfandes taught.  :Lissa, did I say something wrong to Vanyel?  Should I see if I can reach Yfandes from here?:

:It's, um, the time of year: Who told Thellim about the romance thing. Van never talks about it. :I'm sure Yfandes knows he's upset, but I guess you can try for her anyway: 

Since Lissa, at least, can also see with her eyes that Vanyel is upset, but still has no idea what to do about this. He hasn't even finished more than half of his food.

Deep breaths.  Calm down.  Frantic flailing is the first step towards solving some problems, but not a majority, and it's almost never the second step.

Focus on the Companion, even though she's not here.  Should distance mean anything in the first place to a world that seems to be treating mental things as ontologically basic, that lets thoughts be transferred between brains with no doubt widely-different internal coding formats, and even different species?  Maybe there's a real distance dependency and maybe there isn't, but she's not going to throw added difficulties in her own pathway by starting from the assumption that there is.  Remember the mental laugh when Thellim suggested that she pre-chew Vanyel's food, that feels like the realest thing about her...

:Yfandes?:

:Yes?: Surprise, and she gets a very brief sort of flash of Yfandes' surroundings. :Are you with Van - should I come -?: 

:We were having a stressful conversation and I - may have been stupid - I forgot that Vanyel has had a worse time than I have - I was talking about my bright ideas for making something Valdemar could trade for food before - people starved - and not restraining my own emotions while I was doing that.  The last thing that happened was Vanyel asked Lissa the date, and Lissa told him, Lissa said the time of year is relevant somehow but didn't say how.  Now Vanyel's gone mentally quiet and physically quiet, frozen up like a... complicated information manipulation device that's been given bad instructions.  I don't suppose there's such a thing as a Mindspeech technique that takes a quick peek to see if anything bad is happening inside somebody's head, versus their suddenly needing a quiet five minutes but predictably being fine after that?:

:It's not your fault: Yfandes answers instantly, soothing. :It's - complicated. Damn it, I should have been keeping an eye on the dates... Er, there's a particular festival when...a bad thing happened, years ago. And it's in two days. Usually he has more time to prepare for it: 

She hesitates. 

:I don't know of a Mindspeech technique, no, but...this might be an important enough camp to have a Mindhealer? If I can persuade him to see them. Which will take some doing. I don't think he'll get stuck frozen, but...this time of year is hard enough for him when it's not in the middle of a war: 

:Somebody mentioned that Mindspeech is rare and a lot of Mindspeakers can't make themselves heard by non-Mindspeakers.  I didn't realize that before, I thought it was just something anybody here could do with training.  I also started Mindspeaking Lissa before anybody told me I couldn't do that.  I don't know if you need a Mindspeaking human with Vanyel frozen up, but I'm at your disposal if required.:  Time spent trying to Engineer here is probably not that valuable compared to time spent with higher-level engineers in Haven, and right now Thellim isn't sure if she should be building printing presses or looms or looking for oil fields or finding some other application of her world's teachings.

:...and it's also very possible that I know a hundred times as much about how brains work as anybody else on this planet, if Mindhealing is something I can do and you can tell me how to do it and any of my knowledge carries over.:

:Oh: 

Another, even more startled pause. 

:I - I'd be surprised if you can. It's a very rare Gift; there are only a handful in the whole Kingdom, er, that's a population of about half a million. I don't know much about it except that it's one of the more dangerous Gifts to muck around with untrained:

:But -: another brief pause, this time with a sense of decision and brisk motion, as though Thellim is half-overhearing Yfandes sticking her head through a different imaginary doorway to call out to someone else, :sounds like there is a Mindhealer posted in Horn. I've been wishing Van would see someone new ever since Lance died, and she might well be able to make use of whatever knowledge you have: 

: P( Mindhealer ) ≈ 0.00001
  P( Mindspeaker ) < 0.01 (?)
  P( Arrived from alternate universe ) << 0.00000001
  P( Mindspeaker | Arrived from alternate universe) >> 0.01 (?)
  P( Mindhealer | Mindspeaker & Arrived from alternate universe ) = ????? ≈ 0.5

which is to say that my probability of being a Mindhealer is probably dictated not at all by the base rate, and entirely by whatever process decided I should be a Mindspeaker and materialized me here next to a best-in-class mage -

- no, sorry, that's not the key point right now.  Yfandes, I won't be offended if you drop this call and go find the Mindhealer yourself, if that's simpler than explaining things to me.  Otherwise I'm very much reduced to child status right now, in terms of how much adult direction I need.  If you suddenly blinked out of existence, I suppose I'd ask Lissa and then others where to find Horn's Mindhealer, then ask the Mindhealer to come to Vanyel.  If there's any way I can do things more efficiently than that, like by coming to you so you can speak through me to other humans, you'll have to direct me more explicitly.:

A pause. :I - sorry - Van - this is very distracting...: 

Yfandes gives herself a sort of mental shake. :I suppose you should come with me to the Healers' compound, I won't fit inside. And - hmm, could you ask Lissa to write a note under her authority with an urgent request to speak to the Mindhealer here as soon as possible? ...We may still have to wait awhile, as I'm sure you can imagine they're going to be very busy: 

:Lissa, Yfandes wants you to write me a note under your authority with an urgent request to speak to the Mindhealer here ASAP, then I'm to come with Yfandes to the Healers' compound.  She thinks we may have to wait a while because the Mindhealer will be very busy.  I know very little of what's going on here but I'm worried that Yfandes, despite being moderately better about this than Vanyel, may still have a strange blind spot about the actual relative importance of Vanyel to Valdemar and what that implies about optimal distribution of resources.  So the thought occurs to me that you might want to word that note somewhat more strongly, at your own discretion and if I'm not making some stupid mistake here.:

:...I wouldn't be surprised if she does. Damned Heralds, they're all like that: Lissa is already reaching for the neat stack of note-stationary on a different shelf. :Should I stay with him here? I don't - I'm not sure what to do...: 

:I'd guess either that, or take him somewhere else, but I'll ask.  Yfandes, Lissa wants to know if she should stay with Vanyel.:

:- Probably stay here, it's not like we have our tent set up yet or anything, and this one's much nicer: Yfandes still feels very worried, but more decisive now that they have a PLAN. 

Lissa finishes her note, folds it, and applies what looks like a pre-stamped wax seal with a sticky backing; she's clearly practiced at this too, it takes her a couple of seconds.

She passes it over to Thellim, and then slides her chair closer to Vanyel and, somewhat stiffly, puts her arm around his shoulders. 

Thellim takes the note, then moves as directed in order to meet Yfandes outside the Healers' compound.

It's not the first time she's had a friend in trouble, but it's the first time she's seen somebody in enough trouble that they went blank like that, and something about the overall danger level of this world makes it all feel worse.

The Healers' compound is an actual building! Several buildings, actually; they look like repurposed houses or storefronts, and a sort of canvas canopy is spread over poles in front to allow passage between them without getting wet. 

A child of about fourteen or fifteen, in pale spring-green robes - not a colour that does particularly well when splattered with mud and what may or may not be dried bloodstains - is sitting on a crate out front, under the canvas.

She hops up when she sees them arriving. Then gives Thellim a very confused double-take. "Herald...?" 

:Healing trainee: Yfandes clarifies helpfully. :It'll startle her less if you do the talking. I can in theory, but we don't make a habit of it: 

:I'm a Mindspeaker, taking direction from and acting as relay for Yfandes, the Companion beside me.:  Thellim holds up the folded note with seal.  :Orders from General Lissa about our seeing a Mindhealer, quickly.  Please direct us to the relevant higher authority for handling this matter, or send us on directly to the Mindhealer if that's just as simple.:

The girl blinks at them for a moment. :Oh. Sure: She reaches to take the note. :Uh, wait here please, I'll go ask: 

:Please hurry.:  (It will not otherwise occur to Thellim that there's anything wrong about handing Lissa's note to a random person; they wouldn't try to take it if they weren't supposed to do that.)

(Yfandes also doesn't object to this plan.) 

The trainee is back a couple of minutes later. :She's finishing up with someone now but she'll talk to you right after: She looks vaguely impressed about this. :Uh, you can come wait inside if you want, it's warmer...: 

:Well, I can't, but you go ahead if you're cold: Yfandes seems unbothered by being excluded. 

:I'll head in.:  With Mindspeech she'll still be adjacent to Yfandes in the main sense that matters.

'Inside' is a narrow, poorly-lit hallway, with a floor of bare unfinished boards and a staircase peeling off to an upper level. There are benches lined up against one wall, and people sitting on them, presumably waiting to be seen by a Healer; they're nearly all visibly injured, though not badly enough that they can't walk or sit up, just nursing sprained-or-broken limbs close to their bodies or holding pressure on bleeding cuts. The Healing trainee shows her a section of bench and then darts off to get a shivering, coughing man a blanket. 

...lower tech level.  Right.  And they're not doing anything obviously stupid given their tech level, and there isn't anything that jumps out at her that her own emergency training says she's supposed to do without tools.

:Yfandes, do your people already know that diseases are carried by tiny organisms, bacteria and virii, which can be killed by boiling water?  The implication is that bandages need to be washed in boiling water before their re-use, in order to avoid transmitting infections between wounds and patients.  Assuming that's still true in this world and not just my world.  It seems like the sort of thing that might still be true.  Is there - do you know - if there's somebody at this Healers' compound to whom I should be saying that?  Or do your people know it already?:

:- They know that. Healers can See quite a lot, and their Collegium in Haven does some of the most advanced research I'm aware of anywhere: A brief burst of pride. :I hope you get the chance to meet Shavri, later. She's one of Van's closest friends, and lifebonded to King Randale; she's also the best and cleverest Healer I've ever met, I'm sure she would love to ask you all about what your world knows: 

An adult Healer in darker green robes nudges aside the curtain hung at the end of the hallway, looks around questioningly. 

The trainee points at Thellim. :You can go back: she says a moment later. :Melody can talk to you now: 

Thellim attempts to 'go back'.  Is there a unique obvious 'Melody' visible at the end of this operation?

There's a bigger room with more doors leading off from it; there are multiple people in green robes, but most of them are clearly busy, examining patients or hurrying toward one of the other destination rooms. 

One red-haired woman is standing next to an iron woodstove, which is providing an actually-quite-reasonable quantity of heat to the room, and pouring water from a kettle heated on top of it into a ceramic teapot. She looks about forty, and also reasonably well-fed; she might even have been stout before the war, and is still solidly built.

Teapot filled, she sets it down on a nearby sideboard and then glances around, tapping her fingers against her thigh and fidgeting at her collar with her other hand. Her eyes land on Thellim, and she blinks owlishly. :You the one looking for me?: 

(to Yfandes) :Yfandes, I'll try echoing this conversation to you.  Feel free to correct me, give me things to add, or jump in directly.:

(to the red-haired woman) :If you're Melody, the Mindhealer, I am.  Have you seen General Lissa's note?  Vanyel has frozen up and it seemed like a good and urgent time to call in a professional.  I'm not fully acquainted with the details, but I'm Mindspeaking to Yfandes the Companion and can relay questions and answers with her.:

:- His Companion is willing to talk to you directly? Huh, must really be exceptional circumstances. I did see the note, it was quite forceful: 

Melody's mindvoice is fast and feels very clean, somehow, with minimal emotional leakage. She seems to fidget nonstop, shifting her weight from one foot to the other even while standing still, adjusting her hair or smoothing her robe or tugging her sleeve straight. 

:'Frozen up' isn't very specific and neither was the note. Understandable, but - do you have anything to go on other than that, for why you thought this was particularly serious and time-sensitive?: 

:Vanyel is - was - in the middle of doing time-sensitive work.  I - I also have the sense - that Vanyel has been severely neglecting self-care for a long time, in a way that strikes me as strange, but I don't know how much that's - my being raised with a different viewpoint, I'm using Mindspeech because I'm not from Valdemar and don't speak this language.  I don't have the expectation that a 'Herald' will starve themselves nearly to death for no obvious reason, while trying to do vital work that the whole faction of Valdemar is depending on, instead of requisitioning better food to make up for the effect of mage-work on appetite - there are things that Yfandes and Lissa aren't telling me, something about this time of year, and I don't know whether it's a security secret or a privacy secret, but Lissa is with Vanyel, and you could ask Lissa so Yfandes doesn't have to relay secrets through me - Yfandes also said something about, I think, Vanyel's previous Mindhealer having died, and Vanyel having not seen anyone since, despite Yfandes wanting him to -:  Stop.  Pause.  Recollect yourself, Thellim.  It can be a disadvantage, in a way, that Mindspeech lets you babble at top speed indefinitely and never stop to breathe.  :I'm sorry for babbling.  I have no idea whether Vanyel needs you urgently or not.  From our standpoint he's just frozen.  If Mindhealing lets you take a look at him and assess for yourself how much trouble he's in, I think, given the relative magnitude of his importance to Valdemar and that Vanyel's work is urgent, it's worth your time to run over and do that assessment, unless the second most powerful mage in Valdemar is here and in much worse trouble.:

Melody absorbs all of this patiently, though she spends the entire time pacing in a tight circle. 

:...Well. That certainly does sound concerning. It'd be uncharacteristic for any Herald I've ever met to just - drop urgent work like that unless somewhere were very badly wrong. I think I'd better come have a look. Just need another minute for my tea to finish steeping. You could tell me about where you're from? General Lissa mentioned in the note you weren't from Valdemar but didn't say more and I confess you've gotten my curiosity piqued: 

If it's only going to be a minute, then Thellim is going to assume, hope, and pretend that this tea is vital to this person's professional function, instead of checking this delay-decision for Valdemarian Deranged Lack Of Optimization Syndrome.

:I haven't been told of my security classification status as yet, but I'm from far enough away that I know many things that are not known here, and fail to know much that is common knowledge here.  I suspect I will prove to know an unusual amount about how brains and minds work, and should work, and some of that may be useful for a Mindhealer; but I wouldn't know where to start explaining - it's a rather huge edifice of mathematical and scientific knowledge.  Ah, Mindhealers are rarer still, where I'm from, and I doubt that anybody from my city has ever seen one.:

Oops, did she send any unfortunate connotations when she thought the word 'city', such as said city containing roughly twenty times the population Yfandes ascribed to Valdemar?  Oh, well, too late now.

Melody's eyebrows make interesting motions at various points during this, but if she notices the 'city' connotation, she doesn't ask. 

:Well, I would love to discuss that, later when we're not so time-pressed: She's pouring herself some tea into a sturdy ceramic mug with a wider bottom than top. :Anyway, let's go: 

Yfandes is waiting for both of them outside, also pacing. The sky is definitely threatening more rain.

Thellim will stride forth with great alacrity, in order to set a good example.

(Yfandes only.)  :Yfandes, any objection if I ask Melody how somebody can tell if they have the Mindhealing Gift?  And if I don't have it - arguendo, Mindspeech must transfer the content of thought as loaded by words, not just the words themselves, since it works across language barriers and conceptual barriers.  With more practice, better methods, or just trying harder, can I telepathically link with Melody in order to get a look at the sensorimotor input-output of Mindhealing?  Obviously we'd want her to try conventional methods on Vanyel first, but part of me is thinking ahead to the possibility that I was dropped on your vicinity specifically because Vanyel was about to crash and my knowledge would prove necessary to restart him - it's a wild guess, but there's too much going on that can't be coincidence, I just don't know which noncoincidence it all is, so I'm guessing in all directions.:

:...Maybe: Yfandes seems unconvinced, or dubious - or maybe like she's no longer looking around for reasons because she already knows something that she isn't saying...? It's hard to read too much fine detail into the exact emotional overtones around her Mindspeech, though. 

:Anyway, sharing Gift senses is definitely a thing you can do, it's called concert-Sight. It's trickier, takes most people a lot of training, but you're a fast learner. And, of course I don't object if you ask Melody that. Probably neither will she, I think she's terribly curious about you:

(To Melody, echoing to Yfandes.)  :By the way - though, feel free to tell me to take this up again later, if it's a long question - how does somebody tell if they have the Mindhealing talent?  I should probably check that off-chance before I start trying to learn concert-Sight to investigate Mindhealing.:

:Hmm. I don't mind checking, but usually you'd know by now if you were: Melody sips her tea without once either breaking her stride or spilling any of it. :And it takes some time, and concentration for me, so I'd rather save it for not-an-emergency: 

:Acknowledged.:  That's all Thellim can think of that requires her to bother Melody or Yfandes right away, so she'll spend the rest of the stride to the General's tent thinking.

From the perspective of fictional patterns, it's surprising she was handed any unearned power that's rare to this world's natives, above and beyond her possession of her homeworld's knowledge.  It subverts any moral arc of the story about winning by thinking, and makes the lessons less useful in real life... which is to say, a 'real life' she's never going back to, so maybe that literary pattern shouldn't apply?  Or, again, this situation may not obey any fictional patterns - maybe after you die in a vehicular crash, you appear in another world able to use all local extraordinary powers; that could just be the way reality is, instead of it being like fiction.  Or her being able to use multiple Gifts could be the starting premise of a more unusual literary mystery, in which she needs to figure out which Gifts actually matter, if she has other Gifts to act as potential distractions.

Alternatively, some optimizing power could have given her exactly the Gifts she'll need in the future, and no others - which would be a very overt development for a story plot, but much more to be expected from real life where some agent is properly optimizing for an objective.  Arguendo, if concert-Sight lets her operate all the other Gifts secondhand, that would be a clear rationale for a resource-constrained optimizer to give her only Mindspeech, if it could give her Gifts but doing so was costly.  It's hard to see why something that could bring her here from dath ilan, couldn't just give her all this world's Gifts?  But if the intervener isn't limited in some way, it could have constructed a fully optimized avatar instead of her, or acted on this world directly instead of by proxy.

She can pick up this thread of thought again after she learns which Gifts she has; but it is good practice to think through in advance the conditional predictions of alternative theories, before seeing the data.  Anti-hindsight-bias training is powerful, but not perfect, and making advance predictions just works.

They reach the tent just before the rain starts in earnest. Melody, rather than knocking - since there's not exactly a door to knock on - just clears her throat and then calls out. "May we come in?"

"Yes, of course!" 

Lissa is still sitting with her stool next to Vanyel, who's holding himself curled-up and tense. 

When he hears them, he straightens up a little; his eyes aren't really focusing on them. :- What? I'm fine: 

Lissa gives him the MOST DUBIOUS of looks. 

"I object to your statement on the grounds that it is false," Thellim does not say to him, because she has no reason to believe that causing Vanyel to cultivate a self-image of being not-fine is the correct move for him right now even if self-image-accuracy is generally to be pursued.

"You weren't talking or moving," Thellim does not say to him, because to defend the wisdom of her choices would be to argue with him, and arguing could be interpreted as punishment, and she does not want to punish him for moving and Mindspeaking.  She's starting to construct a preliminary Theory of Vanyel, based on clues like the food he eats and Lissa trying to order him into taking a vacation and Vanyel not being enthusiastic about that.  It looks like somebody who's seen too much violence and death, who thinks he should be able to deal with that, who thinks he shouldn't need nice food when children will starve in winter, who thinks he shouldn't need a vacation when children will starve in winter, who is not actually strong enough to get away with treating himself like that; which means that his work is painful and taking better care of himself would be painful and taking a vacation would be painful; which means that all strategies lead into punishment shocks; and finally the subverbal animal underneath his deliberations tries to retreat from the outer environment entirely, emerging only to try to deflect the threat of being forced to face it again.

Thellim doesn't say any of that, because it's a wild guess based on the scantiest of evidence and one day's acquaintance, and there's too much she doesn't know about Vanyel that others do know, like why it matters what time of year this is.  He's from a very alien culture, and possibly might not be exactly what she thinks of as biologically human.  Somewhere around the age of twelve Thellim was cautioned against believing Theories of People that sound like interesting stories, when the reality often looks much less dramatic and human-sense-making, and more like 'somebody's brain started underproducing D2 dopamine receptors in the left ventral striatum'.  You don't want to be that awful person who starts sensemaking at some poor soul whose brain started underproducing D2 dopamine receptors in the left ventral striatum, just because you'd rather live in a world that makes sense.  There is a cruelty to telling somebody with damaged kidneys that they would be healthy if only they thought differently.

Thellim doesn't say any of that either, because if somebody actually does have problems caused by thinking, it is not helpful to suggest to them that they have incurably damaged kidneys.  People with a deficit of dopamine receptors can use cognitive mitigation strategies even if the problem's original cause wasn't cognitive.  What's most valuable is relatively fast and easy tests that somebody can perform to figure out which mitigations will work; tryable solutions are only one kind of test, and 'solving the original problem' is only one kind of potential mitigation.  It's a warning sign when all of your tests look like 'try this solution that undoes what I think was your original problem'.  Only a comedian claims that, when you fall off a ladder and break a leg, the priority treatment is putting on less slippery shoes.

Thellim doesn't say anything, of course.  There's an actual psychiatrist right next to her, and Thellim understands the concept of professional specialization.  :awaiting instruction; default inaction: she tightbeams to Melody and otherwise remains silent.

:Acknowledged: Melody answers, her mindvoice just as tidy and level and before. 

She turns back to Vanyel. :May I have a seat? My feet do get tired, at my age: 

A long pause. 

:- Er, yes, right, of course: He gestures vaguely at the stool previously occupied by Thellim. 

Melody shoots Thellim an apologetic look, and then sits, crossing her legs, and looking mildly at Vanyel. 

:I believe you that you're 'fine' in the sense that you could keep going if you had to: she starts. :Heralds learn that skill early, and I expect you've had it drilled into you even harder than most. But, also - not even knowing anything about you, mind you, just knowing what the last six months would've been like for anyone in your position - I can guess that you're, well, not at your happiest or healthiest or most well-rested. Also, right now all three of the other people involved are pretty worried. So. Can we talk a bit?: 

Vanyel twitches, his eyes turning briefly to glare furiously at Thellim and then at Lissa; a moment later, though, he ducks his head, seeming embarrassed by this response. 

:I guess: 

:Thank you. I do appreciate that I'm asking a lot. Hmm. Can you tell me your own best guess for why you froze up like that, before?: 

Silence. 

Melody waits for about thirty seconds, working through the rest of her tea but otherwise resisting the urge to fidget. 

:- Er, right. I do understand if it's hard to talk about–: 

:I don't know what's wrong with me! It's - Thellim being here is good news, it means there...there might be something we can do about all this...: 

Vanyel turns his face away again, curling into himself. 

:I understand: Melody tugs at her collar again. :May I use my Sight? It may help me sort this out for you, without needing you to talk through everything: 

Eventually, Vanyel nods. 

:Thank you:

Melody's eyes slip a little out of focus, her expression flattening - 

- her face doesn't reveal much, but she stops moving entirely, hands loose around her tea-mug. 

:Vanyel?: she sends, a long moment later. 

:Hmm?: 

:Er, may I try to show my Sight to Thellim? Apparently her world - knows a lot of things about minds: 

Shrug. :I guess if you want: 

Melody reaches out to Thellim with private Mindspeech. :...Sorry, I haven't actually done this before, but - gods - I don't know what I'm looking at except that it's horrifying...: 

:I think the trick is to sort of lean in closer, with your mind?: Yfandes offers helpfully. :As though you were reaching out with your hand, before, but now you're stepping in to dance - sorry, I don't know if your world has dancing -: 

It does, but Thellim wasn't invested in it.  She can guess what Yfandes might mean, though; she isn't just trying to transmit or trying to receive, like reaching out a hand or taking a hand; she's trying to respond, like in dancing where you would pay attention to someone else's whole body and let your own body shift instinctively in response to maintain a balance.  The Gift of Mindspeech is, obviously, handling a very great deal that Thellim would not know how to handle consciously, in terms of sending a thought or receiving it.  If Thellim can succeed at this subproblem at an unreasonable speed by the standards of this world, it won't be due to her conscious knowledge about how cortical columns work - she didn't use that to Mindspeak in the first place - but because Thellim has a better idea of what her Gift would be trying to make her do, and better training in how to get out of the way of herself when her intuitions are trying to move her.

Thellim focuses on Melody, leans in closer, readies herself to pay attention to tiny cues from that 'direction' and respond to them, consciously gives herself permission for her sensory modalities to load strange information, and tries to flow along / get out of the way of whatever her Gift knows how to do.

She won't be too embarrassed if this doesn't work on the first try.

Melody may not be experienced with Mindspeech-based concert Sight in particular, but she has a strong Mindspeech Gift, in power if not in distance-range, and nearly thirty years' of experience of getting into close contact with other peoples' minds. She accepts Thellim's mental 'reach', opens herself to it as well, rebalances herself and pulls Thellim closer...

And the world folds opens and spreads out, an entirely new sensory modality shifting into focus... 

As seen through Melody's metaphorical Mindhealing-specific 'eyes', Vanyel's mind is...like a tapestry, sort of, though the analogy is incomplete. There are threads woven into patterns, layers and colors and more complex structures, beautiful, intricate - 

- and, in the center of it, there's - nothing. A void. Like a miniature, metaphorical black hole, a darkness that swallows anything touching it; the threads and weave of Vanyel's mind are drawn inexorably toward it, nearby parts of his pattern half-unraveled under that impossible strain. 

Despite that, the rest of his mind holds together shockingly well. Thellim can sort of see the part of him scaffolded against Yfandes, the structure of the bond that links them; it bears a lot of weight, which must once have been carried by whatever used to exist in that pit of darkness. And there are other threads, other structures; it's not immediately clear what they are but it's very obvious that Vanyel has spent a long, long time adapting to work around having a void in the center of his soul. 

In the immediate term, every single aspect of him is under INCREDIBLE STRAIN. 

Her first theory was very very wrong, this is so much worse than she expected, how is what's left of him still alive.

Thellim has ripped herself out of concert before she's even realized it, and completely forgives herself for that.  She takes a moment to calm herself instead of screaming at the top of her lungs for Yfandes to explain this, for somebody, anybody to explain this.  She DOES NOT even consider asking Vanyel, Vanyel has had a Mindhealer before this, if he doesn't already know about this it's because his Mindhealer did not tell him.  Yfandes is also in this - whatever it is - it may not be safe to ask her either.

She could ask Lissa, but maybe first she ought to try looking again, try to understand for herself before she asks, just in case other people's mistaken interpretations are part of some larger disaster.

A tendril of thought, colored in cold horror and wound up tightly in cloth calm, goes out from her to Melody.  :Let's try that again.  I want to try looking at some of the threads immediately around the disaster zone, figure out where that is inside his mind and what it means.:

Melody, too, seems shaken but also keeping it under tight control. :Of course. ...You've really never done concert-Sight before? Most Mindhealing trainees find their own Sight really overwhelming, let alone someone else's:

She offers an imaginary mental hand again, and gently twirls Thellim back into the dance, focusing in on the pit of darkness. :All right. Where were you thinking to look...?: 

Vanyel is still hugging himself, hunched on his stool, apparently oblivious to how disturbing his mind looks to them. 

The obvious place to look is at the center of the darkness, and Thellim may try that, but there's a better place to look first, if her first guesses happen to be correct.

:Melody, I know something about brains and nothing about Mindhealing, so correct me if I say anything stupid, it's very likely that I'll say something stupid - I had theories about Vanyel before this, they looked nothing like this, I was very wrong then and may be very wrong now - but my first thought about the difference between Mindspeech and Mindhealing would be that Mindspeech transfers bits of ongoing activity between brains, cognitions in the process of being thought, and Mindhealing looks at and potentially modifies the underlying state of the brain that determines which thoughts lead into which other thoughts.  Vanyel's actual thoughts would be reflected in changes to the tapestry, the parts of it that we can see mutating, and only insofar as Vanyel's ongoing thoughts were changing any of his long-term state.  Does any of this sound like it's at all on the right track?  It's okay to tell me if all of it is wrong.:

If that guess is correct, they should look for a thread visibly in the process of changing, in the process of reaching toward the void and unraveling, so she can understand where the margins of damage are being pushed outward or back.  The horrifying void at the center may be more of a fact about how Vanyel's brain works than an ongoing activity it's performing right now.

:That's - hmm - I'm not sure I totally understand the distinction you're pointing out, there, but it sounds mostly right? Er, an analogy in books about Mindhealing, is that Mindspeech looks at the content of thoughts and Mindhealing looks at the structure of the mind, though I think that doesn't describe it perfectly either. The tapestries I see do change over time, for a particular person, but not quickly, and there's a lot more permanence than with surface thoughts. And - look -: a rapid sort of mental gesture at some of the workarounds in his tapestry, :- I think his mind's been like this for a long time. So...probably not the immediate problem, though it must be related: 

:In which case - again, I'm still guessing - you wouldn't be able to get a lot of information about that huge void at the center without prodding it somehow, you'd have to set it into motion to do whatever it does, which we probably should not do.  Again, correct me if I'm wrong.:

Thellim is still thinking about that caution that Mindhealing is one of the easiest ways to do damage if you don't know what you're doing; if that's an example of a plausible novice error, that could be part of it.

:- Huh! You've got - surprisingly good instincts for this: 

A pause. 

:...Oh. Hmm. I suspect you may have potential - er, the unawakened version of a Gift. But let's talk about that later. Anyway. I'm...honestly not sure it could hurt him any worse, trying to get a closer look there, I don't see any structures or...anything alive at all... But I've never seen anything like this at all, so I'm inclined to be cautious. Usually I would ask him for some context - in particular, Lissa said he saw a Mindhealer before, and I'm sure they knew or had a theory on what was wrong with him...: 

She shifts her weight on the stool, tugging at several different corners of her robes. :Gods. I need more tea: 

Thellim will pay slightly more attention to her hunches, though it wasn't like she was ignoring them.  :My mind - or possibly your mind, I'm not sure whether I was interpreting or you were Seeing - the void looks like something was ripped away.  But if, say, one of Vanyel's memories was deleted, we wouldn't see it at all - it just wouldn't be there.  Arguendo:  The void is something that happened when something else was ripped away, it's not the missing thing, it's the damage done by its removal, missing connections, ashes of what was burned, as they are revealed in what Mindhealing shows about the state of Vanyel's brain and its effect on Vanyel's future thoughts.  I don't know if your Gift lets you just go in and clean the whole thing up but - I'd be rather leery of trying that without either a lot more ongoing harm than even this, or a lot more patient consent.  In terms of the surface metaphor, we could try to strengthen the threads that are reaching toward the void and disintegrating, try to redirect them away from the void or redirect the void away from it, try to do more of the work that Vanyel's already done to work around the damage, maybe find a place where Vanyel seems to be trying to do more of that work and push it along, patch in more of Yfandes to the broken pieces.  But these are all thoughts I've had without trying to understand what I'm seeing.  So I propose that we look at something that's changing, one of the threads in the process of reaching toward the void and unraveling, and see if we can understand that before messing with it.  We won't have to prod it into motion if it's already in motion?  Or so I'd guess?:

:...I think that's right. That what we're seeing here is the damage done by something having been ripped away, I mean. And - I can't fix it. Not even if I were willing to take any risk. Mindhealing is powerful but not that powerful:

A pause. 

:I'm still inclined to ask him, because I don't think I - or we - can guess what's going on, not without a lot of invasive Thoughtsensing that doesn't seem justified. And because it'll be hard to do anything about it without his agreement and cooperation anyway. But, sure, it seems interesting to look for unraveling threads, and I think he could use another couple of minutes to collect himself before I ask him anything: 

:I'd say ask Lissa, in case she knows some reason we shouldn't ask Yfandes who's also tied up in this; and if Lissa doesn't have enough info, we should ask Yfandes before asking Vanyel.  Also, should we ask Lissa to delegate one of her employees to start the process of bringing you more tea?:  If the tea is actually important Thellim does not want it to not be there.

:I mean, I won't collapse if I don't get tea, it just helps me think. And - sure, we can ask Lissa, but I'd prefer to ask Vanyel for permission to do that first. Sometimes people are uncomfortable with that, and it's important that he trust me: 

Valdemar certainly is full of people who think they don't need things that help them.  Thellim wonders what their velocity of money is like, and if nobody ever actually buys anything.

:Oh, well then, Melody, consider me to be asking you to ask Vanyel for permission to ask Lissa about what we saw, so that we can ask Lissa if it's okay to ask Yfandes if it's okay to ask Vanyel.  But first let's take a closer look ourselves, to whatever extent we can only look without changing anything.  My people have ideas about investigative procedures, and one of them is to look at something yourself and think about it yourself, before you ask somebody else what they think is going on.  This does presume you have mastered the important prior skill of actually being able to toss out your mistaken first impressions in favor of the more informed answer somebody else tells you afterward, but I do have that training so it should be okay.:

Aside to Lissa, patching in Melody.  :Lissa, Melody thinks she doesn't really need more tea even though it helps her do her important work.  Can you delegate one of your employees to bring her some more?:  She is beginning to suspect that this universe has a Systematic Problem.

:Hmm? Yes, of course!: Lissa's emotions are mostly of relief (she is SO GLAD to have advice on a concretely helpful action she can take.) 

:- Huh. Yes, all of that makes sense to me - hmm - I think I recognize the concept you're pointing at, but I never managed to put it quite so clearly? I'm very impressed!: A pang of longing, quite noticeable in the overtones. :I think I can manage to hold my first impressions with the right amount of uncertainty, and toss them if they seem wrong later. Mostly I was worried about how I'm not sure how much Vanyel wants this to be happening right now, but - it does seem that he needs it...: 

Melody's uncertainty is leaking through a little in the Mindspeech overtones; it feels as though she knows what needs to be done but isn't sure that she has permission to do it. 

:Vanyel looks damaged to the point of hospitalization.  Among my own people we might consider it to be an ethical dilemma to proceed further if he told us to stop, but not to do more passive scans on him when it's clear that we or rather you are medical personnel and he's not objecting.  Does your standard-professional-ethical-code say otherwise?:  Overtones that go along with the dath ilani word for standard-professional-ethical-code will include the explicitness of the code, patients relying on and trusting the code, and five hundred Very Serious People debating the details in newspaper columns.

:- Your world has a standard code for this?: Awe, desperate curiosity, a hint of envy. :I... For reference, Valdemar has few enough Gifted Mindhealers that there isn't a school or curriculum for it. I've - mostly figured things out myself, over time:

The unstated implication, clear in the overtones, that she knows there's a lot she hasn't figured out yet - and some she doesn't expect that she ever could, on her own. 

:And it - hmm - it feels...disrespectful to Vanyel, and - like it could be bad for our future relationship and rapport, if I ram through on things right now without asking for his input. And...a bunch of other feelings I'm not sure I can describe well... But you're saying your world has formal policies?:

Amazement, fascination. 

how OLD is sapient life on this planet, is it TWELVE

Thellim mentally revises somewhat downward the amount she should defer to Melody's still-superior actual professional experience.

:It sure does!  And don't worry if your world doesn't, I've had enough contact as a patient with standard-professional-ethical-codes in medicine that I can improvise a new one for Mindhealing as we go along.:  Inward screaming?  Who, her?  Not at all!  She doesn't have the time!  :Would you like me to be the one to ask Vanyel if it's okay for me to look at things and talk to Lissa?:

:....Sure, if you have a good script for it: 

Vanyel is still rocking and hugging himself. 

Lissa, not looped in on the recent conversation, is rubbing Vanyel's back and looking very worried. 

:I do not have a script because we don't have Mindhealers.  If you have an actual script you should definitely use the script.  I would say, "Vanyel, we're planning to use concert-sight for me to take a closer look at your mind-state, and then ask Lissa or Yfandes some questions about what's going on, which may include describing what we've seen.  If you're okay with that happening, you don't need to do anything at all.  If it's bad, you can let us know.":

:- Hmm, all right, I think I have a script I prefer to that, at least: 

And to Vanyel:

:I've looked at your mind and I see - something pretty big and significant. It's your mind, of course, and if you'd rather tell me yourself, or - tell us to bugger off - then that's fine. But I think it's important, and I imagine it could be pretty hard to talk about. So, if you want us to help but you're also finding this hard, would it be all right for us to ask your sister or your Companion for input?: 

Vanyel stares at her for a long moment; judging from his expression, he could be very tempted to tell her to bugger off.

:....Sure. That's fine. I - I do want you to help me...do things... Both of them know a lot but Yfandes knows more: 

:Yes, that was significantly better than I could have done.:  She'll go on deferring to Melody for actual patient interactions, check.  :Note, but suggestion only, my world's rules would suggest that you ask Vanyel explicitly about my being able to look at him using your Sight.  I don't look like medical personnel - I'm not actually medical personnel except in the sense that I'm trying to do the job of one - and the way we think about things, I wouldn't be covered by the permission Vanyel just gave you.  Other Mindhealers who work for or with you would be, if they had the same code.:

:- Noted. And, for future reference, I do want to get that code from you in writing as soon as possible after this: 

A pause. 

:Vanyel, is it also all right if I share - er, keep sharing - my Sight with Thellim? She isn't a Mindhealer, obviously, but I think she could be very well placed to help: 

:Sure, that's fine: If anything, Vanyel seems significantly less self-conscious about this part. :...Yfandes? Do you want to, er, tell them -?:

Tell them why he's broken and will continue being broken forever. He doesn't finish the sentence but it leaks through a little. 

:- Yes, of course: 

Yfandes hesitates, though. She seems to be tensing up, like this is a painful subject for her as well. 

After a moment, she narrows her Mindspeech to exclude Vanyel.

:My Chosen had an awful childhood - his father was horrible to him. When he was fifteen, he was sent to the capital to live with his aunt. At that point he...fell in love with - and lifebonded with - another Herald-Mage trainee, Tylendel: 

(From the overtones it is both very clear that Tylendel was male, and that same-sex relationships were strongly disfavoured and disapproved of by the popular consensus, if not by Vanyel's aunt specifically.) 

:They had a few happy months together. But - a lot of awful things happened, and - it's complicated - Tylendel was trying to save Van and raised a Gate using his life-force. And then -:

(- agony, desperate confusion, loneliness -)

:- and then lost his Companion. And he - he - he called a Final Strike: 

The Mindspeech connotations here are clear. A Final Strike means burning all of one's life and strength to set everything nearby on fire.

:....and most people who lose a lifebonded partner, er, they - don't survive. But Vanyel is very strong: 

:Survived because Valdemar needed him,: Thellim says.  There's respect in her Mindspeech, inextricably intertwined with horror.  Thellim can't think of a single person so vital to her own Civilization that they wouldn't retire to cryonic suspension and the hope of future healing, with that level of injury.

Thellim was trying to not know all this yet.  But this is exactly the sort of thing where somebody would look at that huge void and think that it was the missing partner instead of dangling connections, remembered pain, if somebody had told them too early what to think.  She'll just try to blank the knowledge out of her mind and see from first principles.

:A lifebond would have to be much more than a romantic entanglement to do this kind of damage.  Something like Mindspeech but much deeper.  Yfandes, are you okay with - talking about this subject - or should we be looking for an expert on lifebonds?:

:I don't - I'm not sure that there are any experts on lifebonds...:

:I'm okay with talking about it. Although I - I - I don't know where to start...: 

:What you know about what lifebonds are.  What they do.  What happens when they break.  What kind of ongoing damage they do after they're broken.  Why there's a new connection to you in Vanyel's mind holding up some of the damage.:

:Lifebonds are - when two people's souls fit together, and then - when - if they meet, they form a strong bond - they can feel what the other is feeling, they can share magic, it's - even deeper than a Herald-Companion bond.... I don't know what lifebonds are for, but - lore says they happen when the gods are meddling...: 

:I'm not sure anyone knows much about the damage that a broken lifebond leaves. Vanyel is...the first person who's ever survived longer than a few months: 

:- Possibly because I bonded to him immediately after Tylendel died. I - I -:

Another long pause, but this time a tense one, replete with tamped-down...anger? confusion? desperation? 

:....I think the gods - a god - wanted that. Wanted us to bond - wanted something of us - but I don't, I don't–:

Yfandes goes silent. 

:Is a 'god' - responsible for the ongoing damage?  Would we be opposing its active counter-intervention if we tried to fix it?:

:- I don't know. I... probably not? Van saw Lancir for almost eight years and he tried very hard to fix it or at least mitigate it: 

Thellim's sense of pessimistic concern catches up with her.  :Yfandes, is this line of questioning okay with you?  I know you said you were more resilient than a human but some of your responses have seemed - like you might be close to freezing up yourself.  It's visible that you're tangled up with Vanyel and this would not be a good time for you to also shut down.:

A confused hesitation. :I - I don’t think - I want you to help Van. Please:

(tightbeam to Melody)  :I have no idea how much of this is my guessing versus what 'unawakened Mindhealer potential' could be telling me, but I'm getting a sense we should back off Yfandes.  You?:

:- Yes, I’m noticing something too. Was about to ask you, actually. I...don’t have a very clear sense of what in particular we need to back off on, though, do you?:

:I do not.  She... could have picked up some of Vanyel's trauma through the bond afterwards, even though she wasn't bonded to him when it happened?  It sounds more like a wild vaguely-plausible-sounding guess than something that's actually true.  But she's basically functioning and my own guess says we're supposed to leave her functioning while we see if we can do anything for Vanyel.  If we can help Vanyel, sometime later we can go back and have a talk with Yfandes about risks and tradeoffs and future therapy, after Vanyel isn't in a crashed state where anything going wrong with Yfandes could make it even worse.  The main thing that would contradict that strategy is if we can't do anything for Vanyel directly, and have to work on him through Yfandes's side of the human-Companion bond, which I don't know is even possible.  I mean, I did have one crazy thought about whether we could look at the broken ends of Vanyel and deduce how to transform Yfandes to make her more like Tylendel in those particular ways that would turn their current bond into something more like a lifebond, but that's more a discipline of 'how to have crazy thoughts in case you can turn them into saner thoughts' than my current working proposal.:

:....I would be very surprised if that worked. They're different sorts of bonds, and - as far as I know, lifebonds happen at a level deep enough that Mindhealers can't do anything to directly affect them. I - do think it'd be unsurprising if she had a pretty bad time early on, after bonding to him. And of course she's been under the exact same war stresses, if not more. But...I don't know, it feels like I'm missing a piece. I would ask her permission to peek at her mind too, except I'm not sure if that would add to whatever's putting so much strain on her right now: 

:If looking doesn't change anything - up to the limits of Heisenberg, if that even applies here - then it sounds materially safe.  I have some ethical twinges about asking Yfandes for this when she's obviously desperate and would say yes to anything and it's not her who's frozen up - but - if you have a sense that Yfandes is or even could be part of Vanyel's puzzle - we should ask her permission and take a look.:

:I share your ethical twinges, but she's going to be relevant for sure. If nothing else, stressors for her will affect him too, through the bond, and would make it harder for her to support him - which he clearly relies on a lot. Most Heralds do: 

And to Yfandes: 

:Would it be all right if I peek at your mind as well, with my Sight? I think it could be quite valuable for helping Vanyel. If so, is it all right if I keep sharing my Sight with Thellim?: 

Yfandes doesn't hesitate. :Yes. Of course: 

:I appreciate it:

And Melody turns her Othersenses toward a different mind, the muted glow of Yfandes' shielded mind unrolling like a carpet, threads, patterns - 

Yfandes' mind is a stable one. A square, solid-built weave, sturdy and reliable -

- and with a couple of additions, or extensions, woven deep into her but somehow not of her. It's a little as though some sort of scaffolding has been sewn into place, with a metaphorical material closer to finely drawn platinum wire than to any normal cloth. It looks strong. Almost unbreakable. One of the reinforced areas, rooted deep in the core of Yfandes, spirals out and joins her to Vanyel. 

The other's purpose is less clear. And it's the one currently under significant tension, tugging and warping the shape of her mind. Not to anything near a breaking point, yet - Yfandes is resilient - but something there seems off. 

:Melody, I don't think we should try doing anything to Yfandes right now, but I want to try looking at the added metal wire that's under tension and the threads in the immediate vicinity that it's constraining.  Whatever your Gift can tell you about it without poking it.  And - minds are made of smaller pieces that are made of even smaller pieces.  I don't know how much of that your Gift has let you figure out but everything we're looking at is much larger than the smallest elements of a mind should be.  We're seeing thousands of cloth patches woven from millions of threads; there should be trillions of connections.  It's not the time to start explaining neurotransmitters or synapses or Purkinje cells or cerebellar chips, but unless Yfandes's brain works completely differently from mine, I know the things we're looking at are made of smaller parts.  'Zoom in', if you can, if that request makes any sense to you.:

:...Huh: A wash of almost overpowering curiosity, tamped down quickly by self-control. :Let's talk about that later. For now, yes, the request makes sense and it's something I often do, though...maybe not to the level of detail where a mind would have trillions of components: She sounds awed. :Well, I'll see if I can get a closer look with no poking: 

There's a momentary, dizzying impression of falling, down and in, almost swallowed by it, the particular strained-wires part of Yfandes swelling to fill all of Melody's awareness. 

Melody just looks, calmly and patiently, for a long time. 

:...I can't do a confident interpretation without asking Yfandes for more context: she admits, finally, :but...this area is tied really deeply into her...motivations, I guess you could say. Particularly the, hmm - the moral or ethical kind of motivation? I don't know if your world has better terms for that. The bond with Vanyel is very deep as well, obviously, but it's much more rooted in emotional attachment - love, you could say, though not the romantic kind: 

Yfandes holds herself still and calm under their regard, though she's clearly still tense. 

:...she's mind-controlled to have a particular set of ethics and support Vanyel?  We so did not need to deal with this right now.  Melody, what's the version of the story that you know for where Companions come from?  I heard one version, I don't know if there are others in circulation.:

:- That's - it's not what I would've said first but it's not wrong: A mental sigh, though none of it leaks through in her expression or body language. :The story I heard is that King Valdemar was worried about the future of the Kingdom and particularly about corruption - he'd fled a corrupt Empire to the east - and so he prayed to every god he'd heard of for a miracle to help protect Valdemar forever. And also that he was a very powerful mage and cast some kind of spell, and then the first Companions showed up fully-formed in the Grove in Haven and Chose his son the heir and a few others. There's a song about it but it's not very specific on the details:  

Melody feels VERY UNHAPPY about the Yfandes-related discovery. It's not entirely clear why. 

Thellim is not liable to notice this mystery.  It is too obvious for her why somebody would be unhappy.

:It seems very unlikely that Vanyel is the perpetrator here.  That being the case, I think we deal with Vanyel's ongoing immediate medical issues, and only later figure out what to do about the giant mind control plot by mages or gods or both.  It's at least conceivable that what we're looking at is consensual, although the way that Yfandes was freezing up during questioning does not look like the sort of mental help I'd ask for myself.  And, though I hate to say it, depending on how the mind control works, it could very easily be integral to who Yfandes is now and ripping it out could be the equivalent of killing her and creating a different person.  For all we know.  Too many complications drop all this.  We should go look at the place where Yfandes is joined to Vanyel, where she's supporting the broken lifebond, before we look at Vanyel again.:

:Does seem like the best approach: Another frustrated mental sigh. :All right - let's have a look at the other area: 

Another dizzying shift–

The silver-wired area that links Yfandes to Vanyel is not under any particular internal strain. Yfandes' resolve to help and support Vanyel seems practically infinite, and unlike with the other scaffolding, there's no sign of this conversation putting tension on it. 

Some of the nearby tapestry looks - knotted, or repaired with darning, or some other metaphor like that. 

:- She's worried and scared for him, but she's not conflicted: Melody notes. :She's not - in the other place it looked like she might be fighting herself on something, and here it doesn't at all. And...hmm, I do think there's some old trauma here, experiences that were painful for her, but scars, not wounds, at this point, she's dealt with it and it's in the past. I - she's very, very committed to standing by him. I think it could withstand - almost anything: 

The 'almost' seems to hang in the air between them. 

:It sounds like the - uncontrolled part of Yfandes - is fully on board with supporting Vanyel.  At least that avoids some ethical dilemmas.  Even if there was some previous Yfandes who wouldn't have liked what she became, the current person takes ethical priority over the past person.  I'll have to do some thinking about any bad systemic properties that stance might imply when facing mind-controllers, but I'll do that later.  For now, if we see a way to help Vanyel from Yfandes's side of the bond, I won't feel bad about taking it.:

:So let's look next - if we can - at what Yfandes's mind is doing to support Vanyel from this side of their bond.  The part right at the interface to Vanyel; see if we can figure out what the tapestry is doing, maybe zoom in on one of the threads making it up and ask what just that one thread is doing.  The clever-idea that comes to mind is to synchronize Mindspeech activity-reading with Mindhealing state-reading, but if you can't already do that, it's probably more of a research project.  And asking for a full mind-activity-read of Yfandes, or Vanyel, probably comes with all kinds of security implications... it's not clear that we're desperate enough to ask for that right now.  Normal techniques first.  What can we see, from this vantage point, about what Yfandes's mind is doing to support Vanyel's mind through their bond, that partially but not fully replaced the lifebond?:

:Synchronizing Mindspeech and Mindhealing... Hmm, that does sound like something I've done before, actually, though it wouldn't be practical here – it's very invasive and pretty gruelling for the patient, even aside from the security aspect. But, sure, I can go in closer on the interface...: 

Melody concentrates, and her viewpoint backs 'out' again, then swoops 'inward' on a different area – the region where Yfandes' and Vanyel's minds are linked. 

The area where the silver-wire framework of Yfandes' bond link to Vanyel, is placed as closely as possible to the edge of the missing, damaged area. It's evident even at a high-level glance that it isn't and can't be the right shape to patch that gap entirely.

...Up close, the edges of the shattered lifebond are ragged, and it's almost as though the void holds some sort of sucking vacuum, constantly pulling and straining all the adjacent connections. Some of the torn tapestry looks like it's been rewoven, tucked back into itself – part of this looks intrinsic, as though Vanyel is retraining his own mental habits, some is silver-wire-reinforced, and yet other parts are...not Vanyel, but not Yfandes either, but as though his tapestry has been darned with a different kind of yarn. 

:That's another Mindhealer's work: Melody explains, before shifting her 'focus' to pick out the Yfandes-specific modifications in particular.

:The denser area here is...hmm, something to do with interpersonal attachment, and feeling safety or belonging, I think? And other than that, there's a lot of - just steering his thought-patterns away from repeatedly noticing the damaged area, I think, or being reminded constantly of memories associated with it. But incompletely - it's causing him pain all the time, I reckon. Yfandes is - sort of stabilizing the edges so it doesn't collapse the rest of his motivation and ability to want things or enjoy things? Maybe? I don't exactly have a lot of experience interpreting this sort of thing in particular: 

She dives in even closer. :...She's - sort of interwoven with his mind on a really fine-detail level - especially right here at the 'edge' of where his mind would've used to link up with his lifebonded, but not just there. I don't really know what this means or if it's normal for Heralds, honestly, usually I don't go in so close with my Sight: 

This can't be the real story.

Thellim indicates, with a wordless tug, that she wants to step back from the Vanyel-Yfandes boundary and go out of the concert-work link.  It doesn't seem especially smart to try what Thellim is about to try while Melody is in the middle of someone's mind.

Melody seems a little confused, but pulls away from Vanyel-and-Yfandes' minds. :- Yes, what?: 

:Melody, what we're seeing can't be the real story, only the tiniest fraction of it.  What we're seeing is not like how brains work inside.  It's too large an edifice of knowledge, I can't start to explain it in order, but maybe I can send over the experience of what it would be like to know, you may not get the knowledge but maybe you'll know what it would feel like to have it:

and Thellim tries to put more power behind her Mindspeech, send more of the contents of her frontal cortex and all its associations, as she thinks in swift review

:light enters retina, preprocessed, edge cells, bar detectors, down the vast neural cable to the lateral geniculate nucleus (the centers of the brain are older evolutionarily than outer parts and form something like a complete system on their own because they're relics of a time when other parts of the system didn't exist), onward to the visual cortex; the visual cortex has different areas for textures and colors even though we experience seeing them both together and at once; this is the hyperbolic mapping between the actual visual field and its representation in the visual cortex that assigns processing power in proportion to how close an object is to the center of vision; an example seen in a neuroscience textbook of what lights up in a monkey's visual cortex when it looks at a grid, the distortion of that grid, the internal coding of brains does not look like what we experience ourselves seeing; spatial locations and forms in the parietal lobe, recognition of objects in the temporal lobe; the brain divides up internal labor along dimensions that are nothing like we experience ourselves when we're dividing up a problem to think about it, based around the dimensions of low-level properties of things rather than their higher-level uses and categories; here is the cerebellum, vast and central to all cognition, the control of realtime motor patterns including the motor patterns of thinking themselves; here is a cerebellar chip, a tiny thing that attends to incoming sequences of neural pulses encoding the vastly reduced-dimensional sense inputs that are relevant to its job alone, sending out one part of motor impulses to be combined with many others; here are the parallel fibers, showing that chip a hundred thousand input lines that might be relevant to it, the synaptic density here is higher than any other known part of the brain; here is the climbing fiber's error signal, to tell the cerebellar chip when the larger system knows a mistake has happened, it is theorized that the cerebellar chip takes the error signal and tries to correlate it with the parallel fibers' inputs to produce a corrected signal using those inputs; if that happens often, the balance of the signaling algorithm will be at the point where the derivative is zero, balancing the net magnitude of pushes in both directions to remain roughly stationary (this is calculus, by the way, but it's not important right now); here's some of my experience writing computer programs as a kid, and what that metaphorically implies about how often the brain must be translating thoughts between one format and another; it's theorized that cortex began as a convergence space for sensory information, frontal cortex is executive in the simplified stories they tell to children, but thinking is a realtime control skill so probably a lot of the real work is done in the cerebellum; the frontal cortex is much larger in humans than in chimpanzees; records of what happens with blindness show that different parts of the cerebral cortex can take on other parts' work; it's theorized that there's a common algorithm that the whole vast cerebral cortex begins from, here's the six-layer structure that appears everywhere, here's the rather informal theory about hierarchical temporal patterns; brain damage is endlessly fascinating but it's like trying to understand a radio by ripping particular circuits out of it; when the hippocampus is destroyed people can't form new memories but they can still retrieve old ones; damage to the brain here can cause people to believe everybody around them has been replaced by impostors, because they see the face but get no sense of recognition; brain damage here can cause people to lose the ability to control their left arm, and also vigorously deny that their arm is paralyzed, but if you squirt cold water in their left ear they may become able to know:

:Brains are complicated, brains were never made by humans, and brains' inner stories don't look like what humans experience or the stories they tell themselves.  What you saw can't be what's really happening.:

Melody goes still, absorbing the tangled flow of information. 

:I...I mean, I think that's right - that I'm only seeing a tiny part of the story here, I mean, what I'm capable of understanding, what I have words to describe. I -: 

She shakes her head a little, wonderingly. 

:If all that's true, then I don't have the faintest idea how Thoughtsensing can possibly work. Let alone Mindhealing Sight. It's definitely kind of inscrutable at first, for a beginner - but if it were that opaque then no one could possibly learn to control the Gift even in an entire lifetime: 

:Among the very first things I thought after I got here and found out about Mindspeech,: when it comes to concealing how far away Thellim is from, the cat is now out of the bag, out of the house, and well on its way out of the atmosphere, :was that it had to be much more complicated than it looked.  Vanyel can think 'sapling' and somehow that concept makes it from his mind into my mind even though we'll have our memories and concepts of trees stored in different networks of our brain, possibly even in different formats that our brains invented for themselves.  There would be shared points that pinned down the meaning and let somebody looking at both brains in enough detail figure out the codes, if you can load enough of the shape of a tree from his visual cortex into my visual cortex you could probably get started on following the associations into my temporal lobe.  But Mindspeech can't be like - pressing a sheet of paper onto another sheet of paper with wet ink, and the ink just naturally and easily soaks into the other sheet of paper.  It's dangerous to make up theories too fast, I'm in danger of far overrunning my data, but the obvious guess is that there's a Mindspeech organ, or maybe even a Mindspeech tool that connects to a Mindspeech server somewhere maintained by gods.  Whatever Mindspeech is, it extremely likely uses - aspects of this universe that my own universe doesn't have, like 'magic' - which is why my universe doesn't have it - and I have no idea at all what's easy to do with that.  Whatever Mindspeech is, it's doing an enormous amount of work in the background to enable different people to think at each other and convey sense impressions at each other despite all of the formatting-complexity and different associations to different memories that must differ between their brains.:

:Extending my wild guessing even further, my wild guess is that either your Mindhealing is only showing you things that you - expect to see, that you understand - or that your sense of meaning is picking up on one out of a thousand threads in the tapestry, or one tiny aspect of the meaning of the cloth, and it feels to you like that's what the whole section of fabric is doing.:

:And how this matters to Vanyel is that I suspect his broken lifebond has damaged things that aren't in the easy-to-understand class.  I'm far overreaching my evidence but still, guessing so as to organize investigation, when I hear about lifebonds I imagine two sufficiently similar minds, with some of the Thing that powers Gifts, can meld and start sharing cognitive work.  Then half the lifebond gets ripped away, and there are thoughts that - start, and can't complete themselves, like those threads reaching in towards the void and disintegrating.  A form of brain damage that the brain doesn't know how to correct from the inside; the brain can route around some forms of damage but others it can't.  Even people who've been through horrendously painful experiences, I'm guessing, wouldn't end up looking like Vanyel does inside - I don't know if you've seen people like that, Melody, and you should correct me if I'm wrong and they do look like Vanyel.  But my wild guess is that Vanyel has a form of brain damage that my world has never seen before and it's mixed in with the trauma.  When he thinks about Tylendel, he doesn't just remember losing something very precious to him or the pain of the bond breaking, his thoughts literally malfunction.:

:When you're ready, Melody, I want to look at Vanyel again, and look very narrowly at a single one of those threads that was in the process of reaching towards the void and disintegrating.  I'm going to try to - lean in closer - to see if I can recognize anything, or load my thoughts and expectations into your own mindspace through Mindspeech - if I can close the gap between my own knowledge and your Gift's power to interpret what it sees.  And I'd like you to stop me from changing anything - to not let your Gift do any manipulations, even if you cede control of perceptions to me - because I am not an experienced Mindhealer and we do not have a backup Vanyel.: