<<3!! Hey, where does "1159" come from?>

<In my name? I'm the 1159th Yeerk to be named Ashkon.>

...That seems like it implies an incredible amount of recordkeeping and communication and also like it might cause horrible problems if two Yeerks got names in different places at the same time. It seems like it’d be awful if an extra Ashkon turned up and made everyone else change their names. He’s sure it wouldn’t be handled in the same way as name collisions were handled by demons specifically trying to handle them as badly as possible, but...

<There was a pretty incredible amount of recordkeeping and communication but mostly they'd just allocate some names and number ranges for them to a pool that was going out of contact for a while and might have breedings occur in it. I'm not like, fond of my number, it's just a distinguisher from other Ashkons.>

<What if they had more breedings than they planned for?>

<Yeerks don't reproduce by accident, but they'd usually overassign by an order of magnitude. So I guess it's possible there is no Ashkon to go with every number lower than mine.>

<Weird but cool.>

<It makes sense to us but I'm told lots of people think it's weird to use numbers that way.> They can make their way back to school now.

School is also good.

Ashkon emails Nocawe with his host's ID number in case that helps anything with the smoothing along of the subtle artist waiting list or reconciling her records with the federal ones or anything and resumes study.

His host continues to enjoy it and also increasingly daydreams about a life of his own.

In a couple of weeks they have a selection of appointment times forwarded through Nocawe. Most of them are footnoted "available only if it is OK to have a trainee sitting in".

He’s okay with a trainee sitting in. He wants to go alone. As the one with any other commitments, Ashkon should probably pick the time.

Ashkon picks a time when he'll be in the Pool and makes plans to spend some of that time learning Quenya from a volunteer interim host then so he can rely less on osanwë.

And the person known to Vanda Nossëo's bureaucracy as citizen number 56-7912-4522-6238-2739 shows up for the appointment.

The subtle artist is a pointy eared person with coal-black skin and snow-white hair who looks very young. The trainee is an Amentan orange.

"I am called Vyn," says the first, "and this is Mahep. What do you wish to be called?"

He makes a face and shrugs.

"I will need something to put in my notes."

He writes a note since he’s still not really up for talking.

I don’t have an opinion on what you should write in your notes. My ID number is 56-7912-4522-6238-2739.

"Very well. It says in your referral from your social worker that you want a simple nightmare cure. Is that all you expect to want today?"

He has a long prewritten note about this.

Subtle arts was originally suggested to me for nightmares. At this point I still have them most of the time if I sleep, but not always. As my nightmares per se have improved, I’ve noticed that even when I don’t have them I wake up thinking I might be somewhere else and afraid I might be in trouble for having slept, which I didn’t realize was a distinct thing when I was first put on the waiting list since I was almost always waking up from nightmares about being back there.

Currently, I'm not very bothered by these problems in daily life, but the reasons I'm not bothered circumscribe a very limited set of lives I can have. I host a Yeerk, who both directly prevents some physical correlates of panic and is very noticeable and therefore helpful for orienting; I'm also able to make what would be unhealthy use of sleep-skipping music and stimulants for a living person (which I'm not), but skipping sleep isn’t costless for me the way it is for daeva. Everyone has been very clear that I have a right to stop hosting a Yeerk, but I don’t have the ability to do that and be happy or productive. I would like to actually have that option.

I have other problems. I don’t know which are easier to treat or more important. I seem to be selectively mute; I think that's something I experienced sometimes before* but it got much worse when I started hosting a Yeerk who sings. I don’t exactly feel afraid all the time but my body doesn’t seem to know that; I have the parts of fear that a Yeerk can turn off all the time unless I do have a Yeerk turn them off. I get nauseated if I try to eat anything at all without a Yeerk making me not feel sick; with that help, it’s still really hard and brings back bad memories. I don’t need to eat, but when I fasted for centuries I was very weak and tired all the time. I eat lembas every day. I wish more of my diet could come from a replicator instead of consisting of scarce magic stuff. I wish I could eat by myself. I have flashbacks, if I understand that word correctly. I remember things I would rather not remember when I eat, brush my teeth, sit in chairs with backrests, touch myself sexually, see people wearing certain styles of clothing, think about theology, try to go to sleep without magical assistance, or wake up.

Originally, my intention was to say that I don’t want to be used to hurt others but otherwise consent to having anything done to me that anyone wants; if what that ended up meaning was just that I stopped having nightmares, that was fine. Then my intention was to say that anything my Yeerk was okay with and that didn’t hurt anyone else was fine. I don’t feel that way at all now, but I don’t have a positive vision for myself either, so I would appreciate your advice.

By the way, I expect to show up alone, but when I imagine my Yeerk going with me, I imagine him saying that I definitely consent to any mind-reading that would be helpful and that I have mental blocks around being too committal. He could probably pass a truth spell about it if he did say that.

*My memory sucks. It’s not good enough now and it was much worse when I wasn’t allowed to sleep and wasn’t given stims. I don’t think everything I remember really happened. I think it only takes about three days of not sleeping and not using any magic or chemicals to help me cope until I start hallucinating and having attenuated delusions, which I would like to change but I think that condition is called "being human" and it’s incurable.

Vyn reads this through twice and then passes it to Mahep. "That was an extremely helpful history, thank you," she says. "Particularly easy to address with subtle arts are nightmares and flashback trigger associations. Some of the other things may also be straightforward to address depending on how you are mentally architected and we will investigate that today. I recommend that after we have solved some of your simpler problems you follow up with a mundane therapist who can help you work through more of these issues with a lesser premium on their time and perhaps train your Yeerk in assisting with a mode of therapy such as cognitive behavioral or Rishpa-Henj. There are magical solutions available to a poor memory but I do not think they are typically indicated in patients with your background. Do you have any further questions or comments before we begin?"

Shrug.

"If you are unable to speak in this context please nod or shake your head. Shrugging is not admissible as consent to begin subtle arts."

Actually he’s going to write another note about that.

So the thing you actually asked was whether I had any questions or comments before we began and while it’s sometimes possible to prove something can’t exist that seems to apply mainly to concepts like a triangle on a Euclidean plane with two right angles. Now I know that I do have a comment, which is this one. I think he might be right about me having mental blocks around sounding too committal. More to the point, I don’t know if I will have questions I wish I had asked later, but I can’t think of them now. I did come here expecting it to involve subtle arts and will be annoyed with myself if I can’t get that to happen because of my stupid issues.