"I can set up an auction for that with pictures of the clothes you want to sell, then. Meanwhile, in 'loose dresses' -" She has completed a Fashion Quiz on Melody's behalf and gotten directed to a line of cheap roomy dresses that come in forty-eight colors and patterns. "Are you a monochrome sort or feeling inclined to branch out from green?"

That's also incredibly neat. The dresses look nice! She can't tell if they would also look nice on her personally but they seem to be the forgiving-fit sort of dress. 

:I'm not desperately attached to green or anything! It's convenient that it works with my hair, imagine if I'd been a Bard–  Er, for reference, Bards have a different standard uniform and it's scarlet - our friend Vanyel's husband is a Bard and a redhead and it clashes dreadfully. Though I can't claim to be much of an expert on color matching in fashion: 

"I'll get you a green ombre one and a... cobalt, and this charcoal swirl-pattern one, and if you love them you can get more of the same and if you hate them you can send them back and if they're just okay you can rotate through them while you pick something else out. Do you know what Leareth will like or should I wait to ask him?"

Gods. Does Leareth have preferences about clothing? It's somehow really hard to picture! 

:Um, I would say that you should probably just ask him but I think he finds it pretty stressful being asked about his preferences. I get the sense he used to always wear black, but I'm not sure if he liked it or if it was just helpful for the public image he wanted to convey. He seems happy to wear whatever our, er, Quendi friend back in Arda arranged for him, and I think that usually tended towards blues and purples, definitely not orange or yellow. But I'm wildly guessing here, I hadn't previously considered that question: 

"Okay." Dree is in the middle of doing another Fashion Quiz when the temp shows up and knocks.

It's probably Melody's hostly duty to go answer that? She's weirdly nervous about meeting the Premier's representative, she is so incredibly not a diplomat, but there's no reason to expect this to go badly? And definitely no reason to expect it to go the same way as her past interactions with the King and the Senior Circle in Valdemar. 

She heads over and opens the door and smiles. 

"Hi," says the temp, a man in his fifties. "I'm Zare, nice to meet you - Melody?"

:Yes, that's me! Pleased to meet you: Smile. Hopefully it's not obviously horrifyingly fake. :Come on in - would you like tea -?:

"Oh, no thank you. Sorry it took me so long to get here, I got turned around once I got into the hills. I'm just here so you can talk to Secretary Balane, from the Premier's office, without him getting mind-read. If you mind-read me all you'll find is spoilers for my webcomic and probably intrusive thoughts about my girlfriend. Is now a good time to set that up?"

Melody had not been expecting him at a particular time so it's not like she would have any opinions on his lateness! 

:Er, yes, this is a fine time. - Maybe try to talk quietly, Leareth is still asleep and he really needs it:

She ushers him toward the sitting room.

:I am pretty sure I will not mindread you by accident and if I do then I doubt it could be any weirder than what I've seen as a Mindhealer. ....Though I am suddenly really curious about your 'webcomic'? I don't even know what that is? I - I'm trying not to read your thoughts in depth other than the ones you're trying to send at me but I somehow doubt that's the problem, I think maybe Velgarth just doesn't have 'webcomics'. It sounds like - sort of a mix between a ballad and a theatre show? But somehow similar to those paintings that are depicting dramatic battles?: 

"A webcomic is an illustrated serial storytelling medium published on the internet. I can show you if you want once the meeting's over, but you can't read our language, right?"

:I can't, it's inconvenient! I guess that's not the top priority anyway. Let's go have that meeting as a start: 

"Mm-hm!"

Zare sets up his phone in the sitting room and starts the call; it takes a while for the person on the far end to pick up but when the call connects it's a man about Zare's age, squinting into his camera. "Hello, I'm Secretary Belare," he says.

"Do I need to repeat what he's saying or can you just - hear me understanding it?" Zare asks.

Blink blink. 

:- I could manage just piggybacking on you understanding it, but I wasn't trying to do that? And it would require reading your thoughts more closely in general, which I think most people don't like:

"All right, I'll repeat what he says. 'Hello, I'm Secretary Belare'."

Melody smiles back at the not-illusion of the political leader's face. "Secretary Belare," she repeats out loud - she's pretty sure that some of that is a title and some of it is a personal name and she's not quite sure she knows which syllables are which. Moving on. She points at herself. "Melody." 

"It's good to meet you, Melody. The office's Committed of Truth say you're telepathic and they don't say that sort of thing lightly. Can you tell me - I assume you've been through this story before, but nevertheless - where you're from and what brings you here?"

This is such a reasonable request and also it's TERRIBLE how she has to go through all of that again. For like the fifth time. After a night of at most four candlemarks of sleep (even if that was entirely due to her own choices, she could have gone to sleep as soon as Leareth did -) 

Melody nods and does her best to smile in a pleasantly neutral sort of way. 

:I am originally from a world called Velgarth, specifically from a country called Valdemar. Velgarth has inherited magical Gifts of various types. Mage-gift is the broadest of them, but Mindspeech - what you're calling 'telepathy' - is a specific Gift, and I have an additional Gift called Mindhealing which I can get into later if you want. Leareth was the leader of a large organization in Velgarth, north of Valdemar, and he was experimenting with magical transportation and accidentally ended up in a different world, Arda: 

Pause. 

:- Is that making sense so far? Any questions?: 

He's taking notes on a separate device. "Arda isn't your word for here, right?"

:...No. I don't actually have a word for your world yet. Arda is a third different place. It - also had magic, and gods, like Velgarth - and which you apparently don't have at all here - but both were pretty different. Also I think Arda isn't even a planet. It's apparently flat, whatever that even means, and it didn't even have a sun until recently. Supposedly their version of sunlight used to come from these two enormous magical trees - sorry, if that's weird and confusing to you, I don't have a better explanation and I never saw them - but, er, the trees were eaten by their evil god? That happened at the start of the full-on war between their evil god and the faction that Leareth was working with at the time: 

Melody feels like she could probably explain this so much better if she'd had more than four candlemarks of sleep last night. 

"That's... worrying... I'm more interested in the state of things now than in how they got that way, to be clear."

:Right. Current state of things is hard to explain without that background plus some more background, but I'll try to be concise. We won the war in Arda against the evil god, that was a couple of years ago. Leareth was captured and badly injured in the process, but he'd managed to bring in help from Velgarth before that. We'd thought it was all over. But it seems like one of the small-gods that worked for the evil god in Arda had managed to escape into Velgarth in the confusion. A few days ago, the capital city in Valdemar, my home country, was destroyed. We don't know all the details. It seemed like a good idea to get Leareth out of that whole situation, given that he's both a target because of his role in the last war and also still not in great shape to defend himself. One of our allies from Velgarth - Herald Vanyel, of Valdemar - had been exploring with the magic-transportation spell for unrelated reasons. He thought this world was a safer option for us than staying in Arda: 

Pause. 

:....I've definitely already said this to lots of people, but there's no reason to think the evil small-god would target your world or that he even knows it exists, and we're even more sure that us Gating here shouldn't have been detectable to him or anyone else and so shouldn't change the risk there: 

"And you're here as Leareth's - caretaker?"

:More or less? That wasn't exactly my role before all of this, but–: Melody makes a face. Thinks for a moment.

:So the default safe place they were evacuating noncombatants to was Valinor. Which is under the control of Arda's gods, and - I could have gone, but I sort of have a grudge against gods. And Leareth is banned from going there at all. Anyway, we clearly needed an alternative for Leareth, and it would clearly have been a disaster to send Leareth alone, and I was available and - among the people who Leareth already trusts, I'm the least useful one in a fight, right, and separately I considered it a positive that I'd get to see a whole other world. It's complicated but I think that covers all the main points?: 

"Why is Leareth banned from Valinor?"