She can't do it for more than an hour and that only when she's focused on something interesting or at least complicated. Magic will probably qualify. She's loved magic all her life. She'll do her best to recover her equanimity, here with them, while the Bond settles - she'll go back to Elven Lands; the boat will be making several trips and she can simply take the next one - she'll find the same teacher who taught her to focus - she'll work on magic. She'll try to figure out what in the world she's supposed to do with it.
If she doesn't want to wait for the next boat, she needn't.
The dragon could.
He has no idea.
Stay here, perhaps; he is still afforded some privacy, although the way that flight of dragons earlier was talking, it is only a matter of time before the whole world knows that there is a demon on the loose. He can stay here, and... would she like it if he made more good food for elves? He'll do that.
Isibel hugs him as hard as she can, which isn't very hard really. He should be invisible when he sleeps, perhaps, or he could disguise himself as something other than a demon - aren't they supposed to be able to do that? - and accompany them. She'll be awake, soon enough she'll be a competent Elfmage, a Sarion, and then she'll need to go - wherever she needs to go to stop the darkness, and not even elfmagery will let her fly without someone to carry her. (This may be a flaw in the sleeping plan, at least if there is any intention of implementing it before the danger is past.)
He can try again, he supposes.
Invisibility is a good thought. If she can find somewhere to put him where no one will stumble across the sleeping demon. In a box, perhaps. (He has done that before.)
The dragons know what he is; perhaps they'll help. Or Magania. Or a box, if he wouldn't mind a box, or - she can't think, she's already generated more thoughts than she expected to, and hyperfocus is only good for tasks, not for problem-solving, she can't think anymore, she presses her face to his shoulder and sobs.
"We will fly," he murmurs. "To the elves. To the other dragons. We will fly."
She nods minutely. Will he carry her - she doesn't think she can walk very well, right now, ribbons or no ribbons -
Isibel closes her eyes. She needs to stop again, just for a minute, a minute will do - breathe, breathe, breathe -
Or maybe she'll recognize her own thoughts marching across their minds forever even if theirs ultimately settle into, not invisibility, but the difficult cipher it takes centuries to learn to read.
(She has no protection like that; the mindreading is a property of dragons and the dragon will be able to read her whatever they do. Maybe if he sleeps the demon will be awake but unable to get any detail from her? Maybe? She can hope.)
They hope it will not be that way for Isibel.
Well, they can live without her, right? She'll learn magic and save the world and if they haven't figured something out by then there's dream-honey, they can live without her.
But they already knew they were going to, if by some incredible chance the demon is not killed. Elves don't live forever.
Perhaps, though - if the demon is killed - the dragon can sleep for a thousand years, and never take another Bondmate, and he and Isibel can die together as dragon and Bonded used to. Perhaps that would be best.
Once she wanted to live forever.
She can't quite grasp the feeling now.
She thought one day she might love someone - not like this, never like this, but that she'd meet some elf and they'd be drawn to each other in the way that elves are, and then they'd probably have a terrific fight over betrothal pendants and proper wedding ceremonies because the way elves are married also involves thought-sharing, but she would never have agreed to that. Now that's hardly likely at all; even if her personality survives what's to come she's going to be damaged. Maybe she was never meant for that special connection, or maybe she would have found someone who'd be content to remain unmarried yet -
She bites her lip sharply, meditates on inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale-inhale-
"Oh, my love," the demon sighs, smiling a little. He loves her so much. He loved her even before; they both did.
She does now - and the history of Bisochim is even more incomprehensible; how could he love her enough to care so intensely about the prospect of her dying and never listen to her -
She couldn't refuse his will when he willed things.
Could she just will the reading away -
Because when the minds of her Bonded are full of blood and fire, when their demon-self's memories of being a plaything for every Endarkened in Shadow Mountain are the only thing they can think of, they can't really pay attention to her thoughts anymore.
The dragon cannot stop reading her; he has tried. But she can exert her will on him, and when she tries to make him do the impossible, all that's left is the sense of being forced, to which the demon has his own associations and plenty of them.
It would imply that she ever stopped crying, to say that she burst into tears, but she sobs harder, and curls into a ball, and withdraws again into breathing-breathing-breathing without stopping to wonder if they'll fall out of the sky into the ocean.
When she comes back again, they are all a little damp, and her Bonded have already forgiven her.
She's sorry anyway. She didn't even quite decide to do it, just - lurched desperately towards the sliver of hope.