"- But the obvious problem is that Leareth is banned from Valinor. Unless Melody re-blocks all his Gifts." 

"I don't want to do that to him. I - think it would be a huge setback, at this point, this is really godawful timing and - it's going to be bad enough, having to tell him that this is happening. Which, by the way, is that a job you're going to leave me saddled with?" 

Sigh. "I'll tell him. I had been really, really hoping it...wasn't going to be this." 

Stef glances around the table. "Do we have any alternatives. Er, Van, what about that - whatever it was you thought you'd found, when you were Gate-exploring...?" 

"...Huh. I hadn't really thought of that, but - maybe." 

The conversation with Leareth does not exactly go well. Vanyel feels terrible about it. Leareth is doing vastly better in so many ways, but he's still very reliant on their support, and 'immediately after finding out that Velgarth is in danger - and that all of them have been keeping a critical secret from him this whole time - is the worst moment to lose that. But he doesn't actually see that they have a choice. 

Melody will go with him. Vanyel is awfully tempted to send Stef with him - even Valinor doesn't feel safe enough for his lifebonded - but, as Stef points out, being in different worlds will be debilitating for both of them. 

He leaves Leareth to spend a few last precious candlemarks with Maitimo, and re-attacks the Gate exploration problem. He didn't pursue it further before, but he was pretty sure there was something there, a stable destination on the other side of the Void - 

There is, in fact, something there. His first test Gate appears in the middle of an ocean, but a couple of additional trials confirm that this is a planet, with life on it, and cities, albeit very strange ones. 

Leareth is mostly past panic and deep into exhausted resignation. He asks to be asleep for the Gate transfer, because he's not sure that right now he's capable of making a conscious decision to say goodbye and possibly never see any of them again. 

Vanyel does his best to drop the threshold of his final full-sized Gate in the midst of one of the cities, but his 'aim' is rather haphazard.

The Gate lands in the parking lot of a grocery store (not that Vanyel recognizes either of these things, per se). From the perspective of anyone watching, a glowing door-sized rectangle appears out of thin air, flashes brightly, and then shows the stone walls of Vanyel's Work Room (which are kind of absurdly covered in beautiful carved bas-relief images.) 

"All right, go," he says tightly. "I can't hold this for long."

This is incredibly nerve-wracking! Melody is desperately wishing she could have had more than three candlemarks' of warning about this! Though it is, to be fair, significantly more warning than she had when she last left Valdemar. She had time to pack and everything. 

And if it's this uncomfortable for her, she can't even imagine how terrifying it would be for Leareth to face it on his own. 

Vanyel said there were people here, who at least looked human at a glance, and that he was going to try to drop them in an inhabited area so that she could ask the locals about their willingness to shelter a couple of refugees from another world. 

She shoulders her pack and walks through the Gate, and immediately extends her Thoughtsensing as well as looking around in all directions. 

An old man carrying a bag full of fruit and bread and cheese, approaching his nyoom, is very startled by this eventuality! He doesn't drop the bag on the ground but it's a near thing, he swings it awkwardly into the nyoom's basket.

She has also startled two dogs, a crow carrying a grocery list, and a family of six, but the old man is closest.

That's a crow carrying what? Melody blinks mildly at the scene in front of her for several seconds before she manages to find a semblance of composure. 

:I'm very sorry to bother you, but I'm from another world and there's a very dangerous war happening there. I need to know if - if it would be possible for me and, er, one other person to stay here for a while, so we're out of the way of it: She can explain all the complications related to the fact that the other person is Leareth later, once Vanyel isn't holding a Gate open. 

"- you trying to tell me there's a war in space and it's coming here?" says the old man.

It's just bizarre how agonizingly awkward and stressful this interaction is! ...Maybe not that inexplicable. It feels high stakes because it is, they - don't really have a fallback plan better than Valinor, which may or may not actually be safe anyway, and whatever Vanyel says, Melody feels very uncomfortable about the idea of getting dumped here without having first had some kind of conversation with one of the locals. Not that they've got much time for it. 

:No! Definitely not! The, er, parties responsible for the war have no way of knowing or caring that your world exists, so we'll be safe here, and for um complicated reasons that would take too long to explain, my - friend - can't evacuate to the usual place: 

"You obviously know my world exists. Don't like the sound of reasons that would take too long to explain, either."

Gaaaaaaah this is not going how Melody had hoped at all. Not that she's sure what she was expecting, exactly. Maybe she should have tried to start this conversation with literally anyone else. 

She doesn't want to make Vanyel exhaust himself by holding the Gate for half a candlemark, but what is she supposed to do with Leareth if Vanyel dumps him through the Gate here and now and leaves? One of Maitimo's staff is available to carry him across, but the ground is all stone or some kind of cement, she can't just plop him down there and she certainly can't carry him herself. 

:We do, but it wasn't of particular interest before: Because Vanyel hadn't picked up on any hint of magic, locally. :I expect it would be of even less interest to the enemy our world is facing, and that leaving the two of us here wouldn't make much difference either way, since there's no way to track our Gate or locate us once we're here. And - if something does come up we can leave again: 

In theory. Ish. It would require unblocking Leareth's mage-gift and trusting him to embark on more Gate research, which nobody is in any rush to do. 

Melody bites down the urge to snap 'well, if Vanyel leaves us here what are you going to do, kick us out.'  :Is there someone else I should talk to about this?: she says instead, calm and measured. 

"You want I should phone the government?" asks the old man.

The mother of the family is taking pictures of the Gate; the rest of her group has left.

This is the moment that Vanyel picks to stick his head through the Gate. :Melody is there a problem I really can't hold this much longer: 

He notices the mother taking pictures, and smiles and waves. 

:I...don't think so? This place seems - organized: And notably wealthy, too, going off the sheer quantity of paved road and glass storefront windows and the bountiful food being carried out of the market. :Just - some understandable reluctance around a war potentially putting them in danger: 

:Interworld Gates shouldn't be traceable, even if we weren't doing this behind shields: 

He makes eye contact with the mother again, since she looks - friendlier. :Excuse me. Is there anyplace sort of close by where we can put a sleeping person. It's complicated, Melody will explain after: 

And Melody should probably stop ignoring the old man, even if he's mostly been unhelpful so far. She's understanding him at all only by dint of skimming the words in his surface thoughts and she still has no idea what a 'phone' is, though in context it's probably a mode of communication? 

:- Um, yes, I think so?: 

"They'd think I was crazy," snorts the old man. "Heck*, maybe I am. Your process is terrible. Should've gone to the government to start out."

He boards his nyoom and nyooms away.

* Literally "burr" - the kind of seed that sticks to you.

How is she supposed to go to the government to start with, she has no idea who or where the government of this place is– nevermind, not productive to get into an argument with the old man about it. 

Sigh. 

Vanyel, now putting substantial effort into not falling over, repeats his question to the mother taking pictures, and then extends his Thoughtsensing further - is there anyone inside the market-looking building who going off surface thoughts seems to know what's going on or be in charge? 

The market's coming up on closing time; there are a few workers there, none of whom seem very in charge of anything larger than the dairy counter.

"Uh," says the woman taking the pictures, "you... shouldn't put a sleeping person in the parking lot. There's a bench over there?" She points. There are a bunch of benches, actually.

:Oh. Good. Thank you: Vanyel's vision is starting to go hazy and grey around the edges; he can't actually make out the benches. :Melody, can I leave this with you? I'm sorry about the awkwardness, just -: 

:I am slightly starting to wish we'd gone with the plan of arriving in the wilderness and camping out for a while until we felt ready to contact the locals!: Leareth is going to find this place so overstimulating. Which does leave Melody very relieved that he asked not to be conscious for the travel over; this is daunting enough without also having to juggle Leareth's emotional state, and she honestly has very little idea how well or poorly he's going to cope. :- It's fine. I'll manage: 

One of the Quendi on Maitimo's staff, who is very tall and, close up, visibly not-exactly human, marches through the Gate and follows Melody to the nearest of the benches pointed out, where he deposits a limp, sleeping Leareth before breaking into a run back to the Gate. 

:Sorry: Vanyel manages, and ducks back across, and the Gate snaps down and vanishes. 

Great. Now what. 

Melody...is maybe just going to sit down on this bench as well and wait to see if anyone approaches her and what they say. 

The lady takes another picture. Taps on her phone a little bit, texting her husband.

"Do you... need an ambulance?" she asks, when she's done with that.

Melody squints at her. :I have no idea what that is, sorry. I– right, I should explain. My name is Melody and this is Leareth and we - came here from a different world, using transport magic called a Gate - what you just saw - because there's a war there and it was too dangerous for him to stay. I think we should probably talk to someone from your local authorities but I confess we did this all in a massive rush and without really having a plan. ...Your world isn't at risk from the war, or, er, not more than it would have been either way, we aren't traceable to here: 

"Uh. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and call an ambulance. In case you have the space flu."

Melody is suddenly feeling very, very tired. :...All right. I appreciate your help. What...is going to happen once you do that. I still don't know what an 'ambulance' is: She could maybe get further if she were reading surface thoughts more thoroughly but she tries not to make a habit of that. 

"They'll show up with a truck and paramedics and take you guys to a hospital. They'll have an iso room." She's typing to emergency services in the process.

This continues to consist significantly of unfamiliar word-concepts flashing by in the woman's surface thoughts too quickly to parse, but Melody is making somewhat more sense of it now. :So like a - wagon? And trained Healers and they'll take us to your equivalent of a House of Healing. Um. Are there likely to be...loud noises involved. Or a lot of people at once. - I'm trying to decide if I should wake Leareth and explain the plan or if I should at all costs not let him wake up until we've arrived wherever it is and can be left in peace and quiet: 

"Sometimes ambulances make loud noises, yeah, if the road's crowded. Is he allergic?"

Is he what. That is also not entirely parsing. Melody frowns, trying to decide how much to say. 

:He, er, had a very bad time of it during the last war in our world, that was a couple of years ago, and he panics or gets scared about a lot of things, still. It's likely to come up for a lot of different things but noise and crowds seemed like obvious ones to check: 

"I don't need his entire medical history, 'he's allergic to loud noises and crowds' is enough for calling an ambulance." She adds to the text.

It turns out that Mindspeech is not an instant solution to speaking totally different languages because Melody still isn't following what that word means. Hopefully whatever is actually being communicated to the Healers responding is accurate and not totally misleading. 

She starts fidgeting with her sleeve, catches herself and tries to stop, and then finds herself instead smoothing down her robes across her lap and twisting the strap of her pack between her fingers and tugging absently at her ear. 

The local considers giving Melody a spare fidget toy and then realizes that her least favorite is now the property of her second daughter. Oh well.

The ambulance, when it arrives, doesn't have its siren on, though it does have flashing lights. The paramedics have full face masks on, and gloves, and they set about putting Leareth on a stretcher.

Melody stares at the ambulance in some amazement. Glances over at the woman, since she doesn't want to distract the Healers. :How...does it move...?: 

Leareth was managing to sleep through someone talking nearby, but it's a lot harder to sleep through being TOUCHED and PICKED UP, which is also an extremely disorienting thing to wake up to, and he has no idea where he is - extending his Othersenses doesn't help with this, Melody is there but other than that everyone nearby is a stranger and there's absolutely no sign of wards or shielding or actually any kind of magic whatsoever, other than his own shield-talisman and Melody's - 

- right, he was expecting to wake up in unfamiliar surroundings, they had that entire conversation before he asked to be sung to sleep. Which means everything is...probably still going according to plan? And next up in the plan is that Melody will handle explaining things to the locals and he just needs to stay calm until something is sorted out. 

Leareth would still intensely prefer that things be going according to a different plan. This plan is stressful. He cannot really do 'stay calm' but he can at least manage holding still. In some sense, holding still is the easiest way to respond. He's not sure he could move even if he wanted to. 

Oh, he's awake. Somewhat non-ideal. 

:Leareth, we're in the other world. Van dropped us off in a city. One of the locals - wanted to call in some Healers to take us somewhere and, er, I think make sure we're not carrying a disease from our world? Other than that, no problems. Would you rather be asleep until we get to wherever we're going?: 

:...No: He is, instead, going to read everyone's mind (a lot more thoroughly than Melody has been doing) to try to form his own sense of what sort of place they're in and what the locals are thinking. 

Woman who called the ambulance: tries for about a second to come up with a concise explanation of electric motors, decides to just fall back on "It goes by electricity," is now trying to recall exactly the circumstances under which she gave her daughter her least favorite fidget. It's not the same one that daughter's been coveting, that one she still has...

Paramedic 1: the iso seems like overkill but he broadly approves of "if somebody wants an ambulance they get an ambulance" as a policy and they did already have iso gear. These do not look like aliens though. They look like folks. Mnemonic for safely transferring onto a stretcher goes like...

Paramedic 2: Guy's not unconscious any more. Does look kind of out of it. Is this lady his wife or his friend or his sister or what? Is she going to come with in the - oh, right, she's supposedly an alien, that's what the iso gear is for. Oh, she should - "Ma'am," he says to the ambulance-caller, "if you think they might have something you should go straight home and hole up in an isolated room of your house, and then we can get you the quarantine reward to keep doing it if they turn out to have something."

Ambulance-caller nods. She can swap rooms with her brother-in-law who lives in the attic, he'd rather have hers anyway and his is inconvenient to get in and out of but ideal if you aren't going anywhere.

So far everyone sounds calm and helpful? Though also it seems like maybe Melody has not, actually, explained very much of the situation to them. This is moderately stressful - what if they don't want to keep being helpful once they have context - but Leareth is not eager to be the one explaining. 

Melody follows them into the ambulance. :Thank you so much for your help: she says to the woman who called the ambulance for them. And to the paramedics, :- er, I think I owe someone a more thorough explanation of why we're here and, um, some of the background, but I can wait until we get to wherever we're going, if that's easier: 

"- whoa, you really are telepathic," breathes Paramedic 1.

"Give us the twelve second version?" says Paramedic 2, as the driver (who is mostly thinking about not hitting anything, and about the music he has on) pulls out of the grocery store parking lot.

Twelve second version, right. :Er, there's a war in the world we're both from, called Velgarth, involving some very powerful gods. Leareth played a key part in winning the last war with a similar enemy, which we won a couple of years ago. So he's especially likely to be a target now, and he was - injured, in the last war, and isn't fully recovered. And for complicated reasons isn't allowed in the place where we're evacuating the rest of the noncombatants. We have magic that can transport people between worlds, and - we don't actually know very much about this one, just that it's inhabited and has cities, but staying here seemed like the safest option. We won't cause any trouble: 

"Gosh," says Paramedic 1. "Uh, I guess we aren't exactly the people you'd go to about that but I'm still curious?"

Paramedic 2 has processed the implications of the telepathy and is now trying desperately not to think about sex and failing.

(Leareth is still intently reading all the nearby minds, though he immediately stops reading Paramedic 2 at the first hint of thoughts about sex not being successfully squashed. He is pretty sure that this wouldn't have bothered him at all before, which makes it really quite irritating that it seems to be stressful now.) 

:I don't mind answering questions while we're in transit anyway: Melody assures them. :Er, and it's not like I have the faintest idea who else to go to with this! What would your advice be?: 

"I don't know, we don't get magical aliens every week! I guess I'd call the princess's office. I mean, it's mostly a ceremonial position but it winds up sort of being that, like, anything we have a process for gets formalized in the regular government, and the princess does figurehead things but also generally needs to know what's going on so she can make statements on demand? So she'd have the context and would have just as much zero-process-for-this as anybody else. But you could also try the premier."

:The princess? Huh: Melody digs out some paper to write this down. :Of - er, what country is this, anyway? And what does the ‘premier’ do?:

Melody clearly does not have much of a plan when it comes to asking questions about the new world. Leareth is going to have to figure out his OWN list of questions, isn’t he. Though right now he’s distracted by the fact that the moving ambulance is making him kind of motion-sick.

:Can we go around the corners slightly slower: he manages to say to Paramedic 1, without moving or opening his eyes.

"Princess Onda, of Whister. The premier is elected and coordinates the departments of government... Uh, we're doing iso so I can't stick my head in the front compartment. You could telepath the driver and ask him? He's not going to read a text while he's driving. But no actually now that I think of it you shouldn't telepath him either, might be startling."

:Ah. Thank you:

(Melody has mostly not even been trying to organize her questions to ask the locals! She’s too busy preparing answers to the questions she expects them to ask her. She’s going to have to explain some things about Leareth as a person, probably, which she is not looking forward to at all - she’s not sure if it’s wiser to go with a carefully sanitized version or if that just risks having it explode messily later, and she still has too-vivid memories of the last messy explosion and, as a result, Leareth is the last person she wants to ask for advice on this particular question.)

Leareth is going to have so many questions about their system of government as soon as he can actually think! He wishes he had been able to bring more of his notes with them, since it sounds like they’re doing something with democracy, and - this world doesn’t as far as Vanyel knows have gods in it, so it could be a fascinating natural experiment in how things can go differently without that particular problem. unfortunately he mostly doesn’t have his notes, and doesn’t really trust his memory of things that he hasn’t has a chance to properly review. Which is most of the things.

:All right. How much longer?:

"Looks like another block, and then the bridge, which means one more turn and we'll get out."

:Oh. That is fine:

It’s kind of not fine, though mostly for reasons unrelated to carsickness. Leareth is trying to scan his surroundings with mage-sight and getting very little, which on the one hand could be taken as reassuring - no magical threats - but it makes him feel like he’s suspended in a void of nothingness. He desperately wants Melody to fully unblock his Gifts, even though they’ve been over all of the reasons why this is a bad idea right now. 

Privately to Melody, :can you look around and tell me what is happening:

Leareth wanting to orient is in some sense a much better sign than Leareth refusing to engage with his surroundings but it’s also way more exhausting. 

:Here: Melody offers, folding away any sign of impatience, and shares her senses directly with him. Is there a window or anything she can look out through?

There's windows on each side and the back, though they have blinds. If she peeks out she can see the buildings - mostly five stories, some just two or three, occasional tens or fifteens - whiz by, full of colorful windows and balconies with plants on them and ground-level shops with colorful advertisements she can't read. The ambulance climbs onto the bridge, and on the sides where the motor vehicles aren't welcome there's cart-pulling dogs and pedestrians. A crow flies by, going the opposite way from them, carrying a little bag dangling from one of its ankles.

The hospital is just on the other side of the bridge, and they pull up to it with one more left turn and come to a stop. The paramedics hop out to clear the way and roll Leareth in once there's nobody else between him and the iso room.

She's so curious about the crows! And the dogs! Actually, Melody is increasingly thinking that she's going to like this place. She hopes they have tea. And that at some point soon there will be a non-awkward opportunity to request a cup. She's worried about Leareth, of course, but so far it seems like this is going as well as she could possibly expect. 

Leareth is mostly not able to assess whether he likes the city because it turns out that attempting to borrow someone else's to catch a glimpse-through-blinds of a city while in a moving vehicle is really not a good combination with motion sickness. 

There is not really any good reason why being transferred from the ambulance to the room should be the most stressful experience of the entire past year, but nonetheless. Leareth is not managing to stay calm about it but he's mostly succeeding at holding still. 

Here is the iso room! It is basically just a normal hospital room with a negative pressure situation, although mage-sight may or may not be able to notice that behind all the ventilation grates there's ultraviolet light. Most of the surfaces that can be are made of copper alloys of various kinds.

"Okay, here you are," says Paramedic 1. "Are either of you allergic to anything that is in this room right now?"

Melody still hasn't quite pieced together what that concept means, here, it seems like a Healers' term but - used more broadly than just for physical health? It's intriguing. 

:No, I'm fine. Leareth?: 

Leareth hates this room passionately because it's NEW and every single detail is a reminder of how unfamiliar and alien this place is. And also it doesn't have wards. And it smells strange, not in a bothersome way aside from how everything is bothersome just because it's unfamiliar. 

He unshields a bit and pushes his surface thoughts at Melody, rather than trying to formulate actual words. 

Sigh. :Leareth finds unfamiliar places stressful but that's nothing about the room specifically. I think we're fine. Er, will be fine in a few minutes: 

"Okay. Do you need anything urgently such as -" There's a checklist on the wall. "Food, water, device charger - do you even have those - anyone we should text for you, etcetera, anything like that in the next thirty minutes which is the longest amount of time it might reasonably take for an orderly to come in and see you?"

:...We do not have those. Water would be good. Do you have tea here? Er, and are there extra blankets anywhere?: 

They have wall checklists! Leareth is not fully following what the checklist is for, but just the fact that it exists is bizarrely reassuring. 

"Tea exists," says Paramedic 1, while Paramedic 2 gets them water (there's disposable cups and a sink in the room).

Melody carefully notes the location of said sink. :I could very much go for some tea, then.  But no rush, if you're very busy: She's still repeatedly rolling and unrolling her sleeve; it does make Leareth anxious when she fidgets excessively, but he's not even looking at her right now, and she's having such a day. 

Leareth is lying very still and patiently waiting for there to be fewer strangers in the room so he can actually finish any of his thoughts. 

"Orderly can do that if you don't need it in the next thirty minutes," says Paramedic 1.

They point out the call buttons - separate ones for various purposes, with pictograms as well as labels on them - and depart.

Melody is not going to complain about how she wants tea NOW and in fact is used to being able to have tea within thirty seconds literally whenever it occurs to her. This is not the biggest problem with their situation. She thanks the paramedics warmly and then settles in to wait, amusing herself by examining all the various objects in the room. 

Leareth hides under the blanket for a while, but actually calms down relatively quickly once the room is quiet and the only other person there is Melody. (He can of course sense every single other person in the building with Thoughtsensing; they don't have any shielding. Skimming surface thoughts is overwhelming, though, so he mostly doesn't.) 

Within a few minutes, he gets up and starts examining the ventilation grates, and trying to piece together the local alphabet by noting all the repeating letters in the signage on the walls. 

Melody, busy sorting through her pack for her extra blank notetaking paper, gives him a mild look. "Managing all right?" 

Shrug. "This...is probably better than being in Valinor with no Gifts. But - I hope the others are all right. It is very frustrating not to be able to help." 

Nod. "I know." She tugs at her bun. "Want some paper to take notes on, er, whatever it is you're actually doing?" 

"I am trying to figure out their writing system. - I realize this is not the efficient way to do that but it is distracting." 

Whenever someone does come to check on them or bring tea, Leareth is busy organizing a list of all the recognizable letters on the signs, ordered by frequency of use. 

An orderly is by in about ten minutes with an iso mask on. The door is airlock style. "Hey!" he says. "I'm Kro, I'll be on duty for this room for the next four hours and then I'll hand you off. What are your names?"

Leareth freezes. Hiding under the blanket again would be incredibly undignified and he is not going to do it but it's tempting. 

Melody can handle all the social interactions for now. :I'm Melody and this is Leareth. Er, I don't know if– did you get the explanation on how we're from another world? I have some questions related to that but I don't know if now's a good time: 

"- wow, you really are telepathic. Amazing. I'm just going to pretend that's not incredibly weird if that's all right with you, it'll make my job easier. Go ahead with the questions." He writes transliterations of their names on a whiteboard on the wall.

This is pretty useful for the project of figuring out their alphabet! Unfortunately asking anything about it would require interacting and that is apparently not going to happen right now. Leareth continues to hold perfectly still and wait for Melody to handle this. 

If this had happened even just six months ago he would probably be hiding under the stretcher by now, so this really could be going worse. She has a lot of sympathy for whatever Kro needs to do to make his job easier and less weird, and smiles at him. 

:Thank you. The first thing is - one of the people who brought us here said we should 'call' someone in authority here about, er, our situation. I don't actually know what 'call' means, since you appear not to have Mindspeech or other magic here: 

"That means sending them a text, same way as somebody called your ambulance."

:...I think you're maybe overestimating how much I know how anything works in your world! Could I possibly get some help figuring out how to do that? Or, er, for someone else who works here to do it, for now?: 

"You'd need a phone. Uh, I can ask the desk folks to text someone once we work out who it should be, since you don't have a phone."

:I don't! It's starting to seem like maybe we need to obtain one as a matter of urgency just to function here, it's - is it sort of like a replacement for having Mindspeech, but it's a technology? I wasn't entirely following: 

Leareth is following substantially more, due to thorough mindreading, and that's such a fascinating concept! He manages to unfreeze himself enough to return and sit down on his gurney, and starts planning out questions to ask. 

"Sure, it basically does that. And other things, you can get all kinds of stuff on phones, but that's the indispensable one. We don't have spares lying around but I think there's a charity that gives out refurbished phones."

Leareth tenses up, and locks eyes with Melody. 

:We can offer to trade for goods we are requesting, right?: he sends privately. :If - if you unblocked my mage-gift, even temporarily, I could make them some artifacts - you could fix it again before I slept–: 

See, this is one of the reasons why this is a DUBIOUS PLAN, because now Leareth feels responsible for making sure that first contact with yet another alien world goes well, and this is going to hit all of his sore spots around being 'useless'. And it would be better if Melody could reassure him that she's certain this will go well, but she isn't actually that sure of it. 

:Leareth, please don't worry about it. If we need something and they're not willing to provide it out of the goodness of their hearts, I am entirely capable of figuring this out. It's fine. This is not your responsibility right now: 

Great, now Leareth is curled up looking miserable and Melody is pretty sure she could have handled that better somehow but does not, actually, have any sense of what she should have said or done differently. 

She smiles brightly at the orderly, hoping to distract from the sudden atmosphere. :That would be amazing. Though I don't think we're in any incredible rush. I was just working on the assumption that - well, if this were happening in our world, the King would want to know as soon as possible. I guess if you get alien visitors every other week maybe it's less exciting: 

"I don't know if a phone will do you any good while you can't read, so yeah, I wasn't thinking there'd be a rush. We don't get alien visitors but for just that reason it's so weird nobody knows how to say it without sounding like they've started hallucinating, you see? Probably me and the paramedics and the lady who called your ambulance will all sign a message that'll go to the premier or somebody and then they'll figure it's worth sending someone to meet you."

:Oh! That is unfortunate, and - makes sense. I really do apologize for all the inconvenience. ...Leareth, that didn't come up for you in Arda, did it?: 

Does he HAVE to talk about this right now. 

:No. They thought I was a Maia– a local magical small-god. And we needed to sort out that confusion: Probably. He has not gone and CHECKED with the people he met first that the conversation he remembers having on arrival is one that actually happened in reality, and this is terrible. :I think Quendi are less prone to hallucinations, though. And they were familiar with magic existing in general so perhaps it seemed less strange: 

"Arda?"

This is the worst conversation imaginable and Leareth really does not want to be having it right now. 

Fair enough. Melody can do all of the required conversation-ing, even though she isn't delighted about it either. 

:Sorry, this is where it gets slightly complicated. Leareth and I are both from a world called Velgarth, that has - magical telepathy, and various other Gifts, and also powerful but cryptic gods. Almost three years ago - if I'm getting my timelines right - Leareth was experimenting with Gates, the magic we used to come here, and discovered by accident that you could also get to other worlds that way. He ended up in a world called Arda, which a very short time later ended up at war with one of their local gods. The evil one: 

On reflection she should maybe not be including Leareth on all of this, though it's hard to balance with the fact that he also hates conversations that he can't 'hear' happening around him. 

"...and none of this is coming this way?"

:We think that's very unlikely. There's nothing to set your world apart; one of our, er, researchers found it entirely by accident, didn't think it was that interesting to explore further at the time, and only followed up because when the war heated up again, we needed somewhere to go. The Gates aren't traceable, and also we did it from Arda and when the war started up again this time, it was in Velgarth. Where I think everyone is pretty thoroughly occupied. I...can't categorically promise that it's never going to spill across to your world, but I really highly doubt that the two of us being there is going to affect that one way or another, and we came here at all because it seemed like the chances were very very low: 

"...okay.

Anyway, my job is to handle stuff you don't need medical training for, like bringing you stuff or scheduling stuff so you can sleep uninterrupted. You need anything?"

Oh NO Leareth had completely not thought through the part where he is going to have to SLEEP in an unfamiliar place. Which doesn't have shields. And they have no way of putting shields on it. He shoots Melody a frantic, pleading look. 

Melody might be telepathic but she has no magical ability to interpret pleading looks! That could be about so many different things? 

:Leareth, what?: she sends, privately. 

Words. He can definitely do words about this. It takes a little while, though. 

:...What if I have nightmares and project at everyone: 

Right. That. 

She turns back to Kro, grimacing. :Er, this isn't exactly a request, it's - I don't know what to do about it. Leareth sometimes has nightmares and, er, accidentally does telepathy at anyone within range. It might affect totally un-Gifted people less? And it attenuates pretty fast with distance although we haven't actually tested the range, back home we just have magical shields on his bedroom. But neither of us can make those ourselves: 

"Uh. That does complicate having him sleep in a hospital. I can... ask if there are drugs that help with that, but they probably don't work perfectly and we will get incredibly compensationfined if people wake up with telepathy nightmares."

:I'm really sorry about that! I should absolutely have thought of this sooner but it's been a pretty frazzling day: 

:I could just not sleep tonight: Leareth offers, flatly. 

:...Leareth: Melody says in a tone of patient exasperation. :Let's aim for a solution that isn't stupid: 

"Did you guys come with any..... money. Or something you were expecting to sell. Everything I'm thinking of costs money."

Sigh. :I don't know what your world uses for money. We have some gold but it's all in Valdemaran coinage - er, that's the country I'm from in Velgarth. Arda doesn't really use money at all. We - have some camping gear? I think we had sort of been assuming we would camp out somewhere as a backup option, but I thought it would be a good idea to, er, inform the authorities that we had showed up, to avoid trouble later: 

Maybe this was a BAD PLAN. It certainly seems to be causing an enormous hassle for Melody herself. 

"I mean, gold is fine, we don't use it for money but people will buy it for money and if the coins are neat somebody might pay a markup for them as a collector's item. How much gold are we talking about?" Kro reaches a hand into a floppy part of his iso mask which, it turns out, allows him to scratch the corner of his eye without breaking containment.

Melody goes digging in her pack again and eventually retrieves a leather purse with a drawstring neck. She opens it and shows him. They have fifty Valdemaran gold coins, which are decently large and probably weigh about four grams each. Also some miscellaneous silver and copper coins. 

"Huh! Yeah, that'll fetch a chunk of change, I don't know how much but should be a fair bit. And that'd let you do things like cover the compensationfines or renting a place with more margin and taking housecalls. Do you want me to look up some kind of social work person who can help you with that?"

Melody is still mostly not following the concept attached to 'social work person' but she nods and smiles. :Yes, please, I would really appreciate that. ...Also if it would be possible to get tea at some point, that would be amazing: 

"Okay! Tea and a social worker, coming right up, and my call button's the one with the bowl-of-soup-and-a-pillow, icon, there." And he goes out through the airlock-thing.

Melody relaxes a little, sagging back in her chair. 

:See, Leareth? That went completely fine. We'll get everything sorted out: 

:Leareth are you all right?: 

:I...will be. I think. Just– I hate not having a plan: The only thing worse than sleeping here tonight would be having to sleep somewhere ELSE that he hasn't even seen yet. 

:I know: She wants to give him a hug, but Leareth is still iffy on hugs from anyone except Maitimo. :I'm sorry. We should have some peace and quiet for the next bit, at least?: 

Leareth is starting to feel pretty exhausted, but he also absolutely does not want to risk falling asleep, so he goes back to intently examining all the signage and trying not to think about anything other than that. 

Their names are up on the whiteboard, along with Kro's name. There's various checklists - over the bed, over the sink, on the door, next to the whiteboard, by the door to the bathroom. A screen that looks sort of like one of the phones - glass and black and rectangular - but it's turned off now. Ultraviolet in the vents, a radiator by the window, smooth tile floor, a windowshade currently admitting sunshine and a view of the river.

The names give him several vowels and four different consonants, which is not a lot to go on. Leareth eventually sets aside his alphabet notes and goes into the bathroom to investigate the state of the local plumbing technology. 

There's a toilet and a shower and another sink in there!

Leareth is getting the sense that he's going to approve of this world! He spends a little while experimenting to figure out how to operate all the various amenities, and then slips out again and starts checking for any obvious levers or other controls for the the rectangular glass screen. 

There are buttons on the bottom of it! Also a remote velcroed to the back.

Huh. Leareth very much doesn't want to break anything, but probably they wouldn't put something in here that was very fragile? And he should be more worried about accidentally sending a gibberish message and inconveniencing someone. 

He will nonetheless very carefully and gently experiment with poking some of the buttons below the screen, and examining the remote for ways it can be interacted with. 

When he turns the TV on the screen lights up! There is... text, on a background picture of the galaxy. The remote comes off pretty easily if he tugs on it and then he can push buttons there too, selecting a menu option at random and turning on a music video channel.

That's really neat! Leareth isn't sure how you would do that even with all of his accumulated magical lore! He's honestly not sure a god could do that; as far as he knows Heartstones don't have the capacity to record moving pictures of scenes along with music and then play them back. 

This seems like plenty of experimenting for now, and he's starting to feel incredibly tired, so he sits down on his gurney again and watches. 

Melody really likes this world! It just keeps getting better! 

Music videos continue to play one after another. Kro is back halfway through the second one, with tea and also a social worker; they both gear up and Kro brings in a tray with six different teabags, two cups, and a mini kettle. "Didn't know what kind you like," he tells Melody, putting the tea tray down on the nearest convenient surface. He plugs in the mini kettle and demonstrates how to turn it on.

"Hello," says the social worker, "I'm Dree."

Melody beams at Kro and watches intently while he demonstrates the kettle. It's a really neat concept and she has no idea how you would do that without magic!

She wants to point it out to Leareth but Leareth looks like he is maybe not having a great time right now? 

It's too late to flee and hide in the bathroom without this being very obvious and thus in itself causing some kind of conflict. Leareth instead holds very still. 

Melody thanks Kro for the tea selection and then turns and smiles brightly at Dree.

:I'm Melody. Er, did you already get the basic story from other people here or should I explain our situation again?: 

"I'd like to hear it in your own words," says Dree, only a little startled.

:...Right. Er, so - we're from another world. Actually, arguably two different worlds - we're both native to Velgarth, which is a world with much less technology than yours but a lot of people have Gifts, including the telepathy we both have but also lots of others. And some native gods, which are -mostly pretty mysterious but when they do things it's not great:

She pauses, frowns, and then tightens the Mindspeech link to exclude Leareth. 

:Anyway. We've been living in Arda, which is a different world that has, er, immortal natives called Quendi who look mostly human but have a different kind of telepathy and a different kind of magic and also a different set of gods. Leareth found that world accidentally about three years ago. Shortly later they ended up openly at war with one of their native gods, the evil one. No, I'm not sure why they had an evil god either. With help from Velgarth, they initially won that war, but Leareth was captured by the evil god and - had a bad time. It's been a couple of years since then, but - a few days ago a war started in Velgarth, and it looks like a Maia - a smaller god - related to Arda's evil god is involved, and working with the Velgarth gods. We expected Leareth would be a target, because of the role he played in the last war, and he - isn't in a good position to defend himself, right now, so we were kind of frantically looking for somewhere safe to go, and one of the other Velgarth mages had been doing some exploration and thought your world might be safe. So we're here: 

Another pause. 

:- Um, I've explained this a few times now, but we think it's very very unlikely your world would be in danger from this war, and also us coming here shouldn't affect that one way or another, interworld Gates aren't traceable and we did ours from Arda which isn't where the war is right now: 

Dree takes notes while Melody goes over all that. "A god is...?"

- oh, right, Vanyel thought they didn't have any in this world. Which means they won't even have the concept. This is - clearly better on multiple dimensions, but still frustrating right now, because how is she even supposed to explain this. 

:- Er, to start, I think Velgarth gods and Arda gods are different kinds of thing? What they have in common is that they're - beings that are mostly magical, as opposed to mostly physical? And - a lot more powerful and a lot smarter than humans, in most ways, but also fairly alien and - bad at understanding a lot of basic human things. The Velgarth ones seem to mostly see the world and act on it using Foresight - a magical power we have for seeing the future - and they don't communicate very much. The Arda ones are more humanlike in some ways but very...black-and-white. I don't know. I think I'm doing a bad job of explaining but I'm not sure how to do better. Questions?: 

"So sort of like a - particularly powerful naturesoul? That being a general term for a concept in animist religions covering household-mascot-spirits and river spirits and so on?"

Melody squints at her. :...Maybe. That actually sounds a lot like the Maiar in Arda - er, the smaller less powerful gods, there are millions of them, compared to only about a dozen of the big powerful gods. Apparently specific Maiar will sometimes be in charge of making sure a river flows the right way, things like that: 

"That sounds like a naturesoul. All right - Kro, your orderly, told me there's a problem with - uncontrolled telepathy during nightmares?"

:Right. That's a problem Leareth has. I'm not sure what the range is on it, we - haven't actually tested that. It's not every night or anything, lately, but it's - unusually likely to come up tonight, because the new war in Velgarth and then coming here are stressful for him. Kro had thought that there were maybe drugs that could help? ...Also I have something called Mindhealing Gift and I can do things that would help, but it would have to be temporary: 

"Do you have a ballpark on what the range is - feet, blocks, miles -"

Blink blink. :- Blocks as in the spaces between streets in a city? I think it's be closer to that than either feet or miles. His range is miles when he's awake but it's probably a lot less when he's not being deliberate about it: 

"...okay. So you need to stay in an otherwise-empty farmhouse. You're not actually sick, right, just on iso protocol as a precaution because you're from a different universe?"

:We're not physically sick, no. I'm fine. Leareth...has trouble with various things right now, because of what happened during the last war - honestly I probably need to explain that at some point but I've been holding off for privacy reasons until I know I'm definitely talking to the right person: 

"The right person as in some kind of personal care assistant?"

:I don't know what it'd be in your world, honestly. For Velgarth it would be - me, basically, but if you don't have magic at all then you probably don't have Mindhealers?: 

"Not magical ones. There are people who specialize in the treatment of mental conditions. I wasn't sure if you were trying to say he needs more treatment than you can provide or if, in addition to treatment, he needs shorter-term support."

Sigh. :I...don't know. I don't think he needs more treatment than I can provide, it's not like we had that option before either. I suspect I'm going to end up very stressed if I'm solely responsible for him for an extended period of time. I can think about what specifically would make that easier, but - honestly this whole evacuation plan was extremely rushed and we didn't know anything about your world beforehand and whether there would be better options available that 'we camp out in the wilderness for the next year': 

"...I think you can improve on camping out in the wilderness for a year. Do you have - camping - gear?" says Dree.

:That's a lot of what we packed! Food would have been the main problem if we had to do that. I'm really glad we can probably improve on it, even aside from all the other issues with it I personally hate camping: 

"Okay. I'm going to look into places you might be able to transfer to. Do you have any other exceptional needs besides not being near neighbors?"

:I am not sure I have a good sense of what would be exceptional here. I don't think so? It's better if it's quiet, but that probably comes along with not having neighbors: 

There are STILL PEOPLE and this is terrible. 

:Do we have a plan yet?: Leareth asks Melody, not particularly trying to exclude Dree from his Mindspeech (which, given that she's not Gifted, means she sort of gets it but it's faint and garbled.) 

"Well, it might have animals - sorry, did you say something?"

:Sorry, I think he was asking me if we had a plan yet. Leareth, it's all right, we're working on it. ...Er, are they large animals?: 

"Would that be a problem? If there were a rentable spare-house on a dairy farm or a horse ranch? I don't have anything specific in mind, yet, I'm getting a sense of the search space."

:I think that would probably work?: Melody has no idea if Leareth is going to be freaked out by cows or horses. He doesn't seem to be scared of Yfandes but she is obviously not a normal horse. :I guess that would be one of the ways to find somewhere remote: 

If Melody were willing to unblock his mage-gift for five minutes he could put basic shielding on the walls. Probably. Leareth is not entirely sure he could still manage this, after years of not using magic at all, but it's not like the technique is hard. Leareth doesn't say anything, though, just gives Melody a somewhat grumpy look. 

Melody has received her fair share of grumpy looks over her life and is immune to them. 

"Okay. I'll see what's available." Dree helps herself to a seat and pokes her phone to see what there is to be had.

Leareth takes a few deep breaths, steeling himself. 

:- How do those work? I realize you are maybe not the right person to ask and I should talk to a specialist, but - we have nothing like it in Velgarth, not even with magic, it is very impressive: 

"I only know in the most general terms," says Dree absently, scrolling through listings. "It's got a battery, which I have to charge, and that runs everything else it does, and it communicates with the Internet via - possibly radio but I'm not actually sure if it's radio or some other band of signal - and it's got programs on it which are written in computer code... okay, here's something that might do, place up in the hills with pashminas, farm workers might come nearby during the day but not at night. Here's a picture." She turns her phone to display a somewhat disrepaired cute little cottage dug into a hillside, with stairs up to it. "Plumbing and electricity, wifi is listed as 'spotty' but that won't be a problem for you any time soon, apparently the heater is loud but it's warm enough you won't need to turn it on in the near future, what do you think?"

Leareth is very intently reading her mind and he wants to know everything about the 'Internet' and 'wifi' and 'computer code' and - he can make a slightly better guess about what 'batteries' are, and 'radio' is almost comprehensible, but he still wants to sit down with someone for several candlemarks and ask a hundred questions. 

He doesn't ask any questions right now because talking to people is hard. He also mostly misses the part where she's showing them the house because he's distracted trying to guess what 'computer code' could be referring to.

Melody is only half following the explanation, though she's pleased Leareth is engaging at all. 

:- Sorry, what? Oh. That looks fine, I think. How far away is it - do we need to walk there...?: 

"It's a six mile drive, so substantially farther and windier than you would have gone to get here. I think anything really remote will be at least that far."

:Right. I think Leareth wasn't delighted about the trip here but I'm not actually sure what the problem was, he just looked miserable and asked if we could go around corners more slowly. Probably it's fine if it's just one more trip?: 

"It'd be just one more trip, you can arrange grocery delivery and so on once you've sold whatever it is you brought to sell, and then you can stay in the cottage as long as you can afford it. You can probably make money by giving interviews, or doing telepathic relay, or whatever other magic you have available, and the cottage is listed as rent-to-own optional, if you want to stay there for a long time."

Nod. :I could use some more specific instructions on how to sell things here - is there a market? Is it only open on certain days? How do I get there?: 

"Kro said you have gold? I can try to sell that for you if you want to trust me with it, it's not a standard social worker thing but we often have to be a little flexible about stuff like that. I'd sell it online, wider range of potential buyers, and it might want to wait until you've been more widely confirmed to be magical sliders* in case it turns out collectors like that more than commodities traders like gold for its metal value. I'm on retainer from the hospital but would expect a cut from the sale for that service among others - for example, I'm fronting you the money for the cottage out of my work budget. If you don't want to trust me with that you could take the bus - bit of a hike from the cottage to the nearest stop but not untenable - and try to figure it out yourself, but I'd expect it to be pretty hard."

* This language has separate words for space aliens and interdimensional visitors. Like "alien", the word here translated as "sliders" doesn't specifically require that the entity in question have actually personally "slid", but this translation works for this purpose.

Melody has so far only been understanding Dree at all by reading her surface, and certainly hasn't seen anything there to indicate that she would cheat them on this - and Leareth is presumably reading her mind a lot more thoroughly, and currently looks calm and not at all freaking out, which is a good sign. 

:I trust you with that and I really do not want to figure it out on my own. I suppose it makes sense to wait a little while - er, how would people want us to confirm that we're from another world? I assume the Mindspeech is self-evident at this point; I suppose I don't mind demonstrating Mindhealing as well, but it's a lot more invasive and I don't make a habit of flinging it around without making very clear to people what it does and being certain they're all right with it: 

"Mindspeech will do the trick. I'm thinking of contacting the office of the Premier's affiliated Committed of Truth* and get one of theirs to confirm, and then that'll get plenty of attention and most people will believe them. Can I take a picture of one of the gold coins?"

* A Committed is sort of like a monastic. Many governments have some attached to corroborate their statements.

Melody is mildly curious about the 'Committed of Truth' and the institution they work within - it sort of rhymes with what Heralds do, but also it must be very different? 

:Yes, of course. Go ahead: She plucks out one of the gold coins and holds it up between her thumb and forefinger. 

Dree snaps a photo of the coin, both sides. "Can I take pictures of the two of you?"

:....Sure, I think so? Unless there's some risk about having pictures of us taken that I don't know about: 

(Melody feels like it's deeply unlikely that there is any such risk, but Leareth would worry about it, and since the actual Leareth is currently in one of his not-interacting-at-all moods, she feels responsible for covering all of his usual worries. Which is maybe stupid but whatever.) 

"It's not going to hurt you," Dree assures them, "some people just don't like pictures existing when they haven't had a chance to neaten up, or at all if they don't care for how they look." Pic, pic.

Melody is definitely not feeling at her neatest right now! This doesn't seem like a good reason to avoid having her 'picture' taken, although...

:- Can I see the picture? Just, I have never had a portrait done and I am curious how I look in one: 

"Of course." Dree turns the phone around again.

Melody squints at the screen. :...Huh. Is that really what my chin looks like? I think I've gotten stouter than I realized. Anyway, are you going to send those to the Committed of Truth, or do something else with them?: 

"I'm composing an email to the premier's Truth attaché, and I'm including the pictures because it's the sort of thing a prank would be less likely to produce."

:Ah. Is that, um, a common problem - people doing pranks where they pretend to have met visitors from another world, I mean?: 

"- no, not at all, but it's much more common than real sliders."

Melody nods. Looks thoughtful. :Have you ever had visitors - sliders? - like us before?: 

"No, never, which is why even a very weird prank would be more likely. Sliders are historically a strictly fictional concept."

Leareth has been huddled silently on his gurney throughout this conversation. He badly wants to ask several dozen question, and he also desperately wants to be alone in a quiet room - and he misses Vanyel and he wants Maitimo to hold him and sing him to sleep - and the result of these conflicting desires is that he feels very stuck.

...That bit is fascinating, though. 

:You have it as a concept in fiction despite the fact that it has never actually happened before?: he jumps in, without actually moving or looking at them. 

"- yes, why wouldn't we?" says Dree, who is rather thinking that if your fiction only contains things that have actually happened before you're confused about what fiction means.

Velgarth's fiction, such as it is, has plenty of things that didn't happen, but - it's not actually very common to have things that couldn't in principle happen, except sometimes by accident - in ballads written by Bards who didn't especially understand the constraints of mage-gift, for instance. 

:It just seems very specific! And like it must be a rare coincidence, for it to match so closely with our situation. ...I suppose it might be less of a coincidence if you just have much more fiction than us. Your world seems wealthier and you do not have any gods who will try to assassinate people who attempt to introduce printing presses: 

Leareth's mindvoice is remarkably calm and level, given the fact that he is currently curling up and visibly trembling. 

"- we sure don't! The printing press in its original form has been obsolete for hundreds of years now."

:Because you replaced it with 'phones'? And the Internet? ...It is really very impressive: 

"There were some intervening steps - physical books do still exist, also - but yes."

Leareth still has questions, but also his head is buzzing and the walls of the room feel both too close and too far at the same time and he is rapidly running out of willpower or cope to push through any more of this. 

:Thank you: he says, and then dives under his blanket and hides there. 

:- You didn't say anything wrong: Melody quickly clarifies. :He does that sometimes: 

Dree nods and composes her email and gets a reply from the Committed of Truth. "A Committed is going to swing by here," she says. "And not come in the room, she's allergic to iso gear, but you can demonstrate the telepathy and she can see you through the door."

Leareth will probably be very relieved about that. :Sure, sounds good. In how long, do you know? Leareth is going to start really needing a nap, at some point, and I need to decide if it's worth loading him up with Mindhealing blocks to avoid the nightmare problem, or if we should try to hold out until we get to the new accommodations: 

"The map app," she is thinking here of the thing she has running on her phone now, showing a dot approaching them on a colorful map of the neighborhood, "thinks another five minutes."

They have maps with realtime locations on where other people are???? Leareth really very badly wants to see this but unfortunately he is now hiding under a blanket and that is definitely not something he's going to be able to change until there stop being strangers in the same room as him. 

:That's so neat! Five minutes seems fine, sure. Thank you for your help with everything: 

"No problem." Dree hangs around till the Committed arrives.

The Committed is in a work uniform - long white dress, with bishop sleeves and a mandarin collar, and over that a deep royal blue vest as long as the dress is, worn open and decorated with little pins and badges. She has her hair in braided pigtails that go to the small of her back, and wears glasses. She stops outside the door and texts Dree, who says, "That's her, can you telepathy her?"

That's a nice uniform. More distinctive and also a lot more flattering than Healers' robes. Melody approves. On reflection, everyone's clothing here is impressively high-quality; their technology must include something for weaving or sewing. If Leareth were fully functional he would probably have already thought to ask about that.

She reaches out with a Mindtouch. :Hello. I'm Melody and this is Leareth. Er, do you need any more of a demonstration than just me saying that to you?: 

The Committed furrows her brow. :Can you hear this?: she replies.

:Yep! You thought 'can you hear this' at me? ...I can also read your surface thoughts in more detail and tell you what I'm seeing there, if that would be useful information, but for ethical reasons I generally don't do that without asking: 

:Does that go for your companion as well?:

:Sorry, which part? ...Oh. Er, if it's about the Thoughtsensing, Leareth didn't agree to the standard rules for Healers that I did, and I think he does tend to read people's thoughts more often, especially when he's confused or scared. If he feels safe somewhere he's generally willing to not do that: 

The Committed is taking notes. :I am prepared to represent to the Premier and any other inquirers that I experienced this conversation as telepathic, that you made those assertions about your ethical boundaries, and that both of you appear to exist as depicted by Dree. Are there other assertions you would like me to be prepared to make about you or on your behalf?:

:Well, this isn't something I can directly prove, but it seems relevant to include that we traveled here deliberately from another world, using a kind of magic from Velgarth - our world of origin. And probably your Premier would want to know about the war with the evil god that caused us to decide to come here?: 

:Please tell me about that. I would also like to see more demonstrations of magic that are safely convenient:

:War, short version: Leareth and I are from Velgarth, where some people are born with Gifts, including Mindspeech which we both have. Also there are gods, I'm not a fan of Them, it's mostly not relevant except for it's slightly relevant that They hate Leareth personally. Leareth was experimenting with magical travel and accidentally ended up in Arda, a different world, which has its own native kind of magic - generally less flexible, but more powerful in some ways - and also its own native gods. Including a specific evil god, for SOME REASON, who likes torturing people. There was a war in their ancient history and he was imprisoned by the other gods but eventually released. Big surprise, he started another war, it came out openly shortly after Leareth arrived there and noticed in the first ten minutes of talking to someone about it that all their mysterious problems could be explained by an evil god scheming in the background. Leareth helped extensively in the war, including by bringing over another powerful mage - mage-gift is the most flexible and useful of our Gifts, I don't have it sadly - but he was captured by the evil god and only rescued at the end of the war. That was a couple of years ago. A few days ago we learned that the capital of my home country had been destroyed in a surprise attack, and it looks like one of the less powerful god-entities from Arda, one allied with the evil god, had managed to get across during the leadup to the last war ending, and allied with one of Velgarth's gods, and so now there's an entire war going on over there and we're not entirely sure that they don't have inter-world travel too so we figured we'd better bring Leareth somewhere that was definitively safe. ....We're quite sure that this doesn't put your world at any additional risk: 

Melody is running low on energy and, as usual for her, this means that she tends to talk more and use way more words than necessary. 

The Committed takes notes very solemnly. She's transliterating "god". :Is there anything else?:

:No, I think that’s all:

:Are any demonstrations of other magical abilities safely convenient?:

:I - can demonstrate Mindhealing if you want? It's not especially costly or inconvenient for me, or anything. It's more, just, I'm not as sure as I'd prefer that things I expect to be safe and easily reversible will still be that for people from another world: 

:And your companion?:

:He only has Mindspeech right now, which I've already demonstrated. If it would be helpful, I can have him Mindspeak you as well, I guess: 

:Why does he only have Mindspeech right now?:

:....It's complicated. Is it important that I explain it right now?: 

:No, but I will mention omissions in my writeup:

Sigh. :Sure, you can do that: 

She finishes taking notes, exchanges some texts with Dree, and departs.

"Okay," says Dree, "we can get you hauled to the cottage now."

Melody has been sipping and greatly enjoying one of the tea samples - the one from the teabag that smelled best - and she's not quite done but it seems silly to delay just for that. 

She tucks the remaining teabags into a pocket of her robes. :Right, of course. ...Er, can I take the hot-water-heating thing here or does that belong to the hospital? If the cottage already has one of its own then that's fine, I guess: 

"The kettle belongs to the hospital. The cottage might have one and if it doesn't they're not expensive."

:- Sure, that sounds fine, as long as someone is willing to walk me through how to buy a new one once we have money: 

Melody is a little cranky about going somewhere ELSE without a reliable source of tea, but she did sign up to go to another world, and 'not having tea' is a pretty minor problem relative to all the other problems here and elsewhere. 

Dree calls them a taxi, which is shaped much like the ambulance with the driver in a separate compartment and the back open, but it just has benches instead of a miniature medical facility. There's a central ottoman-thing between the front- and rear-facing benches, which has, inside, bottled water and barf bags and three choices of air freshening spray and a stack of clean dry towels and the controls for the music, intercom to the driver, and window tint. Dree settles in the sliders and explains all these features while the taxi starts up.

This is fascinating. Leareth nonetheless spends most of the time that it's being explained with his eyes tightly shut and his hands over his ears. He follows the explanation via mindreading, which is what he would have done anyway, he doesn't speak the language. 

Melody tries to nudge Leareth to follow her into the 'taxi'. She listens attentively and then thanks Dree for her helpful explanation. 

If Leareth is going to cover his eyes like that Dree can black the windows? In case that helps?

Melody is a little concerned that this will do the opposite of help with whatever Leareth found distressing about being in a moving vehicle before, it had seemed a bit like he was getting seasick and she thought being able to see the horizon helped with that, but also Leareth does seem to immediately relax at least a little once the interior is darker. Probably it's fine. 

(Leareth is multiplying prime numbers in his head to avoid having to notice his environment.) 

Some people do get motion sick in cars, yeah.

The driver gets them to the cottage eventually, and Dree has gotten ahold of the code to let them in. It has a kitchen-and-dining area, a half-bath, and a sitting room on the ground floor, and upstairs there are three bedrooms and a full bathroom shared between them. There's a floorplan and things renting parties might need to know in a booklet on the kitchen counter. Dree checks, and it does have a kettle, though it hasn't been de-limescaled in a while. It also has a handful of things in the freezer - take and bake breakfast pastries they can leave out to rise overnight and stick in the oven in the morning, a flatbread thing, half a package of breaded chicken pieces. The pantry has a can of soup (tomato bean) and a mostly empty bottle of olive oil. "Do you want me to set up a grocery delivery for you?" Dree asks once she's assessed this.

Melody is so distracted by utter fascination and amazement at the various foodstuffs available!

(A pastry that comes in a nonmagical freezing box and can be put in the over and baked? And chicken pieces in bread, is that like a pocket pie, Melody has had those with fruit and fish and beef but somehow never chicken and it sounds delicious? Oh and what are "cans"? -) 

Oh, right, she's being asked a question. 

:Er, yes, I would appreciate that since I have no idea how to do that myself! I'm not sure what to ask for, though, I'm really not much of a cook and also I don't recognize the foods here and the kitchen setup is weird - amazing, but weird. Can you maybe just call for a range of standard food things that an unskilled person can cook without messing up too disastrously? I can do pease porridge. ...Oh, and tea. I would really like more tea. The kind that wakes you up, not herb-tea that you take as medicine: 

"Let me show you how to use the stove," says Dree, "and the kettle -" She does that while thinking aloud about what food to get. Bread and cold cuts, eggs, fruit, cheese, peanut butter, oatmeal, rice, lentils, frozen peas, packaged cakes, and a caffeinated tea assortment?

Electric kettles are Melody's favorite thing about this world! They're almost as good as being a mage who can heat water just by thinking about it! Maybe better, actually, on the one hand you need the proper device with the whole rope that goes into the wall but on the other hand it doesn't make you personally more tired! 

Leareth has headed straight to the sitting room and found a corner to sit in. He is, however, still reading Dree's mind at a distance in order to follow the conversation. 

:- Ask her for bread and cheese: he suggests to Melody. :And eggs: He's fairly sure those are being translated clearly. The mental concepts associated with 'peanut butter' and 'packaged cakes' also seem like they should be low-effort, but Leareth has never heard of those foods and is dubious; he also doesn't recognize whatever 'lentils' or 'rice' correspond to AND they're not coming across as clearly low-effort or hard to mess up while cooking. 

(Leareth suspects he was, at some point, a decently competent cook. At some past time that is not the present time, he was decently competent at most things. He really really doesn't feel like taking responsibility for causing edible food to happen here, though.) 

Oh, right, foods are being suggested. Leareth's requests seem pretty reasonable? Except that Melody is not actually sure if she's competent to cook eggs and have them turn out edible, she really hasn't done a lot of cooking for herself in the last decade. 

:Er, if you have bread here, that doesn't require cooking at all and I can definitely handle it. And things that go on bread - in Velgarth we would have butter, and cheese and sometimes salted meat or salted fish -: 

"That's what cold cuts are, yeah, meat and fish, and I can add butter to the list."

:That would be great! And, er, maybe we should get some fruits or vegetables that are edible raw, in the meantime while I get around to actually learning how to cook on this stove, I feel like just eating bread and salted meat isn't a totally balanced diet: 

"Of course. Fruits and veggies, which ones do you like - if you have humans you might conceivably have grapes, much like you apparently have tea -"

:- I guess we have grapes but I don't love them just to eat raw?: 

(The strains of grapes grown in Valdemar and adapted to its climate are mostly turned into wine, and it's not even very good wine compared to the production from Iftel or Rethwellan.) 

:We have apples and cherries and blackberries?: Melody tries to push across as much extra context about what those fruits look and taste like as she can, though this is hard with a non-Mindspeaker and she doesn't want to disorient the poor social worker too much. 

"- gosh that's weird. Okay, we have those, I can get some of those. For vegetables, uh, what's good raw - carrots? Broccoli? Snap peas? Cucumbers?"

Melody doesn't make a habit of mindreading people who she doesn't share a language with; she's trying but not super following. 

Leareth is so exhausted, and sort of gradually melting into the softest piece of furniture available in the living room, but he's still mindreading from a distance and he's more practiced at it.

:Carrots - good. Peas - we have peas, there was a modifier applied in her thoughts but it probably does not matter what exact substrain of peas. Cucumbers are fine. No idea what broccoli is: 

That sounds exhausting to convey and also Melody doesn't even personally like carrots, especially not raw. Melody is perhaps not the most vegetable-favoring sort of person. She's mostly asking for Leareth's sake and because it seems vaguely healthy or virtuous. 

:Er, can you just pick some things that most people find inoffensive, or something?: 

"- sure, most people are pickier than that but I suppose it's not a disaster if you wind up throwing some out." She fills up an online cart. Bread of the boringest sandwichest kind, butter, cheese, cold cuts, eggs, apples - hm what kind - well, this kind's cheapest, they're not going to know what kind they like - cherries, the ones closest to the same color as the mental image even though Dree likes the yellow ones herself - and blackberries, the new soft-seeded kind, that will plausibly be unfamiliar but like who wants blackberry seeds in their teeth - carrots and cukes and peas, and, let's see, if that was all that was in her kitchen what would she most be missing - lots of things honestly, but within the constraints - Six Sandwiches makes a nice range of stuff to put on bread and it's on sale, she'll throw in the chickpea salad one and the strawberry cream cheese one. And these people are so sad and need DESSERT but she'll make it ice cream in case they are going to be suspicious about it for weeks before they get around to it. And tea, five kinds is probably enough that Melody will like one - green black oolong white and white-with-raspberry - does she take it with sugar - eh she'll get a little squeeze bottle of honey, if she doesn't put it in the tea it's nice on bread. She clicks DELIVER.

Leareth (who is still mindreading from a distance) thinks that he likes this person? Or, well. Would like her if he were in a mood where he could have preferences other than "wanting to be home" and failing that "wanting there to be no people he hasn't known for over a year within his considerable Thoughtsensing range". He can still notice that in the abstract she seems admirable. 

Melody putters around the kitchen and waits for the kettle with water in it to boil and looks for cups to make tea in from her existing pocket-stash. Leareth is being very quiet over there but probably he's fine? 

There are cups, two mugs that match and three that don't and a couple of tall glasses. Dree is now replying to an email about the gold coins.

Melody is not even paying attention to which mugs match or don't. She eyeballs them and picks the biggest one and stares at the kettle until it boils, and then pours water on top of her tea "bag" (what a good concept!) and bobs it up and down on its string in the cup while, still, staring at it. Dree seems busy anyway so it's not like it's rude to ignore her, if anything it's more polite.  

They're both distracted, maybe Leareth can slip away to one of the bedrooms upstairs without either of them noticing? He so badly wants a surface to lie flat on. 

Melody, who has Thoughtsensing, obviously notices. She doesn't say anything. 

Dree glances up when she hears footsteps but is hardly going to stop him from ascending the stairs.

The bedrooms have beds. One room is painted pale butter-yellow, one summersky blue, one with white walls but a lavender ceiling. The decor doesn't match well, it looks more like spares somebody put in here just for completeness rather than like anyone made purchases for the occasion, but there are blue sheets in the blue room and warm colors in the yellow one and mostly off-whites in the lavender one. The blue room is the only one that also contains a chair; the lavender one has a bookshelf, though, and a beanbag, and the yellow one has a window seat.

Leareth barely has the energy to stay on his feet, at this point, but he does try to give all the rooms a quick survey. 

Having a bookshelf nearby seems more important than having a chair nearby, given how most of the time he only reads in bed anyway. He's not sure what the non-chair non-bed floor furniture item is but it looks sort of cozy? The color scheme is fine. 

Leareth flops onto the beanbag, just to see what it's like, and discovers that it also feels cozy, and stays there. 

Melody has tea now, which is a good state of affairs! She leans back against the counter and waits to see if Dree has anything else to discuss with her. 

Dree finishes catching up on case-related email and puts her phone away. "We should make a plan for when I should come back, assuming there's no emergency developments between now and then," she says. "Tonight? Tomorrow? It might be a good idea for me to stay until the groceries come, too, in case the deliveryperson gets lost, but I can wait outside if you prefer."

:That seems like a good idea. Um, and I do want to have a way of contacting you if something comes up before your next planned visit, but I have fairly decent Mindspeech range, if you'll be within twenty or thirty miles I can reach you. I'm fine with you waiting inside - I think Leareth maybe wanted some space but he went upstairs so it shouldn't bother him if we're in the sitting room: 

"Let me see how far my place is..." She checks. "Looks like less than five, actually, in a straight line. So that works, although normally if you had an emergency in the middle of the night one of my colleagues would pick your case up for the duration. Would you be able to do telepathy with someone I introduce to you over the phone?"

:What a good question. Maybe? I haven't ever tried it before but - if I knew what someone looked like, and I'd heard their voice over the 'phone', and I knew approximately how far away they were and in what direction, that might be enough to go on? I think Leareth could–: go on way less in order to Gate somewhere, but actually the reasons why Leareth can't Gate right now are both private and not something Melody incredibly feels like getting into, so she won't. :- Nevermind, sorry. If she's also within that range, I'd be happy to get introduced tonight and test out whether I can also Mindspeak her while we're already talking on the 'phone':

"All right, I'll stay till the groceries are here, leave you to settle in, and swing by once my nocturnal counterpart responds to a message and is able to be introduced." She composes that message now, it's asynchronous.

:Sure, works for me: 

The groceries take another twenty minutes to show up but then there they are in a couple plastic bags on the front porch. Dree brings them in and puts them away for Melody, who might not know which things belong in the fridge.

Melody is not super familiar with 'fridges' but - there's a cold compartment and an even-colder compartment, it looks like? And if something would become less edible if left out in the snow to freeze, it should go in the less-cold of the cold compartments, is that about right? If there's some kind of organization schema more sophisticated than that, Melody has no idea. 

"People have different ways of organizing their food - I like to put fruit in the fridge because I like to eat it cold but some people forget it's there if they do that, and it'll last longer in the fridge but if you abandon it there for weeks it's done for. The cold cuts have to be in the fridge, the spreads do too, the cheese does, ice cream in the freezer. Most people would fridge the butter too."

:Huh! ...Valdemar doesn't have 'fridges' and we don't even really get mages to keep things cold - I guess we had cellars to store vegetables and fruit overwinter, and the idea is that it was colder underground...: 

Leareth set up some kind of magic to keep meat frozen for that with the Quendi in Arda, in preparation for the war, but that is yet another complication that Melody is not inclined to get into. 

Once the groceries are away and Dree has located a yellowing old bag-accumulator mounted to the wall next to the door that already has a bunch of bags stuffed in it to which she adds these two, she bids Melody goodbye and departs to meet an electric pedicab she has summoned to pick her up.

House! She is in a new house and she can now explore it freely! 

- she will check on Leareth first. 

Leareth is, to external appearances (and also to Thoughtsensing), fast asleep, sprawled diagonally across some sort of soft roundish giant cushion that Melody doesn't recognize. 

...Ugh. She's not going to wake him up now but this isn't ideal. 

Melody goes around looking for ways to close curtains or turn off nonmagical mage-lights and otherwise make the room as dark as possible, which might at least buy her more time before Leareth inevitably wakes up from a nightmare. (Even if they've arranged it so that no one else is in range, it's still going to bother her.)

How dark can she make his room, given that the sun is still up outside?  

The curtains aren't blackout but they're fairly thick. She can get it dim.

Melody does that, and nudges the door mostly shut so that she won't disturb him by walking around but can hopefully still hear him if he wakes up, and then she can EXPLORE their new HOUSE. She is going to look in all the bedrooms and the bathroom and examine all the furniture and go around opening every closet and cupboard and cabinet and drawer to see what's inside. 

She can turn up:

- most of a tube of cinnamon toothpaste
- a bottle of shampoo, vanilla coconut scented
- a plastic truck small enough to fit in her hand, yellow with red trim
- a silicone spoontula, a nylon turner, a metal ladle, and a chef's knife
- flatware, mostly spoons but also some forks and knives and a few grabby tong things and some disposable straws in assorted colors
- a big steel frying pan and a smallish steel pot
- three paperback books she can't read, one missing the cover and the other two bearing pictures of a) a huge dog with wings and their master b) a planet seen from space, mostly purple
- a plastic comb
- salt, MSG, red pepper flakes, and garlic powder, somewhat caked with neglect
- a bottle of cleaning vinegar under the kitchen sink
- a stash of paper towels and toilet paper and facial tissues, in a closet
- a handheld vacuum cleaner, charging in the same closet, and also a broom
- a dog bed under the blue bedroom's bed, somewhat chewed and bearing the hair of animal visitors past
- a square glass casserole dish
- plates and bowls, chipped and mostly mismatched
- an old flyer for a bagel shop
- half a pink crayon
- a stash of spare sheets and pillowcases

This people are in some sense really absurdly wealthy! This is fascinating, even if at least a quarter of the objects are entirely mysterious to Melody. She squeezes some of the cinnamon toothpaste onto her fingertip and sniffs it and still doesn't have the faintest idea what it's for. The handheld vacuum cleaner is equally baffling. The tiny dollop of shampoo lathers between her fingertips, so it's...probably soap...but she's mystified as to why it smells like it should be edible. (She does not risk tasting it.) 

She does manage to figure out via trial and error that the crayon is for drawing or writing. The cookware seems entirely adequate, if somewhat random. Leareth's probably going to want the books, he can't read them either but Melody has no doubt he'll try to use them to learn the local alphabet and get started on properly learning to read. 

She selects the room with the windowseat and unpacks her things in it, and eats some bread with cheese and sliced meats on it, and then goes to investigate the bathing facilities. 

It's not that different from what she was shown how to use in the hospital. The shower curtain has seahorses on it. The sink in this bathroom is deep enough that you could fit a toddler in it, but there's not a tub for adults, just the shower.

That's too bad. Leareth likes baths and, while he's usually fairly independent with basic life tasks these days, when he's this exhausted he approximately just won't bathe unless coaxed through it. 

She uses the weird edible-smelling soap goo to wash herself and her hair, and then puts on her second spare pair of robes, and starts washing the first set in the sink. 

Leareth wakes up while she's doing this, mostly because in the process of tossing and turning he managed to slide off the beanbag onto the floor. He instinctively checks the wards with his mage-sight while only a quarter of the way awake, and they AREN'T THERE and he can't remember where he is and he tries to osanwë Maitimo which takes less concentration than Mindspeaking and nothing happens and - 

Thoughtsensing - right, Melody's there - right, other world, though he's still disoriented about where he is specifically. 

:Melody?: 

:Hey. It's okay. We're at the house they found for us somewhere remote. Nothing unexpected or bad is happening. I'll be right there: 

He's on the floor and he would kind of prefer not to be but changing that state of affairs would require taking actions. 

Melody is pretty sure that she's way worse at this than Vanyel, but she goes in, trying to move slowly and predictably, and opens the curtains to let in some light, and starts recounting a list of the groceries that have now arrived and her discoveries while inventorying the house, and eventually they can relocate downstairs so she can make Leareth a sandwich as well while they wait for the night-shift person to be available for introductions. 

About twenty minutes past sunset Dree is back, this time on her own nyoom, a scooter. She knocks on the door.

Melody goes to let her in, teacup in hand. :Thanks for coming back to do this, I appreciate it. ...And this house. It's really nice. Er, do you have any other updates for us, on selling our gold or anything else?: 

"Apparently the Premier wants to send someone to visit you but is concerned about how telepathy might interact with classified information, so they're trying to hire a temp who'll just translate for you," says Dree. "There's some bidding on the gold, it's best to let that run for a few days so people who are interested have time to hear about it but it's already bid up high enough to cover your stay here and all the other incidentals that have accumulated so far once the sale's made. I'm glad you like the house. My colleague is awake now and ready to meet over the phone."

:That's a reasonable worry! It's possible to use Mindspeech without actually getting any surface thoughts not deliberately sent, but it's admittedly a lot harder with non-Mindspeakers, you don't shield and you can't actively project. I'm fine to wait on the gold sale if it's acceptable to pay for those things after the fact. And I'd be delighted to meet your colleague over the phone!: 

Maybe they can go to the sitting area for this, and Leareth can decide if he wants to join them? :Leareth: she sends. :Do you want to meet the overnight 'social worker' too?: 

Sure, he can come do that. 

Dree puts her phone on the low table and stands it up on its case and calls her co-worker, who answers after a minute and appears on the screen eating a piece of toast and propping a baby on his shoulder. "Hi," he says. "I'm Nalu."

Oh, there's even a picture! Melody smiles and waves. "Nalu," she repeats carefully; she's memorized enough word-sounds to guess that this is probably the name part. She points at herself. "Melody." 

:Dree, what direction and distance is he in, approximately?: 

"Nalu, you live in the Amber Grove area, right?"

"A little downtown of it but yeah."

Dree closes her eyes to orient to a mental map and then gets up and turns and points. "That way, maybe three miles."

This turns out to be a really hard way to do this! Three miles is technically within Melody's range but it's pushing it to reach someone un-Gifted at that distance, and she's going to have to jump past a lot of other minds that aren't Nalu. Heralds who do Mindspeech relay duties are probably a lot better at this, but Thoughtsensing in itself doesn't come with a search function. 

:Er, can you ask him to try to really loudly think my name? Might help me pick him out without needing to read random other people's surface thoughts so much: 

:Do you want me to try?: Leareth offers. :I suspect I might have more practice at using Mindspeech in this way: 

:...Sure, if you want, and then you could pull me into a link: Privately, :- and maybe try not to read random people's surface thoughts, they haven't agreed to that: 

"Sure, I can try to think 'loudly'," says Nalu, and he does that as best he can.

Melody keeps looking, but Leareth finds Nalu in less than thirty seconds, before she's made much headway. He's more experienced at distance-mindreading than her and he has a much stronger Thoughtsensing Gift in the first place. 

:Hello: he sends, and then pulls Melody in. 

:Melody here!: Wow, that's harder than she expected. Projecting to an un-Gifted mind takes more energy to begin with and at that range she can just barely do it for a couple of words. Which is probably fine, if all she needs to do is alert them to an urgent problem? 

:Would Nalu be able to come over here if we need help with something?: she thinks to check with Dree. :It'd be pretty hard to have a whole conversation at this range - Leareth could do it fine but I should assume that a lot of the things that could come up involve Leareth not being up for that: 

"Yes, he can come out if you need him," says Dree. "He often spends entire nights at home not having any social work emergencies but he's on retainer at the department anyway specifically so if one happens he can come out and help."

:Hello!: says Nalu. :Gosh, that's really something. Can I hang up now? If the baby wakes up she's going to be very interested in the phone:

:I think that's all we needed: Melody smiles and waves again. :You've been so helpful, Dree, I really do appreciate it: 

The screen goes dark.

"That's my job!" says Dree. "Is there anything else you need before tomorrow morning? The Premier will probably have a temp hired by then."

:Er, let me think about that for a minute: Melody does this. :Does it get cold at night here? If so, I didn't see a fireplace - how does heating work here?: 

"It doesn't get very cold, and if you do need to turn on the heater - the listing warned it was loud - you'll need to, hm -" Dree looks around and finds a little door in the back of the broom closet which conceals the controls for the climate system. "It's apparently seventy-three degrees* in here right now and the heater will kick in if it gets below sixty-five, which is cool but nothing you can't sleep through with blankets."

*no, they don't literally use Fahrenheit, consider it translated

:Then I think we're all good. Thank you: Hopefully it won't startle Leareth too badly if it does start going in the middle of the night. At least it's downstairs and far away from the bedrooms. 

Leareth still looks exhausted, and would probably be happy to just go to bed now. Which might have him waking up before dawn, in which case she too will have to wake up before dawn and that's not one of her favorite things, but keeping him awake now will just make both of them miserable. 

She prompts him through going to his room, decides not to fight the battle of convincing him to change before going to bed, and makes sure he has water and an extra blanket and pen and paper within reach.

Then she heads to her own room with a cup of tea (yes, caffeinated, and no, it doesn't especially keep her awake once she's decided to go to sleep, if anything it helps), and she settles herself in the windowseat to look out at the sky and listen to whatever ambient noises are there to be heard.  

There are frogs and crickets and a surprisingly sparse-looking selection of stars despite the cloudless night.

Huh. That's going to make Leareth sad once he notices. Melody wonders why. Surely it can't be that the planet just has fewer stars around it? Actually, on consideration, maybe it could be that, it's not like Melody is an expert on astronomy. 

The crickets are soothing, at least. Melody sits by the window for - honestly, a lot longer than she should, she should be in BED to ensure she gets as much sleep as possible before Leareth inevitably has a problem and needs her - but she was never any good at that when she had small children either. (Melody is glad that she had children, they're pretty neat once they get past age six and especially so once they're all grown up, but she really doesn't miss being a parent of toddlers.) 

She indulges in feeling stupidly homesick for a few minutes and then decides to stop that, and goes to bed. 

Leareth, in a turn of events which is surprising to no one, wakes her up at three am by screaming like he's being murdered and projecting PANIC far enough to hit the entire house and a twenty-foot radius around it, though not any further than that. 

Being awake from three am until dawn because Leareth starts panicking again whenever she makes a bid to leave the room and also seems really really averse to the thought of her putting blocks on him until he falls asleep again: incredibly not how Melody likes her life to go! She has to be calm and comforting and reassuring (and she's not actually good at "reassuring") and it's just unfair to have to be professional at three am. 

She makes him some herb-tea with the mild sedative effect; she doesn't want to give him anything stronger because then he'll just wake up confused and too out of it to be reassured by logical arguments. This does not appear to do anything. She wants tea TOO but she had to convince him to come downstairs with her before so she could use the kettle and it was an exhausting trial and she doesn't want tea badly enough to do that again. 

She doesn't call Nalu about this because it's not as though it's an emergency-emergency, it's just making her incredibly grumpy. 

...And then, of course, by dawn Leareth is tired enough to give in and ask her to put some blocks on him, but once the sun is up it's too late for Melody herself to get any more sleep. Maybe she can nap this afternoon. In the meantime she plonks herself in the kitchen and waits to hear something about the Premier's temp visiting and is in a ridiculously foul mood. 

Dree drops by at a civilized hour which is to say after the sun has been up for four hours already, and knocks.

(Leareth is still asleep, and with enough Mindhealing blocks in place that the knock doesn't even wake him.) 

Melody, who eventually ran out of ways to entertain herself and started MENDING HER SOCKS even though she hates sewing, answers the door. 

:Good morning: She is trying so hard not to let it show like she's in a horrible mood, but mostly she does this by holding a deadpan poker face. 

"Good morning!" says Dree. "The temp was right behind me, should be along any minute. How did you guys sleep?"

:I have been awake since several candlemarks before the sun was up, if I'm short with you that's why, sorry. Leareth is asleep right now: 

"Oh no, did the heater come on and wake you up?"

:- Oh, no, heater was fine. Leareth just had a nightmare and by the time I convinced him to go back to sleep it was too light outside for me to manage that: 

"Oh dear. Morning person?"

:Generally, yes. I think I don't need as much sleep as a lot of people, even, just, however much I got last night was less than that: Shrug. :It's fine, I'll take a nap this afternoon or something: 

"Okay. While we're waiting for the temp do you want to look at some clothes so you have something to change into?"

:Oh! Sure? I did bring a change of clothes and I washed my other one yesterday: 

"I don't know if what you have is going to hold up well in a washing machine," says Dree, "and you might want to go out without looking like you walked off a movie set, but if we do get interrupted by the temp it's good to know it's not urgent. Do you want to tell me what you normally like to wear or should I try for something sort of like what you have and otherwise maximally inoffensive?"

:I don't normally think much about what I wear? These are the standard Healers' robes in Valdemar, so people know what I do - and also they're comfortable and easy, but since no one's going to recognize Healers' robes here anyway, I'm not very attached to them. I don't want anything tight, I saw some people wearing things like that but the whole world does not need to see my tummy in that much detail. I want pockets and I don't love close-fitting sleeves that don't roll up easily. Other than that I don't think I'm fussy or anything: 

Melody stops. Frowns. :...Also, er, what's a washing machine? I just washed mine in the sink with the weird soap stuff that smells like some sort of exotic dessert: 

...Dree blinks. "Oh, I forgot to explain the washing machine. The place does have one but maybe it's not inside -" She heads for the backdoor and goes out. "Yeah, washer and dryer back here."

Melody follows her. Does not look less confused once the washer and dryer are pointed out. 

:...This is probably a very silly question but what do you - do - with them?: She can't see an obvious way to get water in other than carrying buckets from inside (and there aren't any buckets she's found so far), and the ergonomics of trying to bend down and wash clothes in there seem not ideal. 

"You put the clothes in here," she opens the washing machine up, "and you add one of these - don't squeeze them too hard, and if you do and they burst go wash the soap off right away, it's very strong stuff - and then you close it again and you push - let's see, this button here, looks like it's already on pretty gentle settings your clothes might make it through but some things do not get along well with washing machines - and then about an hour later you come back and move them to the dryer here and push that button and they'll dry, and you come back for them in another hour. Some things can take the washing machine and not the dryer, those you can hang. You could sell your clothes if you want more slack than the gold winds up giving you, they're exotic."

:......That's incredible!: Melody's mindvoice is full of awe. 

(Leareth is going to have a dozen questions about how this works. Melody is mainly amazed at how much time and effort this must save for so many people. She was wealthy enough to afford a maid who handled laundry by the time she married and had babies, but her parents weren't, and she shudders to think what her mother's day must have looked like when she had babies in nappies. Babies are so very good at making messes.) 

:- Hmm. I might sell one pair? Seems like it might be a good idea to keep one familiar set of clothing in case I get desperately homesick and that helps. I bet Leareth would sell all of his, though, he switched over to Quendi fashion much more than I did - it's way prettier - and he's not sentimental about clothes at all: 

"I can set up an auction for that with pictures of the clothes you want to sell, then. Meanwhile, in 'loose dresses' -" She has completed a Fashion Quiz on Melody's behalf and gotten directed to a line of cheap roomy dresses that come in forty-eight colors and patterns. "Are you a monochrome sort or feeling inclined to branch out from green?"

That's also incredibly neat. The dresses look nice! She can't tell if they would also look nice on her personally but they seem to be the forgiving-fit sort of dress. 

:I'm not desperately attached to green or anything! It's convenient that it works with my hair, imagine if I'd been a Bard–  Er, for reference, Bards have a different standard uniform and it's scarlet - our friend Vanyel's husband is a Bard and a redhead and it clashes dreadfully. Though I can't claim to be much of an expert on color matching in fashion: 

"I'll get you a green ombre one and a... cobalt, and this charcoal swirl-pattern one, and if you love them you can get more of the same and if you hate them you can send them back and if they're just okay you can rotate through them while you pick something else out. Do you know what Leareth will like or should I wait to ask him?"

Gods. Does Leareth have preferences about clothing? It's somehow really hard to picture! 

:Um, I would say that you should probably just ask him but I think he finds it pretty stressful being asked about his preferences. I get the sense he used to always wear black, but I'm not sure if he liked it or if it was just helpful for the public image he wanted to convey. He seems happy to wear whatever our, er, Quendi friend back in Arda arranged for him, and I think that usually tended towards blues and purples, definitely not orange or yellow. But I'm wildly guessing here, I hadn't previously considered that question: 

"Okay." Dree is in the middle of doing another Fashion Quiz when the temp shows up and knocks.

It's probably Melody's hostly duty to go answer that? She's weirdly nervous about meeting the Premier's representative, she is so incredibly not a diplomat, but there's no reason to expect this to go badly? And definitely no reason to expect it to go the same way as her past interactions with the King and the Senior Circle in Valdemar. 

She heads over and opens the door and smiles. 

"Hi," says the temp, a man in his fifties. "I'm Zare, nice to meet you - Melody?"

:Yes, that's me! Pleased to meet you: Smile. Hopefully it's not obviously horrifyingly fake. :Come on in - would you like tea -?:

"Oh, no thank you. Sorry it took me so long to get here, I got turned around once I got into the hills. I'm just here so you can talk to Secretary Balane, from the Premier's office, without him getting mind-read. If you mind-read me all you'll find is spoilers for my webcomic and probably intrusive thoughts about my girlfriend. Is now a good time to set that up?"

Melody had not been expecting him at a particular time so it's not like she would have any opinions on his lateness! 

:Er, yes, this is a fine time. - Maybe try to talk quietly, Leareth is still asleep and he really needs it:

She ushers him toward the sitting room.

:I am pretty sure I will not mindread you by accident and if I do then I doubt it could be any weirder than what I've seen as a Mindhealer. ....Though I am suddenly really curious about your 'webcomic'? I don't even know what that is? I - I'm trying not to read your thoughts in depth other than the ones you're trying to send at me but I somehow doubt that's the problem, I think maybe Velgarth just doesn't have 'webcomics'. It sounds like - sort of a mix between a ballad and a theatre show? But somehow similar to those paintings that are depicting dramatic battles?: 

"A webcomic is an illustrated serial storytelling medium published on the internet. I can show you if you want once the meeting's over, but you can't read our language, right?"

:I can't, it's inconvenient! I guess that's not the top priority anyway. Let's go have that meeting as a start: 

"Mm-hm!"

Zare sets up his phone in the sitting room and starts the call; it takes a while for the person on the far end to pick up but when the call connects it's a man about Zare's age, squinting into his camera. "Hello, I'm Secretary Belare," he says.

"Do I need to repeat what he's saying or can you just - hear me understanding it?" Zare asks.

Blink blink. 

:- I could manage just piggybacking on you understanding it, but I wasn't trying to do that? And it would require reading your thoughts more closely in general, which I think most people don't like:

"All right, I'll repeat what he says. 'Hello, I'm Secretary Belare'."

Melody smiles back at the not-illusion of the political leader's face. "Secretary Belare," she repeats out loud - she's pretty sure that some of that is a title and some of it is a personal name and she's not quite sure she knows which syllables are which. Moving on. She points at herself. "Melody." 

"It's good to meet you, Melody. The office's Committed of Truth say you're telepathic and they don't say that sort of thing lightly. Can you tell me - I assume you've been through this story before, but nevertheless - where you're from and what brings you here?"

This is such a reasonable request and also it's TERRIBLE how she has to go through all of that again. For like the fifth time. After a night of at most four candlemarks of sleep (even if that was entirely due to her own choices, she could have gone to sleep as soon as Leareth did -) 

Melody nods and does her best to smile in a pleasantly neutral sort of way. 

:I am originally from a world called Velgarth, specifically from a country called Valdemar. Velgarth has inherited magical Gifts of various types. Mage-gift is the broadest of them, but Mindspeech - what you're calling 'telepathy' - is a specific Gift, and I have an additional Gift called Mindhealing which I can get into later if you want. Leareth was the leader of a large organization in Velgarth, north of Valdemar, and he was experimenting with magical transportation and accidentally ended up in a different world, Arda: 

Pause. 

:- Is that making sense so far? Any questions?: 

He's taking notes on a separate device. "Arda isn't your word for here, right?"

:...No. I don't actually have a word for your world yet. Arda is a third different place. It - also had magic, and gods, like Velgarth - and which you apparently don't have at all here - but both were pretty different. Also I think Arda isn't even a planet. It's apparently flat, whatever that even means, and it didn't even have a sun until recently. Supposedly their version of sunlight used to come from these two enormous magical trees - sorry, if that's weird and confusing to you, I don't have a better explanation and I never saw them - but, er, the trees were eaten by their evil god? That happened at the start of the full-on war between their evil god and the faction that Leareth was working with at the time: 

Melody feels like she could probably explain this so much better if she'd had more than four candlemarks of sleep last night. 

"That's... worrying... I'm more interested in the state of things now than in how they got that way, to be clear."

:Right. Current state of things is hard to explain without that background plus some more background, but I'll try to be concise. We won the war in Arda against the evil god, that was a couple of years ago. Leareth was captured and badly injured in the process, but he'd managed to bring in help from Velgarth before that. We'd thought it was all over. But it seems like one of the small-gods that worked for the evil god in Arda had managed to escape into Velgarth in the confusion. A few days ago, the capital city in Valdemar, my home country, was destroyed. We don't know all the details. It seemed like a good idea to get Leareth out of that whole situation, given that he's both a target because of his role in the last war and also still not in great shape to defend himself. One of our allies from Velgarth - Herald Vanyel, of Valdemar - had been exploring with the magic-transportation spell for unrelated reasons. He thought this world was a safer option for us than staying in Arda: 

Pause. 

:....I've definitely already said this to lots of people, but there's no reason to think the evil small-god would target your world or that he even knows it exists, and we're even more sure that us Gating here shouldn't have been detectable to him or anyone else and so shouldn't change the risk there: 

"And you're here as Leareth's - caretaker?"

:More or less? That wasn't exactly my role before all of this, but–: Melody makes a face. Thinks for a moment.

:So the default safe place they were evacuating noncombatants to was Valinor. Which is under the control of Arda's gods, and - I could have gone, but I sort of have a grudge against gods. And Leareth is banned from going there at all. Anyway, we clearly needed an alternative for Leareth, and it would clearly have been a disaster to send Leareth alone, and I was available and - among the people who Leareth already trusts, I'm the least useful one in a fight, right, and separately I considered it a positive that I'd get to see a whole other world. It's complicated but I think that covers all the main points?: 

"Why is Leareth banned from Valinor?"

This is the WORST conversation to be trying to have on four candlemarks of sleep but it seems like it would be bad to look evasive and even worse to lie? 

:Er, during the period after he was captured by the evil god in the last war, he– so, the evil god, Melkor, could control people's sensory experiences, give them arbitrary hallucinations, and edit their memories. Melkor had only captured one Velgarth mage and he.clearly wanted to have Leareth's capabilities and he tried very hard using all of that to trick Leareth into doing magic for him. I don't think this was his fault in any meaningful way but the other gods in Arda were scared and so they banned him from Valinor: 

"Regardless of whether it was his fault, is he currently hazardous?"

:No. His ability to use magic other than Mindspeech - the telepathy we're using to communicate - is blocked, and we're not planning to change that anytime soon: 

Melody HATES HER LIFE but she can't deny that the Premier's representative is asking very reasonable questions. King Randale would have the same sort of questions and - actually she's been in a pretty analogous situation, with Randi, and she was upset and frustrated but she couldn't really judge him for it. 

"The report I got said you're planning to sell some personal effects to fund your stay here. Do you expect that to last until someone - comes to pick you up?"

:Probably not? But I have some useful skills that I'd be happy to provide and get paid for, and Leareth has a lot more although I don't want to ask it of him until he's ready, and if we can't earn our keep here then our backup plan is to camp in the wilderness and we do actually have all the supplies we'd need for that: 

"What skills are those?"

:I'm a Mindhealer. This is one of the Gifts we have in Velgarth but it's also a skillset, and I'm pretty experienced and - if I can say so myself - pretty good at it. I can help people to cope with their emotional difficulties or traumatic experiences - that's not an exhaustive list or anything, it covers more than that: 

"So like a therapist?"

Melody obviously doesn't recognize the word! If she looks in a little closer and deeper at Zare's surface thoughts, to try to get more of the underlying concept, what is that concept? Does it sound similar to what a Mindhealer does? 

Zare's trying to actually parse the conversation and not just repeat the sounds but he's imperfect at this. His associations on "therapist", such as they are, is that you go to them if a) you have a mental condition that makes you wash your hands 5,000 times in a row or hear voices or try to kill yourself, or b) you don't have one of those but for some reason have no friends to talk to and are paying one to listen to you instead.

The a) cluster mostly fits? Well, Melody is weirded out by the whole "washing your hands 5000 times in a row" concept, she's never had a patient who did that specifically and it's definitely not 1/3 of her patient load, but the other two fit, ish?

....She is so mystified at the idea that anyone would pay a Mindhealer to talk to them because they don't have friends? Mindhealers are annoying. Or maybe it's just her, but this sure does seem to be the consensus with her patients. Also there are five Mindhealers in the entire country of Valdemar. It sounds like this world has a better ratio, which maybe makes sense given that they don't have magic at all, and once you already don't have magic at all, it must seem like a better idea to just train un-Gifted people in helping other people with their emotional problems. Melody has been advocating for this for years. 

:- Er, yes, I think roughly that? Not exactly but there are enough cultural differences here that nothing's going to match up exactly. - And I do have a Gift for it, I can - hmm, so for example if someone tends to get into a guilt-spiral about being fundamentally inadequate every time they see something that reminds them of their parents: that must be generic enough right, :I can go in and directly add a different redirect. It's a shortcut, obviously, and you can't fix everything that way, but it's really useful: 

"That does sound useful. It seems like it might be hard to apply existing malpractice law to."

:....I don't know what that means?: 

"I'm observing that therapists, and the pharmacists they work with who prescribe drugs to the patients, are covered by a set of laws governing how they're supposed to do that, and none of that law or how it's usually enforced covers magical therapy which no one else can directly observe. - that doesn't mean you can't practice, it means you have to get patients to agree to waive certain rights."

:Oh!: Melody's eyes light up. :That - I think I follow what you mean - that's such a good idea! Valdemar has laws around the allowed ethical using of Healing - that's a different magical Gift that can treat physical illness or injury - and I've really wanted there to be an equivalent for Mindhealers but there just haven't been enough of us, it's lower priority because it just affects fewer people and even if it were a priority none of us had time to write up some kind of official standards and then argue about them. But I really want to see your version! ...Not sure it matters that much whether you can directly observe Mindhealing, it must be even harder to directly observe the effects of a therapist having talked to someone: 

"The patients are allowed to record their sessions secretly if they wish."

:Record as in - take notes?: Melody would have thought it would be hard to take notes in a secret invisible way! :Or, wait, it's probably a technology thing like phones, isn't it–: 

This is the point at which Leareth - who is still asleep - starts projecting DESPAIR at his immediate surroundings. 

This is so awkward! It's maybe not quite as awkward as her argument with Randi about putting Vanyel under Truth Spell right after the whole stupid drama with Leareth's grand reveal and Yfandes running off, but it's close! 

:Ummmm sorrysorrysorry I should probably go - deal with that - just give me a minute -: Melody sprints upstairs. 

(She put some pretty serious blocks on him! How is he even doing this?) 

Well, that leaves Zare suddenly sobbing for no reason and trying to explain to the Secretary about that.

Melody would have put a shield on Zare but, given her lack of mage-gift and of any special training for that, she only knows how to share her own mind-shields with someone else to cover them if she's touching them, and it seems like she more urgently needs to go solve the source of this problem.

Halfway up the stairs, she reaches ahead and Mindtouches Leareth. :Wake up. It's Melody. You're with me in the other world. Wake up, everything's fine -:

Leareth wakes up. Stops projecting. Does not stop crying. He's yet again so confused about where he is and also for some reason he's very groggy and can't quite finish his thoughts and also - 

:- Is Vanyel dead?: Leareth is very sure he just saw Vanyel die! The exact circumstances are unclear and also now he's confused about everything to do with his epistemic state but he saw it. 

(Leareth isn't deliberately trying to include Zare in the link, but he's also not trying for directional Mindspeech and he's projecting kind of loudly; from Zare's perspective, this will probably come across as the telepathy equivalent of someone screaming not-quite-comprehensible words from a long way off.) 

Zare decides to hang up on the Secretary apologetically and LEAVE THE HOUSE and walk away until stuff stops happening to his brain.

It would be really great if Melody had any way of confirming that Vanyel is definitely not dead! Leareth is probably asking for reasons related to whatever nightmare he just had, as opposed to actual events in the real world. But there's a war on and she cannot, actually, give him any certainty that Vanyel is alive. 

:I doubt it? I haven't heard anything indicating that he's dead and when we last spoke yesterday it didn't sound like the war situation was that dire and also Maitimo would absolutely sit on him and stop him from doing anything stupid: