"Okay. Any time you want to update how deep you'd like to let me read, let me know, you're not going to annoy me changing that around until you find something you're comfortable with or even if your comfort level varies occasion to occasion."

"Okay."

"Also, since we're not working with a practice's appointment block, you don't have to do the fifty-minute hour thing, but it's probably a good idea to have some period of time blocked out in advance."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"Do you want to start in on this right here sitting in Milliways or maybe pick a time after I've moved in to your world?"

"Now seems convenient, since apparently time's paused in my world while we're here."

"Okay. Call it an hour?"

"Sure."

Bella sets a timer on her crystal ball and sets it where they can see if they look but have to turn their heads to do it.

"When you say you hurt a lot of the time what do you mean?"

"I mean I spend a lot of time dwelling on things that cause me to have negative emotions." She misses her in-laws, she misses her parents, she hates the Valar, she deeply resents the people she grew up with and this is deeply uncomfortable because she used to care about them, her family is almost certainly dead and almost certainly suffering, she died, she died cold and alone because Imliss died first, she hates being cold now when it's not under her direct control, because she died she couldn't prevent the Holocaust or the genocide of the Native Americans or any of the other shitty things Melkor was showing off.

Whoo. Lots to untangle.

Easiest thing to pick at is the cold; that's pretty much a phobia with a concrete traumatic etiology and she's got a process for that.

She has no problem with Bella making alterations to her mind that solely affect her phobia of the cold.

It takes a while to go through the de-affect-ized memory as many times as it takes to wear away the sharp edges, but they can sneak it in under an hour!

"Thanks. That should be helpful."

"That's the idea."

"Now maybe I won't wake Daphne up with cold anymore."

"Is that a recurring problem?"

"Did I not say that was why I ended up telling her?"

"You may have, sorry, I wasn't taking notes. Addressing what you dream about is a different but likely related thing. I can probably nudge it some if you don't get as far as you'd like with the lucid dream trick."

"Noted."

"Is there anything else we should do in here?"

"I don't think so."

Okay. Deep breath. Here goes nothing, then.

Idaia opens the door.

And Bella and her crystal ball and her cart of books and her purse go through.