:That could probably help: 

Leareth is starting to feel very tired now, and he even more intensely wants to put his entire face in 448's soft fluffy fur. Probably she won't mind, now that he's given her plenty of treats and she's gotten to know him? He flomps forward and does this. 

How does he keep being so ADORABLE??? 

:I'm hoping to get to the point where I can leave him alone in the house with her and expect a low chance of anything disastrous happening that can't be managed by Mindspeaking him from a distance: Melody explains. :It's going to be pretty hard to take patients otherwise as a source of income: 

448 does not mind! She does lick Leareth's ear.

"Some people like telepresence appointments but if your magical range is short that might not work," Dree agrees.

This is moderately startling but Leareth is relaxed enough that it's not startling in a bad way. He makes a surprised noise but stays where he is. 

:It's pretty short! For Mindhealing at least, I really have to be in the same room. ...Though I was thinking a first step might be talking to some of your local non-magical equivalent of Mindhealers, to get a sense of what their usual practices are and where I can do things unusually easily or effectively or just quickly - a lot of the magical Mindhealing ends up in practice being sort of a shortcut for shifting thought-patterns or whatnot where it would be possible to do with repetition but would take months. And then by the time Leareth is settled enough to be here alone during the day, I can hopefully already have a plan for how I can slot in and get patients referred to me - maybe just for one-off sessions, once their existing not-Mindhealer has a clear idea of what they think I could do?: 

Honestly, Melody's ulterior motive here isn't just about earning their keep here; if she has to go much longer with only one patient she is going to end up SO BORED. New world and all. 

"All right, I have some therapist contacts, I can put you in touch with a couple."

:I appreciate it: She glances over at Leareth, who does not look especially inclined to let go of 448 anytime soon. :I, er - was the plan for today just to be an introductory visit or for 448 to stay with us now? Realized I'm not sure: 

"You can keep her if you want her," says the old man. "If you buy her, that is."

:I think we probably want to buy her, though I'll confirm with Leareth! - Er, and: glance at Dree, :- assuming we can work something out with an advance loan on the gold sale: 

"You're covered," says Dree.

:Perfect. Leareth?: 

:I think I want to keep her: Leareth says, face still buried in 448's fur. :I - should think of a name: 

"If you want her parents' names - some people like to be thematic - I can get you those," says the old man.

:Sure. Why not: 

:Well, excellent - that turned out not to be complicated at all! Dree, I suppose that means we need to get food for her, can we order that? And does she need anything to sleep on? I'm thinking it would be a good idea for her to sleep in Leareth's room, if that sounds fine to you, so she's right there if he has a hard time at night. - The drugs you ordered for us helped, by the way, though I think one of them had a longer-lasting effect than ideal and I should either make sure he takes it a lot earlier in the evening or try the other options and see if any combination is better: 

"She's from Beetle by Whisper," the old man says. "Ideal to get her a bed if you don't want her in yours. This place doesn't have one?"

"You still have the notes on how to iterate, right?"

:I do! We ended up trying two of the set you can combine last night, the first one seemed to help him fall asleep but it didn't keep him from waking up and needing to call me over, which was a lot of the goal. It was still definitely much better than not having them but it seems worth iterating through the list to find if there's anything much better:

To the old man, :- oh, hmm, that might be what the weird cushion thingy under one of the beds was for? I wasn't sure: 

"Seems likely," he says.

:Neat, then I guess we're covered on that. And it sounds like we have a plan on the initial basic training, and at this rate Leareth will be able to puzzle through reading books by next week, so if he had questions at that point we could maybe make do with the manual: She ducks her head. :Thank you so much for everything:

"You're welcome. Enjoy your dog," says the old man, and he gets up and gets back on his nyoom without her. She picks up her head a bit to watch him go but mostly stays cuddled up to Leareth.

Melody sits down. A safe distance from the dog spit. She smiles at Dree. :I think that went well: 

Instead of thinking about anything stressful, Leareth can think about plans for training his dog! He hadn't expected it to be this, well, soothing - but apparently it makes a difference that as far as he can tell none of his torturememories involve dogs. 

When the old man is gone 448 plops her head back down on Leareth's lap more firmly.

Leareth is trying to think of dog names. This is surprisingly hard! Maybe the language tutorial will give him some inspiration later. 

:Can we order food for her online?: he asks Dree, sitting up but still keeping his hands tangled in 448's fur. :If you can walk me through the steps to do that on my laptop, I cannot actually read all that fluently yet but I am getting comfortable with memorizing the order of steps for something once I figure it out: And it would feel very good to be self-sufficient, if only for this one small thing. 

"Yeah, grocery stores have dog food. I'm trying to figure out if this breed needs a special formulation but it looks like no." She will show him how to order dog food.