A lean man with a vacant expression walks in, dressed in a faded and patched red and black tunic. It takes him a moment to come up with a reaction to being in an unexpected place.

"...Hello, I think I might be lost."

"Oh, hi. This is an interplanar bar called Milliways. Its portal has appropriated whatever door you would've walked through normally, but Bar says - she's a person - that you can most likely go home through the same door whenever. First drink's free."

"...Oh." Well, that's really inconvenient, someone who can think should be here and he can't figure out how to make that happen. "Would you mind telling me what I should do with that? It seems important."

"Oh, I'm just having a milkshake and using the time-pausing thing - uh, time's paused in your world by default while you've got the door closed - to do my homework, it doesn't seem wise to try to take further advantage. Though I guess if you have a friend in earshot you could probably get away with calling them over."

...They don't need to pause time now.

They needed to pause time in the past. He could let someone know that they should go tell someone in the past about this place.

"Everyone I would want to bring here is through the door I was trying to go through." At least if he fills his mind with thoughts on how to get through the wall that won't particularly hurt to think about.

"That sucks, I'm sorry."

He doesn't have any tools for excavating.

Okay, that's as much as he wants to think about that.

"If you're stuck on anything, I always like listening to people talk through their problems. Or anything else. If you don't want anything I'll probably just go home so I'll get to tomorrow faster, but I still think there's probably something useful I could do here and maybe it'll come to me if I just stay a while."

"I guess I could read you the confusing parts of my handout on treating depression and maybe the translation effect'll make it make more sense to you than it does to me even though you have presumably not taken the class?"

"Sure!"

So she can read from her handout, which alas makes a lot less sense in a language that has never been spoken by a subtle artist.

"Do you... make people... not feel unpleasant things?"

"That's the idea, or at least it's part of the idea, yes. I'm still in school, of course."

"I feel unpleasant things." Which he is Not Thinking About.

"I'm really not qualified but I guess if you don't have access to any subtle artists where you're from and it's not super complicated I could maybe take a look?"

"I don't actually care if you wreck me, I'm going to die tomorrow if nothing changes. - I care if you wreck me badly enough that I can't do it but that's all."

"...okay, have a seat. Did... something happen?"

"Yes." Oh no he's going to think about the thing. He studies her milkshake glass to distract himself.

"...I don't necessarily need you to talk about it but I need to be able to find it. May I have your permission to look for it, and read the memories and thoughts that seem relevant, with the understanding that I might find something that is not relevant and stop looking at it but only once I realize that?"

"You..." FINE he will think about this briefly. "...should not make me hurt other people or leave me worse off and unable to kill myself or ask for help. Other than that I have no real preferences about anything you look at in my mind or do to me." He might have more preferences if he thought about it more. He is not going to contemplate the details of his own misery.

"I'm not fully trained at this, it's always possible I'll make a mistake. It's unlikely that I will leave you too catatonic to carry out your suicide plan even if I make some kind of error but I cannot definitively guarantee it, and I can't get a more experienced artist from my side of the door over here to fix it if I do something wrong."

"...I think I'm willing to take a small chance of instead starving to death if there's also a chance I end up more useful or. Something." It feels like it would be really pointless and silly to say or happy.

"It's small, I'll be very careful, I just can't say it's zero. I'm going to start looking when I say 'now', and you can tell me to stop any time and I will stop, but please try not to startle me. Okay?"

"That's - I'm going to get a drink first so I have something to distract me if I get bored, I might have a harder time not startling you if I get bored. How do I get a drink?"

"You just walk up to her and ask, she can hear you. She's talking to me telepathically but she'll address you by writing on napkins."

He walks up to her. "Hello. I'd like my free drink and if there's anything you'd like me to read I'll read it while I'm trying not to startle - I didn't get your name, I'm Verlan."

"Bella."

Here is a mug of something steaming and reddish-brown with a thin straw. Enjoy! I'm happy to loan you a book but usually have something more to go on when I give a recommendation.

"Something from the future of Benden Weyr?" Probably that is not actually on offer.

I can't guarantee that any particular Benden Weyr which is experiencing a later calendar date than yours is a genuine reflection of your own weyr's future, but with that understood, here! Book.

"Thank you."

He can sip the mysterious beverage and look at - oh huh Threadfall charts from seven turns from now, that will be slightly useful later - while Bella takes a look at him.

"Starting now."

Is there any chance the problem is glaringly obvious.

Verlan is kind of like if you took a skein of yarn, cut it open, did the same thing to a different skein of yarn, glued the cut ends together, then ripped the skeins apart and threw one of them away. There's an entire person but...

His ability to feel socially fulfilled no longer connects to anything; he can in hindsight perceive that he has had a friendly interaction but he never gets more than the afterimage. It has been more than half his life since someone hugged him and he could feel the hug happening in the moment.

His body map is overlaid with a different body map and he has phantom limb pain in all six phantom limbs. He has never, ever, gotten to feel those wings catch the air. The part of him that could - isn't him, not really. It's just traces of someone else.

He has an unshakeable sense that someone he is responsible for, someone he needs, someone he is beyond intimate with, is missing, is in danger, and he needs to find that person right now. (He's dead. Verlan is only partly capable of knowing this.) He notices this in every quiet moment when nothing else is taking up his attention. It hurts and it dovetails very badly with the loneliness.

He's been in this state since he was a boy. By now the weight of friendships he couldn't maintain, dreams he couldn't have, plans he couldn't carry out or replace, and generally being unable to have a life is crushing all by itself.

He used to like to think. He was never as intense about mental housekeeping as Bella, but the strain of being unable to do it at all has really eaten at him. He feels an intense pain that he doesn't pick apart into individual components and tries not to acknowledge at all. It's like having his soul cut open. The only time it ever stops is when he sleeps, which he always achieves through drugs and overwork so he doesn't have to spend any time alone with his thoughts. (Lying awake for a while is how he used to do his mental housekeeping.)

He knows... most of this. He could know all of it if he could stand to think about it.

OH GODS THIS POOR MAN WHO DID THIS WHAT THE FUCK.

She can - what's straightforward - she can -

She needs to slow down, she's panicking because it's so awful and she must not do that. She has to be methodical about this psychically gory horrorshow. She takes some deep breaths.

What can she do.

Phantom pain. That's easy. She does one foreleg, no new sensation real or imagined is allowed from there, and then checks to make sure she did that right.

Oh no a thing is different. He needs to not do anything startling about that.

...The thing that is different is better. Not that it matters in the face of NOPE IT'S ALIEN BEVERAGE TIME. This drink is kind of like klah, a little bit. It's better than klah. He should find out how it's made later.

Looks like she did that right. His affect is consistent with that, once it settles.

Slowly, methodically, not panicking: all the rest of the phantom pain, begone.

That would be very good if it weren't so noticeable. He wonders if it's safe to think about the thing but successfully doesn't check.

"You'll tell me if it's ever... not going to make me do anything startling to hear about what you're doing, right?"

"...I can safely take a break now, if you might want to do something startling."

"What... are your plans." He doesn't have plans for himself. He had plans and his plans were to contribute in whatever tiny way he still could to the readiness of the Weyr to protect the planet. And now that the planet is as safe as it's ever been during a Pass, he's given his notice and has nothing left to live for. He will presumably come out of this with some motive other than to never think too hard, because Bella bothered to do anything in the first place, and he has managed to muster some idle curiosity about what that motive is going to be and whether any part of the process of carrying it out will be pleasant.

"Um, I think I got rid of all the phantom pain because that looked pretty straightforward. Everything else looks much more complicated and I might be able to make it a little less awful but I don't know if I can just fix it like the phantom pain, but it'd be too early to give up on it. - if you'd rather be asleep for this, I can put you to sleep."

Oh no it's a question about his preferences. He knows less about his own preferences than his coworkers know about his preferences and is in the habit of letting them make all his choices. He doesn't really want to consider the question.

"I... think I..." which option will bring Reith back which option will excise Reith from his mind He digs his nails into the skin of his wrists. "...uh, I just woke up and should probably not go to sleep again immediately?"

"Okay, that makes sense. Do you have any questions?"

"I shouldn't." He definitely does but not well articulated. He wants to know what he's going to do if this works, and he wants to know if it's going to work. He can't even try to have hope because he can't acknowledge what he's hoping will end and also doesn't know if he's going to go back to working in the Lower Caverns doing miscellaneous menial work but somehow find this tolerable, or go follow Bella home to be useful to her somehow (how?), or something else.

"...okay. I'm not sure how much more improvement I can make but - too early to give up."

Do the cut-apart strings have - signifiers of where they used to connect, that she can find, if she is the sort of person who is willing to look at everything in a five thousand piece jigsaw puzzle looking for the corner pieces if the corner pieces are somebody's mind working right.

They're set up to connect to and through another person now, and the things that are left are no longer only stuff that was part of him to begin with or all of the stuff that was part of him to begin with. It's probably still possible to connect things in ways that are more functional than this - it would be hard to make it worse, really - but there aren't neat matching ends to join up anymore. It might be possible to just reason out the least stupid connections possible if she can tell what all the pieces do, but the last safe settings for this mind are just not available.

"Do you mind if I go ask for another book?"

"Go ahead."

He gets a book from Bar about this alien beverage.

"Why don't you know how much more improvement you can make?" This question is probably a terrible idea but maybe it won't be. And maybe he'll be able to say something useful.

"I've never seen something like this before to know what to try and what to expect when I try it, and it's very, very complicated."

"I wonder if it would help to look at a - "

He can't make himself say dragonrider. He can't quite breathe. He can't quite think or feel anything except the desperate need to find Reith, talk to Reith, hear from Reith, be with Reith.

He was on his way from the bar to his seat and now, instead, he is sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, trying with much more success than usual to focus on the sensations of the present moment.

Hopefully she doesn't need him to repeat himself.

"You said everyone you'd get is on the wrong side of your door."

That sure is a thing he should engage with that isn't any of the things he shouldn't think about.

Right. Wrong side of the door.

"But you could call someone with your thoughts. There are - people," he says in a strained voice, "in the - nearby. In the same mountain."

"Who could come to the door?"

"I don't think anyone could get to this side of the door but the they could get to the other side of the wall. Anyone in the Weyr could get to the other side of the wall - maybe someone would even have something for getting through stone, maybe it would be worth having a second door to this room - the Weyr is currently inhabited by about four hundred pairs of dragons and riders," which is easy to say as long as he doesn't think about any reason that would be an interesting category and he's just breaking down the census into categories, "and almost four times that many people in the Lower Caverns, including all the children and all the people who maintain the Weyr and take care of the people in it. The closest people will be bathing or using the necessary. Or sleeping in."

"...okay, yeah, I can telepathy people through walls, if you hold the door for me."

"I can hold the door." He will read this book the whole time and try not to think about anything else.

And she casts out looking just for who's around, and broadcasts - Excuse me, Verlan found a door to an interplanar bar and I'm trying to help him but need help to do that. I'm a subtle artist, but I won't read anything not intended for me.

The thing is, this mountain is home to hundreds of telepaths, almost none of them human. They usually don't find it worth the effort to speak to people who have no similar power themselves. They aren't unfriendly, though, at least not most of them; there's some quick coordination about who's going to answer her and then someone asks what she needs while quite a lot of others listen in.

There's a startled yelp from a person (this one is human) who was just about to take a bath and is barely in Bella's range.

- pardon me, Bella says to that one person. To other listeners: I need someone who has the - functional version of whatever was damaged in Verlan, who will let me examine them in some detail, I can avoid specifically flagged things and stop looking at anything irrelevant I come across.

It takes a while for the dragons to collectively figure out who she's talking about. None of them actually know this person by name or face; they all have riders, most of whom also do not know Verlan (and one of whom is now trying to read Bella's mind, though she doesn't really know what she's doing and isn't about to succeed), but once enough riders have been asked K'net recognizes him and reminds Piyanth that they were briefly weyrlings at the same time, and once it's clear that he's dragonless it's obvious what Bella wants is to meet a dragonrider. Most of the riders are busy but there's a green rider who isn't doing anything today because his dragon is badly injured and he's moderately injured; he is very confused when his dragon asks if he would mind being looked at by someone who wants to understand the difference between dragonriders and people who have lost their dragons, but he doesn't mind showing off how cool his dragon is or how much he loves her, if that's... possible somehow...?

The dragon taking point on talking to Bella solemnly informs her that her friend's problem is that he doesn't have a dragon and that it is incurable, but that someone has volunteered to be looked at anyway.

I know I can't bring back his dragon, I'm trying to make it less painful to go on anyway. The phantom pain was pretty easy but the rest of it's dreadfully complicated.

She goes through the informed consent rigmarole with the injured rider.

The injured rider doesn't mind if she sees how he feels about Arith, who is the best dragon and he loves her very much. Does he need to go meet Bella in the Lower Caverns in person or can he keep lying in bed?

He can keep lying in bed.

What does this look like when it's working as intended?

This person - his name is R'til - is an entire human being, with his own feelings and hobbies and friendships. Arith is also an entire person with her own feelings and hobbies and friendships. But they don't have to be. They can fluidly lend each other attention and working memory, or approach problems as one mind that works better than either alone. They're aware of each other's feelings by default, especially if those feelings are very strong, and they can listen to each other's thoughts, though by default they don't. They can drop their separate senses of self and be one person with both sets of memories and both sets of strengths and all their combined intelligence and force of will; they don't do this much because circumstances they have no differences of opinion about are not that common, but they protect this planet from a rain of eel-like hungry monsters that devour all plant and animal life they touch, and when they're doing that they have wholly shared goals and move as one. (Also, it makes for some really good telepathic foursomes with other dragon and rider pairs.)

They have a deeper sense of each other's love than they do of other people's. They complete each other. They find the background awareness of their bond comforting.

Mostly she needs a structural look at this, not the details of what exactly it's all doing - because it's more relevant, not because thinking about what it's all doing makes her deeply uncomfortable. She can see Verlan from here, too, and compare - if she imagines the separateness of Reith having once been there, shaped like Arith's presence in R'til's mind is, and Verlan still having the ability to be his own person, can she tell what would have been joined up to what else, ready to swing open at a touch from his dragon but functional alone -

Yep, they weren't identical but they were pretty similar. There are a lot of things being man-in-the-middled by Arith that are just broken in Verlan.

She places flags, rather than joining up anything right away, she wants to make sure as much as possible is accounted for - this would go over there, that would hook up to two separate things like so... she takes notes, intermittently, makes drawings, though they don't really cover the four-dimensional spaghetti of a whole living mind, just serve to organize her own thoughts about it.

If nobody interrupts her she'll be standing there in the doorway looking at things and placing flags for hours.

She is interrupted at an oddly well-chosen moment, when she's just taking notes and not actively touching Verlan's mind, by a sharp knock at the far side of the Milliways door.

? she says. (Telepaths can do that.)

"When you're done, I'd like a word with you."

She doesn't have to talk aloud but it doesn't make it harder - slightly easier, maybe, to find only what's being said to her. This might take me a really long time and I'll probably have to take at least one break in the middle, but a break where I don't even talk to anyone telepathically, because that uses up the same resource I'd be using to make repairs.

"I want a word when you're done and if that's tomorrow then so be it. Finish with this first, dawn stars know it'd be cruel to make a dragonless man wait if you can help him."

All right.

She continues to find analogous structures and place flags. For hours. It's not that arts-intensive but it is net negative against her recharge rate. Eventually she tells Verlan that he can stop holding the door and then she needs to rest her arts, and then she has more she expects to be able to do for him.

(At some point during all this, probably not affecting Bella through her shields, one of the dragons starts really loudly broadcasting that it's sex time now. This meets with very little surprise or offense.)

Once it's been hours it has also been hours since he slept; he can ask Bar for whatever she has that can put him to sleep and curl up at a booth.

She can put a very effective sleepytime tea on his tab.

Bella convinces Bar to accept her student meal plan, gets dinner, and naps on the other bench in the same booth.

Zzz. He doesn't have horribly distracting nightmares or anything.

That's good.

When she wakes up she gets breakfast and double checks that all the flags are where they ought to be and that the tangly drawing she's made doesn't seem obviously mismatched from what she'll get if she hooks them up. And she waits for him to wake up, because this part she doesn't think she'd better do while he's unconscious.

Waking up is always miserable. Here he is, still alive. Time to ignore the urge to stretch or let himself ease into wakefulness and instead immediately get up and look for something distracting. What is even distracting around here. He can look at the stars while talking to Bella, maybe, if she wants to talk.

"Hi. I'm ready to try some more stuff. I am going to need you to pay attention to it and tell me if each thing I do is better, or worse, so I don't lock in something that is worse. I can keep you calm while I do that."

"Oh." What if he just died instead. What then. Then he would be useless and he has been assured repeatedly that he is not useless, much though he sometimes wishes he were. "I don't think I know how to tell if things are better or worse."

"When I did the phantom pain thing yesterday, could you tell if that was better or worse?"

Oh no, now he's thinking about having had his attention drawn to how he feels about The Thing He Doesn't Think About. "Not at first. I don't... like to know how I feel, so I usually don't."

"I can try to guess but I'd be -

- some of the people in your world have some kind of telepathy, right? Not my kind but some kind? Is there someone who might be able to tell for you if you're better or worse, from where the door is?"

That's the kind of thing a dragon could do if he had one. Where is Reith? Instead of saying that he commences pulling out his hair one strand at a time.

"...No."

"I can try doing it all in a row, and then maybe if it works, then you'll be able to tell me if it's an improvement and if it is I can stick it on?"

"That sounds like it could end up being a lot of extra work for you relative to me trying harder to introspect. I can try." The fact that this is among the least pleasant things he can imagine doesn't really strike him as implying he shouldn't do it.

"If it's - unsustainable - we can switch to the other option. ...ready?"

No. "Yes."

Tentative delicate easy to undo - thread this to the matching flag there - "Better or worse?"

Probably. Can't he just say "probably". It is probably one of those!

If he doesn't play along this might be harder or worse. And if it goes well then maybe he gets to find out what there is in the world that he could care about. There are - really kind of a lot of things beyond the mission he's already finished with, aren't there. Lots of work to be done to make a world worth living in. Lots of work to be done protecting that world - he reaches mentally for Reith, stupidly, and it hurts differently.

That's... definitely better but it's hard to make himself say anything. He's just going to sit here and be overcome with grief for a moment.

"Verlan?"

Wow, talking is really a lot of effort.

He really does need to, though. So. Think about something else. Think about the exploding stars. Maybe they could explode the red star that way and Thread would stop falling on them.

Deep breath.

"I think it's better but..." He really can't just say that he didn't care enough to feel grief before. Shards but that makes him sound incredibly broken and like a terrible person who's hardly human. And it raises the question of why he's so badly affected if he doesn't care. Didn't care. "...it's different."

"...okay. I won't stick it on yet, if you're not totally sure. Ready for the next one?"

"I'm ready."

Ever so gently and carefully she draws the this over to the that and psychically safety-pins them together - "Better or worse?"

That feels like -

- nope he's not going to think about that.

Not going to think about it.

It really feels like - nope.

...it's kind of like back when he was friends with his sister.

It's like back when it was possible to actually have friends.

Maybe it will be possible to have friends tomorrow.

"Better but - I want to ask you something about it but I don't know what."

"...huh. Do you have... partial concepts that relate to the question you have, maybe?"

That sounds like it would involve more introspection than is completely necessary, so no. Either a question will bubble up or it won't.

"No. Could you just start talking and see if that helps?"

"Sure. - I can also show you what I'm looking at but it won't make much sense because you aren't a subtle artist and it doesn't even make a lot of sense to me."

"That sounds good."

"Sure. So the thing I just did was -" This. Psychic spaghetti, sliced through, carefully labeled and she's just attached this one to that one and she's pretty sure they were originally the same noodle but if they weren't it will have done something really strange, that's why she wants his help - and before that she hooked up these two severed ends -

He... understands what's happening, actually, once she shows him a mental image.

Not because the spaghetti makes more sense to him in itself, just because - the thing where he can't feel like anyone is really there just because they're not in his head¹ is fixed² and so is the thing where he doesn't find anything compelling or valuable, and now someone is talking to him. In his head, in fact, if only a little. He would desperately like that to continue, more than he actually cares about the answers to any specific questions. He can come up with questions he barely cares about for a while.

"What do those marks mean?"

¹that's not quite why

²slightly improved but he can't remember what it being fixed would feel like

"Those are little flags I placed so I can keep track of everything, they're sort of like sticky notes with numbers on them, not really contentful - I placed those while you were holding the door and I was looking at an example person to compare the structure against."

"What are they? Can everyone see them?"

"No, I can only see them with subtle arts, I think your plane has some kind of non-subtle-artist telepath maybe but even on my plane most people aren't subtle artists. They'll go away when I'm done, on their own if I don't take them down but they're easy to take down. They don't do anything but be visible."

This is objectively boring but also the most desperately welcome conversation he's had in over a decade.

"The other telepaths you mean are probably the dragons. They - you know."

"I don't actually know. My plane has dragons but they're really really different, I think they're... not even sort of the same thing apart from being scaly winged quadrupeds."

"What are your plane's dragons like?"

"Best avoided. Capable of shapeshifting. Really into having a lot of stuff. Very powerful, usually solitary, not particularly telepathic but very very magical."

"Dragons don't shapeshift. On Pern, I mean."

"I got that sense, yeah. Pern's the name of the plane?"

"No, Pern is the planet. By a 'plane' do you mean all the - the normal places, the ones that connect to each other without needing to go between?"

(Between is... not that. Maybe it's not anything. It's where you are, when you've slipped out of all the ordinary places that have things in them and distances from each other, before you come back to reality.)

"...well, my plane has just the one planet, outside our sphere it's just a lot of gibbering horror sorts of things, but I... think that sounds about right?"

"The horror things don't gibber. They just eat everything alive or dead."

"I've never met one and wouldn't be here to talk about it if I had, the gibbering might be metaphorical."

"Who fights them?"

"Epic adventurers, I guess."

"What?"

At some point maybe she'll notice the thing where he's compulsively keeping this tangential conversation going for no reason, but he really can't stop and hasn't enjoyed anything this much in a very long time.

"People who've gotten into so many fights and so much intrigue and done so much inventing and discovering and picked up so many magical artifacts that they can do impossible things that nobody else could get away with. - which isn't really relevant to your treatment plan."

"That's true." She can't just stop talking, she can't just abandon him like this, he can't bear to never again have anyone talk to him for the rest of his life, surely there's something he can offer her that would make her want to keep talking to him. "What... is the treatment plan, anyway, beyond not giving up yet. What are you hoping to achieve here?"

"I'm going to keep connecting up the spaghetti, as long as it doesn't seem to be making you worse - you seem more talkative? Do you know if you are... innately... talkative?"

"I don't remember what I'm like as a person. I wouldn't be the same now anyway, I'm older. I just - haven't had - I've had conversations but I wasn't there for them. I might be talkative, too. I really don't know. I usually like it when people talk to me but - not as much as I like it right now? Am I too talkative? I don't want to be offputting. If there's something that would make me a pleasanter conversation partner, I'll try to do that."

"You're fine, but we'll be here for ages if we don't get on with it and I'm not sure how long I can get away with staying in this interplanar bar."

"What's in the way of you getting away with it?"

"Oh, just, it seems like a pretty abuseable thing, doesn't it, an interplanar bar that pauses time. Risky to lean too hard on anything about it. But I really do want to help you. How about I join up another couple of flags now?"

"Yeah, so far everything you've done has been good. Go ahead."

This one and that one: put. Gently gently but he's so much - livelier - that she does need to worry a little more about him knocking something loose than she had been. Not a lot, he probably won't do it today, but.

"So when you pick things to put together, what do you know about them before you do it?"

"Not that much. I'm copying structure from someone else I had a look at and I'm making sure it looks plausible, like - topologically, though that's not really - there aren't great words for a lot of telepath stuff. And I can make some guesses. But I've never seen, like, a textbook, about this kind of damage, so it's not as obvious as it would be if you had damage to the part of your mind that lets you tell colors apart. That I'd recognize."

"Do you think any of that will end up doing anything about the - about how it's - about why I don't like to think?"

"Maybe. I think it will at least get - easier, less aversive - to think."

"You know, if you want me for anything, you can make me whatever you want. I was - there was a threat to Pern and - I could be available in case the people who were going to deal with that threat needed anything, so they'd be ready and healthy and - alive - but I'm done now, there are definitely enough of them alive and ready and they're protecting Pern just fine. I still don't actually have better plans for tomorrow than dying and if you want my plans to be cooking you dinner or cleaning your bathing pool, they can be. I don't know what you know how to do but you have my permission to do most things."

"- no! I'm in training to be a therapist to help people, not to turn them into my personal servants."

He shrugs. "Suit yourself. You might want to ask Headwoman Manora what to do with me, then. Or the Weyrwoman, if she cares - she's the one who wants to talk to you later."

"I will listen to what she has to say, certainly, but first I want to get all these bits joined up. Are you ready for the next one?"

"I am."

Scootch scootch and safety-pin. He can see what she's doing, he seems to find it - grounding or something.

This one's another one that leaves him a mess at first, and then has significant ripple effects that still haven't settled by the time he comes up with something to say.

"Can I tell you something pointless and awful?"

"If you want to, yes."

"Dragons won't live alone. They hatch and they look around for someone to love and if they can't find anyone they disappear. And if they do find someone and that person dies, they disappear. They don't wait to do one more thing. They don't stay long enough to stab themselves or down themselves. They're gone, immediately."

Verlan has his head in his hands and is speaking very calmly.

"They're the ones who protect Pern. Men don't really do anything irreplaceable - we can - they can help. But it's the dragons who keep us safe from the Threads. We would all die without them, too, just slower and more painfully."

Deep breath. Sigh.

"I was born to keep a dragon alive. I wasn't searched out from a hold somewhere and I wasn't raised in a craft. I only exist to be a dragonrider. I stood at a hatching when I was ten and that was the day we knew my being born hadn't been a waste. And then he died, and I did whatever menial chores anyone wanted done, for the sake of the dragons and their riders. And that's - everything I am, everything I've ever been."

He shakes his head and makes an almost wry expression, still half hidden in his hands.

"And two hatchings after mine, the new Weyrleader - he was nine when his Mnementh hatched and I think he's acquainted with his brother, who was the youngest dragonrider in living memory - he decided the candidates should be older. Fifteen, maybe as old as twenty sometimes. Brought in boys from elsewhere with other plans if the dragons - didn't want them - but none of them as young as we were. So they'd be - people - already. They all made their Impressions and it's - fine - and they didn't have to be ten. And they won't be ten in the future. Two hatchings too late for me."

He makes a quiet sound that isn't quite a laugh.

"And Pern is going to be fine without us."

"I'm sorry."

He drops his hands, raises his head. "He didn't even live long enough to fly." Sigh. Headshake. "I don't - how impossible would it be, if I said I wanted to be the person I would have been if I'd been a harper or a smith?"

"I don't think I'm likely to get results that precise."

"Does that mean I could be a harper, just not the specific one I would have been, or what?"

"If we are very fortunate you will be able to go learn to play the harp."

"So there's no actual... fixing the fact that I'm not fit for anything but drudgework. I still won't know how to do anything else. The first twenty three turns of my life will still have been a waste. And there's certainly no giving Reith another chance."

"I can't resurrect people and I can't implant skills whole, I'm sorry."

"And you're sure you don't want personal servants."

"I don't think I'm even allowed to have a servant on campus to say nothing of whether I could afford to, like, feed you, before I graduate."

"I think I'm still marginally useful - I'm not very useful but I'm better than nothing - but I'm not really happy carrying on like this and I think I still won't be just from being less broken inside. Can you just... make me happier?"

"Not permanently, but connecting up the rest of your flagged injuries might help? Shall I do the next one?"

"I don't want to waste your time. Or your ability to do telepathy."

His mind has tentatively settled in a very different state than before.

"If it's any consolation this is actually much better clinical experience than anyone would let me do under normal conditions while I'm this undertrained."

"I can be your scrap leather to practice your stitching on."

"I would not choose to put it that way but, yeah."

"Go on, then."

Nod. Connect up and - pin in place.

"...Maybe... not... that."

"- okay, it's not permanent, I can undo it -" Unpin. Re-flag. "Can you tell me what it did?"

"I think you found the... part of me that listens for... where he is, whether he's thinking about me. It just got... kaleidoscopic. I don't think there's any point in touching it, it's broken but it's supposed to be broken. I think."

"Okay. Do you need a minute or should I do the next one?"

"You can do the next one."

Next one.

The next one is better.

He keeps coming up with kind of distracting conversation topics - what's the weather like where Bella is from? What kinds of structures do people live in?

As more of the puzzle pieces come together, it might eventually become apparent that, on top of being psychically wounded and in an immiserating situation, Verlan is just kind of melancholy as a person. Not in a way that would really need subtle artist attention under normal circumstances - his mood isn't innately unresponsive to circumstances and he's not incapable of being happy when things go well - but it's there and it's not helping.

She can show him mental images of the weather - it's a temperate climate, a little swampy in the low-lying areas, she lives in this dorm, her parents' houses look like so.

There is nothing long-term she can do about a melancholy temperament, but she can safety-pin things together, one at a time, as he's ready for them.

He thinks her parents' houses are amazing, particularly her father's. There's nothing like her father's house in all Pern. They don't have the forests for that.

"Huh, not enough trees?"

"It's green space that doesn't produce food. Anywhere that's not kept barren needs to be protected from Thread. That's... rain that eats plants and animals, all of them."

"That sounds bad, yeah. There's lots of forests on my planet, though they're pretty dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, I think most of the trees people build houses of are farmed these days."

"...I wish I could farm trees. Or - never mind, you know that already." He sighs. "I... think I could be fine if not for my whole existence being utterly meaningless. You've helped a lot."

"I'm trying. I hope that your - people - back home will be able to help you find something to do with yourself."

"...You probably don't want to, with me as your best example, but I suspect you could Impress a dragon."

"I wouldn't want to do that even if I'd only ever seen it working out swimmingly!"

"Huh. Why not?"

"...I understand it's necessary to make protecting your planet work but it seems completely unappealing as a lifestyle? I don't want to share my head."

"Most people think it's the best thing that could happen to you, I think."

"Well, maybe I'm just weird, or maybe it only sounds great if you grew up on Pern."

Shrug. "I don't dwell on anything enough to have any idea."

Nod nod. "Next one?"

"As you like."

There aren't any sea changes left, but there's more improvement to be had. Just connecting things that should have joined up in the first place can't really solve the thing where he keeps thinking he should get in touch with Reith, and that still hurts any time his attention isn't taken up with anything else, but at least he has more of himself with which to cope with it.

Once she's got all the safety pins in place -

"I think I can maybe find the - reflex you have where you keep trying to communicate with him, and make that not happen?"

Whyyy did she mention it, now he's thinking about it.

That's a stupid thought. Obviously that was a useful thing to say.

It doesn't feel like he should solve this problem. It's - insane, to think this is a real possibility that he should really prepare for, but suppose Reith actually didn't die and just traveled to the future, shouldn't Verlan still be available? (This thought, of course, prompts him to search desperately for Reith's mind. Again. Of course.) On the other hand, maybe that's not what she's suggesting anyway.

"I don't know if I should. What exactly would you change?"

"So whenever you do that I see this over here, reaching in this direction -" Observe this incomprehensible brainpasta. "But I think I might be able to see where the prompt to do the reaching comes from, and pinch it closed so it takes at least a lot more provocation to do it, I'm not sure it would be wise to completely fuse it shut."

"Would that... be a normal habit? Something I could do more or less often if I put in the effort for a while?"

"I think so but I've never done this before."

"You've done well enough so far. I trust you."

"Okay, when you're ready?"

"Go on."

Piiiiiinch gently?

"How's that?"

Well, fun fact about specifically prompting him to think about it...

There are specific thought processes that have been consistently interrupted by this problem or by his attempts to avoid it. The real measure of success will be if he can think the things he hasn't thought in over a decade.

He doesn't know how anymore.

But, well, he gets as far as noticing that.

"I think that's as good as it's going to get. It's... not in the way." Or maybe it is but it isn't the thing making it completely impossible to - what is the thing that's so impossible, anyway? - though now that he thinks of it again, well.

"Okay. There are plausibly more things I could do here but I don't see anything super obvious. Do you want me to stick everything on how it is now?"

"That sounds good. I really never expected to be this... comfortable, ever again." And if it's not enough... all the more reason to make sure he's told her how much difference she did make.

"Oh good, I'm glad I didn't wreck anything and made some improvements! I'll get underway on shoring that up..." Stick stick stick.

...She looks happy.

He doesn't quite know what that makes him feel anymore. Someone is happy and proud and that feels real, not like a particularly dull ballad that he happens to be perceiving with his eyes instead of his ears. He wants to laugh about that, or cry, or - something - but none of those reactions would be helpful, and something about it hurts terribly, and.

And she looks happy and if nothing else, that, at least, is one thing he's glad to have lived to see.

She does go back to looking serious and professional while she's working on it. Stick stick stick. Stick stick stick stick stick. Double check 'em all. Triple check one she has a random anxiety about even though it's literally fine and the triple check confirms this. "Done."

"Good. Thank you. Thank you."

"You're welcome! Is there anything else I should take a look at in case it's clear what to do once it has my attention?"

She looks happy again!

He shrugs. "I wouldn't know, I don't even know how to know anything about myself. You can look at anything that interests you, particularly if you'll show me."

"Sure, though I can't imagine it's very informative..." Here is what his mind looks like from this series of "angles". It is much patched but now mostly holds together as a unitary thing!

It's very Someone Is Communicating With Him. It's very Not Being Alone In The World. That's a lot like being informative, in that it is good, and being informative would also be good.

He thinks maybe this is the kind of circumstance in which you're supposed to kiss someone and declare your love for them, but he doesn't know how to kiss, or how to love, and he does realize he would probably feel this way about almost anyone and she just happens to be the one in the room. It's going to be so embarrassing if he has to speak with Headwoman Manora.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"I can't really think of anything, sorry. There was someone past your door who wanted a word when I got to a good stopping place though."

"Weyrwoman Lessa. I'll hold the door for you."

"Thanks."

And when he's doing that:

I think he's a lot better now!

Some time passed on Pern since they last spoke, while Bella was looking at the other rider. Lessa is no longer right on the other side of the wall, so her answer comes via her dragon.

Lessa says: good! You have Benden's gratitude. I'll be down to speak to you myself shortly. Who and what are you? How do you speak in our heads like a dragon, when the dragons say you aren't one?

My name is Bella. I'm a human subtle artist; subtle artistry is a talent that pops up in a lot of different races on my plane and in most cases it permits telepathy, and I'm in school learning to use it to be a therapist.

Lessa says: does "subtle artist" mean you can lean on others' minds as well as speak to dragons?

Individual presentations of subtle artistry vary, but in my case it does. I don't do this without permission, consent is very important for doing therapy.

Shortly there are footsteps and then a voice on the other side of the wall.

"I'm here now!" Does this work?

Yes, I can read what you're trying to say to me.

You as well, though you give away nothing else. How are you so quiet?

If you mean you're trying to read things I'm not trying to say, the reason you can't do that is that I have good shields.

Yes, but how do you make them?

Many subtle artists have to make them on purpose but I don't, they do that naturally for me and the thing I have to do on purpose is let anything through.

Do you know how others make them?

Only the very basics and I assume none of it would work the same way for you since you aren't a subtle artist.

Why do you assume that?

Because your telepathy works differently? I could read to you from one of my textbooks, I guess, but subtle arts training is pretty heavy on the demonstrations and I don't know how to demonstrate this because I do it backwards from how you want to learn.

I'd certainly like to hear some of your book. If you're hoping to stay a while, we can carve a new door for that room so the Weyr can offer you our hospitality.

I should probably not actually go to your world, if the door ever closes with everybody from Pern on Pern then I'd be stuck there.

I could assign people to stay there - probably will, regardless - but I can hardly blame you with fifty turns of Thread to look forward to here. While I have you, perhaps you'd be interested in trading anything you know of your planet's technology for information on ours?

I can't say that sounds like a super great idea, sorry, it's very clever though.