"...sure. Why not."

He removes the ring from his finger and places it on a decorative table between them. "This is a dyr. I don't suppose you recognize the material?" It's not quite metal, not quite stone. Looks almost liquid when the light catches it just so.

"No..."

"Disirad. It resonates with the spirit, providing clarity and heightened perception, while at the same time putting a bit of distance between you and your emotions. If that sounds…useful for you, in this moment, I can activate it."

"Uh, no thank you, I'm not freaking out nearly that badly."

"My mistake. It's there if you need it." He slips the ring back onto his finger.

"You just wear that all the time?"

"There was an adjustment period when I first started training with the dyr, but that's been over for some time. Separation at this point would be akin to blinding myself."

"Uh, wow. Thank you for offering to lend it to me, I will take that in the spirit in which it was offered?"

"Ah, I see it's—no, I was offering to guide you through a session with the dyr, not to leave in your hands. It's dangerous without the proper training, for one thing; you might lose yourself into the mental realm. That said, if you do ever desire the effects of the dyr without any hand-holding, disirad grows wild in some parts of the world, and its effect on the soul is similar."

"That should probably go on my curriculum for acclimating to this universe where I apparently live now."

"There's time enough when you're ready." A sad smile: "I'm sorry that your family isn't here."

"I was not still reliant on my parents on a day to day basis. It's just sad if we can't let them know that I'm alive and stuff."

"Of course."

(He's definitely curious about Bella's plans but will wait for her to speak.)

"Is there - some obvious remunerative thing I should step into once the books are all translated, since I have to plan to support myself here indefinitely -"

"There's a great need for mind-healers. Dyranarya don't take money for our services, but part of the training is picking up a separate trade so that you can earn. I'm not sure that you'd make a dyranarya in the traditional sense—we'd have to experiment with the disirad—but it's a close enough analogue if you decide to practice your world's version of mental healing. Barring that, we'd want to find you a trade that you enjoyed and set you up with an apprenticeship. You…don't strike me as someone who would enjoy bouncing from royal court to royal court on the sufferance of the local monarchs, but that is also an option."

"I really wouldn't, though it's not like I'd sooner starve. Why would anyone want to see me if there's a free version who have actual training?"

"Because there are only fourteen of us, and the world needs much more healing than fourteen lifetimes can accomplish."

"...I guess that's a good reason. Does everyone who can learn it do so or is there lots of unused potential?"

"There's unused potential. Identifying candidates is one of our main constraints; most of them so far have selected by Detlev, although some of the others are finally getting a handle on it. I expect we'll see the numbers grow over the next few decades, as dena Yeresbeth—unity of the three, our term for these mental abilities—returns to the population at large."

"Are your three telepathy, telekinesis, and pyrokinesis, or something else?"

"Those last two words are unfamiliar. The main feature of dena Yeresbeth is mind-to-mind communication. It was the birthright of Sartorias-deles until the Fall of Old Sartor, and it's only just started to return, slowly, within the last generation or two."

"Huh. Subtle arts are commoner than that at home though they vary in strength a lot, and the three arts someone can have are telepathy which I'm fairly strong in, telekinesis," she picks up the end of her ponytail and lets it drop illustratively, "which I have a bit of, and pyrokinesis which I don't have at all. What are the other two mental abilities for you?"

"Ah, 'three' in 'unity of the three' refers to mind, body, and spirit. The abilities themselves aren't so neatly delineated. But besides mental communication, the unity can also provide a certain degree of control over one's own body—the ability to ignore cold or sleep, for example, although not indefinitely. Our ancestors could also control the aging process from within, but I don't know how much of that was dena Yeresbeth and how much was the old magic."

"This is a lot of new vocabulary to take in all at once and I am likely to drop some especially since you're grouping concepts in ways I'm not used to at all. I think I've been quite left behind at this point. Is it important that I understand this soon?"