Melody waits for a bit. 

:- Sorry, I don't think that worked: 

Well, then I'm out of ideas, unless you want to let me prepare another translation spell. Or tell me the syllables to speak aloud and I'll try saying them but I'm no good at languages.

:- Er, I have one more idea. Wait for me a minute?: 

And she slips out of the shielded room and stands by the door. 

:Vanyel?: 

Vanyel is sitting by himself in his room, after an entire endless day of frustrating meetings with the Senior Circle. 

He jumps. :Melody? What?: 

:Leareth: 

That does not help. 

:What about Leareth: 

:We're trying to -: 

There is way too much context and - too much interrelated history with one of her actual patients.... 

:Sorry, can you just come over to the House of Healing: 

.....Sure. Vanyel feels like he's wasted most of the day thinking about Leareth anyway; he might as well go over on the hope he can do something useful. 

Melody is waiting at the door for him. 

She reaches for his shoulder. "- Are you holding up all right?" 

That is such a stupid question. 

....On two seconds' reflection, Melody also feels like that's a stupid question. 

Maybe they can both just ignore that it happened. 

She switches to Mindspeech. :Leareth is pretty out of it and - understandably scared - we need him to use Thoughtsensing to read Carissa so that she can delegate to Moondance the ability to give him instructions for the stupid compulsion, only he's too delirious and panicky to do that. He knows you, though - can you...?:

Can he what. 

- all right, fine, Vanyel can notice that he's to some degree being deliberately obtuse and that this is probably stupid. 

:Leareth? This is Vanyel: 

Vanyel tightens the directional shields around his Mindspeech connection, making sure it's private between Leareth and himself. 

:Leareth, I - I'm really sorry about all of this - I just, I didn't see another way to get you out of there. Except asking k'Treva for help. But - I'm so sorry, but can you please Thoughtsense Carissa so we can modify the mind-control magic they did and let you eat and drink?: 

- what. 

All right, fine, he'll read Carissa's mind and see whatever she's thinking right now. 

.....Or not. 

The geas is still blocking all volitional actions - he's gotten Thoughtsensing past it before but apparently that wasn't volitional enough... 

Melody sees the change start, and then crumble. 

That is so incredibly inconvenient! 

:- Carissa, do you know how he was able to read your mind before? He - it seems like your compulsion is stopping him from doing that, right now:

- honestly I would've expected it to block it! I assumed it was involuntary, more like breathing than like talking, the geas doesn't block that.

:Oh. That - makes sense - but maybe this time it was too deliberate - not instinctive enough -?: 

Maybe. 

It's honestly weird that Leareth is cooperating at all? But he was weirdly cooperative with her too. Maybe he's just a weirdly cooperative person.

She's trying not to glare at Vanyel but succeeding mostly only by not looking at him.

Vanyel, who has always been sensitive to criticism, hasn't failed to notice that Carissa is trying not to glare at him! Even though she's mostly succeeding! 

...He feels really bad about– well, honestly he has no idea what he should be feeling bad about here. 

:Right: 

Melody takes a deep breath, centres herself. 

:- How long would it take you to prepare another translation spell: 

If I were able to prepare spells it would take an hour to prepare all of them.

:Can you not prepare spells because of the mind-control or because of - other reasons - er, I mean, if I modified the set-commands on you would that help?: 

Vanyel interrupts both of them. :- If I pretended to attack Leareth so that he'd be startled would that help: