Melody undoes some of the blocks, after explaining what she's doing and then doing it a second time more slowly in case Leareth didn't follow. 

Eventually she stretches out her Thoughtsensing to look for Zare again. 

He is a ways up the hill from them, sitting on the ground and shredding a piece of grass in his hands and mostly succeeding at stopping crying.

:Hey. Melody here. I am really incredibly sorry about that! ....Um, I had been sort of assuming you got the background on why we're staying in the house in the middle of nowhere, but if not, it's because Leareth has nightmares and does that sometimes. Anyway, er, I think we're fine now, but it would be really reasonable on your part if you did not want to finish our conversation right now: 

Also Leareth is still quietly sobbing next to her, and Melody is REALLY BAD at this and could desperately use some help but she's not sure it's something she could get local backup on even in theory. 

Zare takes a couple deep breaths and heads back down the hill. "It's only when he's asleep? And he's up now?"

:It's only when he's asleep, he's not going to do it again by accident while awake, and I think he's pretty done with sleeping now? ...I'm not sure if you'd also wanted to talk to him directly while you were visiting anyway: Frown at Leareth. :I think he'd want to talk to you, if that's the case, but now is possibly not the best moment for it: 

"It's not really about whether I want to talk to him, but if the Secretary does." He shakes himself a little and goes back in the house to set up the call again.

Melody really wishes she could personally do the thing that Maitimo can do where he hugs Leareth and this fixes things! She cannot do this. Leareth freaks out if she touches him.

She sits nearby and Mindspeaks with him and eventually it seems like probably nothing disastrous will happen if she leaves the room and goes back downstairs to resume the conversation. 

Leareth wants to know what's going on but it would be nice if this didn't require moving or taking any actions. 

....On reflection, it might have been more loadbearing than Melody realized that Quendi need like a quarter as much sleep as humans do. She is so much better at handling things gracefully when she hasn't been up half the night. 

She heads downstairs and makes herself another cup of tea, fidgeting incessantly with her hair and collar and sleeves while she waits for the kettle to boil, and then she rejoins Zare. 

Zare calls the Secretary back and apologizes, explaining that Leareth had a nightmare and did a telepathy thing about it.

"Well, that's why we're doing this through an intermediary - I'll credit a bonus to the job - anyway, where were we. Feasibility of therapy practice, right, you'll need to make it clear to people that you would be very hard to enforce a malpractice suit against but I'd expect you'd get business. You will need to be familiar with the laws that apply to a profession before you start."

If the Secretary is just going to continue like none of the recent awkward disaster happened, Melody will go along with this.

:That makes sense! I personally wouldn't feel comfortable doing this at all if I wasn't familiar with the relevant laws!: 

"Glad to hear we're on the same page about that. You're assigned to social worker Dree Mistyview? She'll be able to help you with that, and also with picking up at least literacy in Kayshu, that being our language."

:Yes, I think we're with Dree: Whatever that means, Melody doesn't feel like she entirely gets their processes here. :Learning the language is a great idea! If there's some kind of standard literacy training we should arrange that for Leareth, probably, he'll pick it up five times as fast as I can and if we don't do anything he'll just try to teach himself your alphabet from the random books we found in this house: 

"There are plenty of options, I recommend you talk it over with Dree.

The rest of what I want to talk about has to do with what we can expect when people come to pick you up - what's the range of possible dates for that, where will they land, what if anything will they want with us besides to collect you."

:...Oh. Right. That: 

Melody has, possibly, been trying not to think about that! It involves trying to make guesses about how the war might go and that's stressful. 

:I don't think we have an exact range of dates and it's possible it could be never, if they lose the war over there or even just if Vanyel gets killed– er, he's the only one who can currently do the interworld Gate spell and find us here again. Um, to be clear, if that happens then we're not going to be demanding your hospitality forever, I think it'll be at most five years before Leareth is stable enough that I can unblock his mage-gift, and it could be a lot sooner than that. I...would be pretty surprised if it were less than a month but that's the best case scenario, and Vanyel's plan had been to Gate somewhere remote and Mindspeak me or Leareth to check if there was anything he needed to know before just showing up: 

Shrug. :Last war took six months. The last war in Velgarth lasted four years but it could've been a lot shorter, I reckon it'd have been over in a year if we'd been more ruthless about it. So I suppose that's my best guess - six months to a year. But it's really, really guessing: 

"If this war involves telepaths, and Vanyel knows where you are, is it possible he could be induced to provide that information to hostiles?"

:...In theory, I guess? But it's a lot harder to use Thoughtsensing that way against someone who also has that Gift, and Vanyel has it very strongly. And has - some other defenses which are complicated to explain:

(Melody doesn't feel like getting into the whole Companions of Valdemar thing right now.)

:It's not impossible - Leareth could have done it - but it would take a fight, and we don't think the Arda small-god involved in this is especially adept at Velgarth magic, and have no reason to expect they have allies as impressive as Leareth. Also, er, a fact about mages in Velgarth is that they can - well, instantly commit suicide and make a very large explosion. And I am certain that Vanyel wouldn't hesitate to do that, if the alternative meant putting Leareth in danger: 

She has mixed feelings about this fact being true, but she's very very sure it's true. 

"Can Leareth create a large explosion?"

:No. His mage-gift is blocked and it requires that. Only mages can do it, I couldn't even though I have other Gifts: 

"All right. So assuming both sides of the war are equally likely to prevail it's probably most likely that you will not be picked up and leave under your own power in several years - how long are your years - and nearly as likely that you will be collected before that time, though probably not for months, and there is a minority possibility that through Vanyel or some other avenue that we're unable to predict from here hostiles trace you here, which, if it's going to happen, could happen at any time. Is that right?"

:...Yes, approximately. To be clear, even if the Enemy does capture Vanyel alive it's not clear that coming after us would be the best use of a captive Vanyel, I'm uninteresting and Leareth isn't currently a threat: 

"I understand, but how we plan to receive potential visitors depends a lot on whether we're very confident they aren't here to attack or merely expect they probably are not. Is there a particular remote area Vanyel is likely to appear in or is that somehow both undetermined yet within your telepathic range?"

:Um. He had somewhere specific in mind but I'm - not actually sure where it is - we didn't have a lot of time to plan this out. It's within 500 miles of here, which is in his Mindspeech range, and it's probably the first place he found when he was scoping this world out: 

"- how was your landing place chosen?"

:Er, I think he looked around a bit with tiny Gates, or maybe stuck his head through one and cast a scrying spell, and it was the first spot he found that where there were definitely people?: