Nod. :I can tell all the littles to stay away, then, and I suppose everyone else can be careful about not reading her. Or she could stay outside the Vale if she would really prefer that, we could bring food out instead, but - the Vale is where the baths are.: 

:Well, I don't know in more detail how she values baths versus mental privacy but I can ask her. How far away is the Vale?: Also how many mindreaders do they HAVE. Are they breeding for it or something, affinities don't even work like that usually...

:About half of the people in the Vale old enough to have awakened Gifts are Mindspeakers. I think that is about normal? ...Do you want me to stop reading your mind too, I am convinced that you are not bandits and - I suppose if you do not have many Mindspeakers and cannot have everyone doing concert-work all the time then you might be more used to thinking of it as rude.: 

:I mean how else are you going to understand me?:

:I can try to hold a narrower Mindspeech link with you and only pick up words you are trying to think loudly at me on purpose? ...I think I will learn more about why we are both so confused if you do not mind me reading more, though. I am very confused about where you are from and how you are here.: 

:I don't mind it like Bella does. but - if you don't already know what the Scholomance is or where America is I don't think confusing you less will actually help:

:See, and I am still confused why you are saying that.: 

But it sounds like a conversation they should have once they're safely inside the Vale. The youngsters from 'America' seem to be able to defend themselves, and the local wildlife is so far keeping its distance, but he doesn't really trust that to last. 

He's happy to Gate them all over once Caio wakes the other two and they agree they won't harm anyone or disturb anything in the Vale. Caio can relay his promise to Bella that he won't read her mind and will make sure everyone else either knows not to or to stay on the other side of the Vale. He doesn't really want to Mindspeak her directly and get bitten, even though he can probably do it without accidentally reading anything else. 

That's fine with Bella. Not socializing is INFINITELY PREFERABLE to being mindread. Can they have some uninterrupted frickin' sleep when they get to the Vale.

Has this child prodigy here got a name.

:Wingsong k'Onsoyoa, Healing Adept to our Vale!: He bounces slightly, and then goes back to trying to look dignified as he raises a glowing blue-white portal on the nearest vaguely archway-shaped curve of branches. 

The Vale is completely different from the forest! They step out through an elegantly carved archway - not actually made of branches, but the carving imitates them, and it's also draped with vines - into a courtyard paved in smooth stones, surrounded by a wild abundant profusion of greenery. There are flowers the size of babies' heads, and hummingbirds darting through the air, and steaming fragrant hot springs over there, and it smells like a glorious tropical summer day. 

The surroundings are kind of packed with places where mals could hide. Wingsong looks completely untroubled, and skips over to shed his fur boots and dip his feet in the pool. 

Presumably the place is warded to hell and back and anyway anything that got through would eat the kid first, if she had mal-vision-goggles he'd look like a fucking tiramisu.

"Where can we go back to sleep?" Aadhya asks, out loud for the benefit of the others and for keeping her own thoughts straight.

The Vale certainly looks warded; the patches of sky visible through the foliage are seen through a shimmering textured barrier that, to Bella's meta-magic if she checks, will be absolutely glowing with mana. 

(There's also some other mana source further off. It feels - not exactly tranquil, it's humming vibrantly with raw power, but it's controlled, not wild and turbulent like the river of mana outside, and it doesn't feel icky at all. There's so so so so much of it. It has to be more than any enclave in the world has in their mana storage, maybe more than all the enclaves in the world combined.) 

There are hammocks right over there! If they want somewhere more private then Wingsong will have to ask around if anyone has spare space in their ekele or is willing to move in with friends for a night. (It comes across in Mindspeech connotations that 'ekeles' are like houses, but in trees for some reason, except for some weird or disabled people who have theirs on the ground.) 

- also there are abruptly several trays of food on that table-like rock behind them. Whoever put the food there was very stealthy about it. 

Wingsong runs over, calling out something to the trees in another language. :Come eat something!: he sends to the two people who are accepting his Mindspeech. 

How the shit did that get there without them noticing the process, the school has to wait until they're more distracted than that, Caio's holding a spray bottle in one hand and his boomerang in the other a moment later.

Bella has gotten to the point of setting the garnish on fire before she realizes the plates aren't hostile.

"Can you ask if we can have some of the not-icky mana in that direction," she says, gesturing. "There's a lot, I'd be floored if New York or Shanghai had that much -"

Aadhya blows out the flaming parsley and relays this request telepathically.

That's - pretty forward as a request when they've literally just met? Even visitors from other Vales don't ask to be keyed to the Heartstone right away. 

(Bella will notice, on further inspection, that while there are little rivers of mana everywhere, the big pool of it is - shielded, or something, behind a metaphorically-transparent barrier that won't let her actually slurp it up.) 

...He does feel bad for them, though, they clearly haven't been eating enough and look pretty underslept, both of which are terrible for your reserves. 

:If you are short on reserves I can share some with you directly?: he offers. 

"That would be great especially for the others, I'm not sure they'll be able to grab from the rivulet-things and they're - polluted or something anyway -"

"Bella says that would be great especially for me and Caio, we might not be able to do the thing she was doing - she's got a metamagic affinity - and they're polluted or something."

He'll pull kind of an alarming quantity of mana, then - he definitely does not have a normal mana capacity for an eleven-year-old - and then extends a hand to offer them some. 

(You can't normally do this with people who aren't trained in concert-work, but he's a Healing-Adept and he's not ""fully"" ""trained"" but he isn't bad at it.) 

"Thanks -" Aadhya will clasp hands and kind of wait to be offered the mana.

Sploosh! It's a reasonably generous quantity of mana. The Vale does not seem to have a shortage. 

Do Caio and Bella want some too? 

Sure do!

Lots of mage-energy for everyone! Hopefully they'll feel more relaxed about everything after, it is jumpy-making to be out in the open in the Pelagirs when you aren't even trained in safely tapping its nodes, and - the boy seemed to think that he and his friend can't do it, even though 'Bella' can? Maybe they're not actually mage-gifted, or possibly they just aren't powerful enough. 

He sits down and starts eating the food. They seem jumpy about the food too. (And about the hertasi sneaking up, but it probably would be startling if you weren't used to it. He used to try to chase them when he was little because it bothered him to never see them.) Maybe if he eats it they'll believe him that it's safe, and if he's relaxed and happy they'll believe him that the Vale is safe? 

(He's not entirely happy. This seems complicated and he doesn't like being confused and also the strange visitors seem to think that telling him what's going on, or anything about where they come from, will be dangerous to the Vale? Which doesn't even make sense.) 

Yeah they will eat the food, less the singed herbs, though only after casting some unfamiliar spells over it.

He watches the spells in fascination! He doesn't know all the magic yet that he really should but he's quite fast at learning it. What does it look like to mage-sight?