Awww. 

Hertasi are nonplussed but will bring out a luxurious breakfast spread while being very visible the whole time and making no sudden motions. 

What cute lizard people who do not appear to be mals even if this forest is full of mals. "Thank you," Aadhya tells the lizard people. And then she eats breakfast.

"Thank you," Bella echoes, crossing her fingers that they will be able to tell that she said the same thing Aadhya did without reading her mind. Breakfast! Is there fruit? Is it all made of real ingredients that used to be alive?

Yes! The hertasi aren't skimping and these poor youngsters clearly need good food and lots of it. There are like eight different kinds of fruit, and six different kinds of nuts, and a big leafy green salad with fruit and nuts as topping, and eggs cooked four different ways, and stewed beans, and steamed mixed vegetables in spicy sauce, and stuffed pastries, and little meat pies. 

They STUFF THEMSELVES.

The hertasi are SO PLEASED!!!!! 

They'll also haul out a washbasin, if Aadhya wants to temporarily borrow a robe so she can launder her magic clothes. They will even be reasonably graceful about not being allowed to just do all of the work without being asked. 

Yeah, okay, she will take off the clothing items she is wearing, one at a time, and wash them, one at a time. Mostly with magic, and some scrubbing to stem the mana loss, singing to the threads and the fibers softly.

There's also that hot spring over there! The hertasi have quietly - but non-sneakily - made sure there are towels and about twelve different kinds of fragrant soaps available. The other inhabitants of the Vale are mostly keeping their distance to avoid having to carefully not accidentally read Bella's mind, but these particular pools do serve a cluster of eight different ekeles, and a woman will at some point arrive to bathe her toddlers. 

(The nudity norms in the Vale are, approximately, nobody seems to care or even really notice it.) 

Good, because neither do Scholomance students! You have to run with a really big pack of pals to care whether whoever's watching your back in the shower has the same bits as you!

Aadhya will go ahead and take a dip in the spring once she's gotten her clothes hung up and started on drying off with another spell. (There's a faster one but there doesn't seem to be a hurry here.)

"So, uh, were we going to... figure out how to reach... civilization... at some point? This is a very nice place but our families all live in civilizations."

:I have been trying to think about how to help you with that! It would - be easier if I knew which direction you would want to end up in, we would have to do hops between multiple Vales to reach the nearest kingdoms that have cities in them, and I am not sure if it would be better to go south or east.: 

"If we are on the right planet it barely matters - like, it would sure suck if we wound up in, uh, North Korea? But at least then we'd know to go south from there. And if we are on the wrong planet it... also barely matters, since you don't seem to be in the market for long term guests around here and none of the places we could go instead are the right ones."

Blink blink. :Do you think you might have ended up on the wrong planet? That - does seem as though it would explain why we are both so confused. I am not sure what to do about it but we can get you to a kingdom that at least has roads and cities.: 

Frown. :...If you are somehow from another planet and came here by accident, does that mean the dangerous thing you were worried about, that made you not want to answer our questions, would be less or more dangerous than you thought before?: 

:Uh, probably one of those, though it could go either way?:

Sigh. 

:I am - unhappy with sending you on to another Vale without knowing more of your world - but I know you want to find a way home, and I cannot Gate you that far myself but I think we should still have at least one Mindspeaker with the range to contact a scout-party and we can get a location that way. ...Though we are not going to kick you out, if you wished to stay rather than be bounced between more strangers.: 

"It would be nice to stay here and decompress for a couple days if we definitely can't be calling home collect this time tomorrow anyway, except that it will really, uh, cramp your style trying not to read Bella's mind apparently."

:Unless she learns how to shield properly! I think she should do that anyway, if you are going to travel, you might startle more people - you are very startling - and we are not the only ones who have Mindspeakers.: 

Frown. :I can - tell you instructions to tell her? And then I am not sure how to test it, but I could sort of try to Look out of the metaphorical corner of my eye, so I would not get any thought-content even if she was not shielding properly yet?: 

They discuss this with Bella and eventually agree that this sounds like the best plan.

Then Wingsong will cheerfully and with lots of hand gestures try to explain how to shield! ...He does it like he would teaching a mage without Mindspeech, though this is actually rather rare among the Tayledras.

She wants to center and ground properly first, if that's a thing with the way they learned how to do magic - or even if it's not, she can tap nodes which implies she has the right senses for it, and he can give a description of how to find the still place at the center of her reserves of mage-energy and then link herself solidly to the earth so any outside force that gives her a shove will be absorbed. 

And then she wants to weave a barrier around her mind. Different people imagine it differently! He thinks of it like hiding under the big drooping leaves of [untranslatable kind of shrubbery], not that he usually shields very much actually. Some people think of it like weaving cloth or reeds, or like smoothing layers of mud over themselves until they're camouflaged, or like hiding the surface of their mind behind a waterfall, or making their thoughts opaque like egg white when it cooks.

You actually don't need Gifts at all to learn how to block Mindspeakers from your surface thoughts! Though the technique is different, less weaving an external barrier of energy and more...hiding away in a hole, or holding very still and blending in with the forest, is how he's heard it described. And it usually takes way longer to do it that way. 

Bella tapped a ley line, not a node, though she doesn't think nodes would be any harder? - and doesn't do it with any of the described sensory apparatus? - is this supposed to cost any mana to do.

...Not very much? He's never actually thought about it before. But, yes, people who drain themselves unconscious generally use their shields, so presumably some? 

Irritating to have another mana expenditure but she supposes this is worth the pushups.

(Wingsong has no idea that their "mage-energy reserves" work in such a different way, since he isn't reading Bella's mind, and assumes she regenerates her reserves with sleep and food like normal people - and can also just tap nodes and ley-lines whenever, but you really shouldn't need to do that just for basic shielding.) 

He'll intermittently ask Caio and Aadhya's permission to glance out of the corner of his metaphorical eye with his Sight 'out of focus' so he definitely won't get content. He really doesn't want to get bitten. 

"Tell him I'm not going to bite him, I don't have the spell up," sighs Bella, "it would just be extremely unwelcome."

Caio repeats this dutifully and says when.