:I...will be. I think. Just– I hate not having a plan: The only thing worse than sleeping here tonight would be having to sleep somewhere ELSE that he hasn't even seen yet. 

:I know: She wants to give him a hug, but Leareth is still iffy on hugs from anyone except Maitimo. :I'm sorry. We should have some peace and quiet for the next bit, at least?: 

Leareth is starting to feel pretty exhausted, but he also absolutely does not want to risk falling asleep, so he goes back to intently examining all the signage and trying not to think about anything other than that. 

Their names are up on the whiteboard, along with Kro's name. There's various checklists - over the bed, over the sink, on the door, next to the whiteboard, by the door to the bathroom. A screen that looks sort of like one of the phones - glass and black and rectangular - but it's turned off now. Ultraviolet in the vents, a radiator by the window, smooth tile floor, a windowshade currently admitting sunshine and a view of the river.

The names give him several vowels and four different consonants, which is not a lot to go on. Leareth eventually sets aside his alphabet notes and goes into the bathroom to investigate the state of the local plumbing technology. 

There's a toilet and a shower and another sink in there!

Leareth is getting the sense that he's going to approve of this world! He spends a little while experimenting to figure out how to operate all the various amenities, and then slips out again and starts checking for any obvious levers or other controls for the the rectangular glass screen. 

There are buttons on the bottom of it! Also a remote velcroed to the back.

Huh. Leareth very much doesn't want to break anything, but probably they wouldn't put something in here that was very fragile? And he should be more worried about accidentally sending a gibberish message and inconveniencing someone. 

He will nonetheless very carefully and gently experiment with poking some of the buttons below the screen, and examining the remote for ways it can be interacted with. 

When he turns the TV on the screen lights up! There is... text, on a background picture of the galaxy. The remote comes off pretty easily if he tugs on it and then he can push buttons there too, selecting a menu option at random and turning on a music video channel.

That's really neat! Leareth isn't sure how you would do that even with all of his accumulated magical lore! He's honestly not sure a god could do that; as far as he knows Heartstones don't have the capacity to record moving pictures of scenes along with music and then play them back. 

This seems like plenty of experimenting for now, and he's starting to feel incredibly tired, so he sits down on his gurney again and watches. 

Melody really likes this world! It just keeps getting better! 

Music videos continue to play one after another. Kro is back halfway through the second one, with tea and also a social worker; they both gear up and Kro brings in a tray with six different teabags, two cups, and a mini kettle. "Didn't know what kind you like," he tells Melody, putting the tea tray down on the nearest convenient surface. He plugs in the mini kettle and demonstrates how to turn it on.

"Hello," says the social worker, "I'm Dree."

Melody beams at Kro and watches intently while he demonstrates the kettle. It's a really neat concept and she has no idea how you would do that without magic!

She wants to point it out to Leareth but Leareth looks like he is maybe not having a great time right now? 

It's too late to flee and hide in the bathroom without this being very obvious and thus in itself causing some kind of conflict. Leareth instead holds very still. 

Melody thanks Kro for the tea selection and then turns and smiles brightly at Dree.

:I'm Melody. Er, did you already get the basic story from other people here or should I explain our situation again?: 

"I'd like to hear it in your own words," says Dree, only a little startled.

:...Right. Er, so - we're from another world. Actually, arguably two different worlds - we're both native to Velgarth, which is a world with much less technology than yours but a lot of people have Gifts, including the telepathy we both have but also lots of others. And some native gods, which are -mostly pretty mysterious but when they do things it's not great:

She pauses, frowns, and then tightens the Mindspeech link to exclude Leareth. 

:Anyway. We've been living in Arda, which is a different world that has, er, immortal natives called Quendi who look mostly human but have a different kind of telepathy and a different kind of magic and also a different set of gods. Leareth found that world accidentally about three years ago. Shortly later they ended up openly at war with one of their native gods, the evil one. No, I'm not sure why they had an evil god either. With help from Velgarth, they initially won that war, but Leareth was captured by the evil god and - had a bad time. It's been a couple of years since then, but - a few days ago a war started in Velgarth, and it looks like a Maia - a smaller god - related to Arda's evil god is involved, and working with the Velgarth gods. We expected Leareth would be a target, because of the role he played in the last war, and he - isn't in a good position to defend himself, right now, so we were kind of frantically looking for somewhere safe to go, and one of the other Velgarth mages had been doing some exploration and thought your world might be safe. So we're here: 

Another pause. 

:- Um, I've explained this a few times now, but we think it's very very unlikely your world would be in danger from this war, and also us coming here shouldn't affect that one way or another, interworld Gates aren't traceable and we did ours from Arda which isn't where the war is right now: 

Dree takes notes while Melody goes over all that. "A god is...?"

- oh, right, Vanyel thought they didn't have any in this world. Which means they won't even have the concept. This is - clearly better on multiple dimensions, but still frustrating right now, because how is she even supposed to explain this. 

:- Er, to start, I think Velgarth gods and Arda gods are different kinds of thing? What they have in common is that they're - beings that are mostly magical, as opposed to mostly physical? And - a lot more powerful and a lot smarter than humans, in most ways, but also fairly alien and - bad at understanding a lot of basic human things. The Velgarth ones seem to mostly see the world and act on it using Foresight - a magical power we have for seeing the future - and they don't communicate very much. The Arda ones are more humanlike in some ways but very...black-and-white. I don't know. I think I'm doing a bad job of explaining but I'm not sure how to do better. Questions?: 

"So sort of like a - particularly powerful naturesoul? That being a general term for a concept in animist religions covering household-mascot-spirits and river spirits and so on?"

Melody squints at her. :...Maybe. That actually sounds a lot like the Maiar in Arda - er, the smaller less powerful gods, there are millions of them, compared to only about a dozen of the big powerful gods. Apparently specific Maiar will sometimes be in charge of making sure a river flows the right way, things like that: 

"That sounds like a naturesoul. All right - Kro, your orderly, told me there's a problem with - uncontrolled telepathy during nightmares?"

:Right. That's a problem Leareth has. I'm not sure what the range is on it, we - haven't actually tested that. It's not every night or anything, lately, but it's - unusually likely to come up tonight, because the new war in Velgarth and then coming here are stressful for him. Kro had thought that there were maybe drugs that could help? ...Also I have something called Mindhealing Gift and I can do things that would help, but it would have to be temporary: 

"Do you have a ballpark on what the range is - feet, blocks, miles -"