A dog’s bark. The sound of waves in Lake Belone lapping up on the shore outside of Quorge. The aroma of freshly baked bread. Several shades of blue and green. All these things and more flitted about Felitïa as she brought up the black walls of the Room in her head. They circled around and bounced about the empty space, occasionally colliding with one another. Sometimes, those collisions caused the sensations to vanish. Other times, they combined into a completely different sensation—yellow colliding with the taste of mouldy cheese became the sound of rain on a window; the slick of melting snow on her skin colliding with the caw of a crow became the grey of the well where her telepathy had first manifested.

Still other times, though, two colliding sensations became a full-on memory. Like when the sound of a rat squealing colliding with the chill of a cold breeze turned into a memory of childhood at Elderaan’s Mystic Palace. Felitïa was tending the rats while trying to watch over the store while Elderaan was out. As she tended to one of the early Lons, a cold wintry wind blew over them as the front door opened and Elderaan entered, a wide smile on his face.

And that was the entirety of the memory. She had no idea what happened next, or even when exactly it was. Certainly, it was very early in her time with Elderaan, perhaps even before her telepathy first manifested. But even though she could remember nothing else about it, it brought with it feelings of happiness and fondness. A part of her longed for that time again.

Yet most of the sensations didn’t combine like that, and Felitïa suspected it had something to do with needing just the right combination to trigger any specific memory. It would be interesting to explore this in more detail.

Or you could remain focused on the task at hand. Honestly, how you survived against Plavistalorik is a miracle. Your concentration is terrible.

Felitïa sighed metaphorically. Mikranasta was going to be a huge boon in so many ways—Felitïa had no doubt she would have a much harder time with her new powers without the Isyar’s help—but she was also proving a very harsh taskmistress.

Elderaan used to criticise my concentration, Felitïa said.

And he was right to.

I thought the point of this was to explore my mind. Surely learning how these sensations or whatever they are work is part of doing that.

Eventually, yes, but the first part is to set up this Room of yours.

It’s done.

Then we clearly have a lot of work to do.

Felitïa looked about the mind-scape. The Room was emptier than it would usually be. There were no presences, and the queue of people was missing. Same with the Staff of Sestin’s presence over the queue. And the ever-present voices calling her name and listing the people in the queue were silent. The only things present other than the black and grey walls were the flittering sensations.

And those were actually new. In the past, she had always set up the Room in an isolated part of her mind. Now under Mikranasta’s instructions, she was experimenting with letting her entire mind—conscious and subconscious—in.

But the relative emptiness of the Room was because Mikranasta was blocking anything from getting in. Of course it was empty. What else should be there?

I am only blocking exterior sensations, Mikranasta said. Not interior. You have only the barest magical protections up and I take it those black walls are the extent of your telepathic ones.

Most of the time, I don’t need any more than that, and with you shielding my mind, I certainly didn’t expect to need more. Ses-Tlacotl had apparently found her defences more than adequate and difficult to break through. Admittedly, that had surprised Felitïa at the time.

This...Ses-Tlacotl was clearly an amateur.

Felitïa groaned—probably in the real world too.

Yes, I know that last thought wasn’t directed at me, but it’s the perfect example of your poor concentration and defences. At the barest minimum, I should only receive what you specifically send me. Nothing more.

Felitïa nodded. She was right.

Of course I’m right. Now focus! Don’t let me hear anything you don’t specifically—

Felitïa clenched her fists and blocked Mikranasta completely. Some quiet for a little while would be nice. Just what did Mikranasta expect of her? Felitïa was grateful for the help, yes, but it had only been a week since she’d been able to sleep properly again. She was only just starting to feel something approximating normal again, and her magical power was still mostly depleted. Of course she only had the barest of magical defences up! It was a strain just to maintain those.

Felitïa opened her eyes and looked across the table into Mikranasta’s thin grey eyes. The Isyar’s face was expressionless with neither the hint of a smile nor of a frown. They were seated at the table in the Belone palace library—well, Felitïa was. Mikranasta was standing, as the chairs’ backs were not good for Isyar wings.

Mikranasta reached across the table and took hold of Felitïa’s right hand, gently pulling her fingers open and laying her hand down, palm up. Four little red marks made a line across the palm, impressions from where her fingernails had dug into her flesh. Mikranasta’s mouth dropped into a slight frown and she shook her head, then stared at Felitïa.

After a moment, Felitïa relaxed and let her back in.

Honestly, not bad, Mikranasta said. I could have broken through with a little effort, but honestly, it’s a good start. However… She motioned down to the marks in Felitïa’s hand. You need to control your temper better.

Felitïa nodded. Controlling her temper had never been an issue for her in the past. That had been a Zandrue thing, and Felitïa had always been the one contending with it. But when she had become overtired, her temper had started to become a problem. Now she was feeling better, she was sure she would return to normal.

She hoped.

That will be all for today, Mikranasta said. You are still overtired. Get some rest.

Felitïa nodded again. “Thank you.”

Mikranasta let go of Felitïa’s hand and placed a hand to her chest. Pleasant thoughts, Felitïa Asa Folith.

Felitïa copied the gesture. Pleasant thoughts, Mikranasta.

With a slight nod, Mikranasta turned and walked from the room.

Felitïa sat there for a couple minutes longer before getting up and heading out herself.

In the hall, Hedromornasta fell in beside her, maintaining the shield that blocked her telepathy. As usual, he had a scowl on his face.

I’m just going to my room to take a nap, she tried to tell him, but the shield blocked her. Either he was unable to make the slight alterations his mother could to allow mental communication or he was unwilling to. Felitïa suspected the latter, and there was no point saying it out loud as he didn’t know her language and she didn’t know his. She did try giving him a comforting smile though, to which he just looked away.

Mikranasta talked of Felitïa getting her anger under control, but her own son clearly had far worse anger problems. Felitïa didn’t need to sense Hedromornasta’s feelings to be aware he seemed perpetually angry. She should probably bring it up with Mikranasta before it became a problem, as it was already starting to disturb her.

Zandrue was waiting outside the door when they reached Felitïa’s room. “I see you’ve got old Pouty Face monitoring you at the moment.” She flashed a smiled at Hedromornasta and said something in Isyarian in which she used his name.

Hedromornasta muttered something back.

With a roll of her eyes, Zandrue opened the door and motioned for Felitïa and Hedromornasta to enter. “He says my pronunciation is terrible, which honestly, it probably is, but would it hurt him to give a friendly greeting once in a while?”

Felitïa chuckled. Inside the room, she went straight over to the bed, where Lon and Nesh were scurrying about. Part of her just wanted to collapse straight into it, but that would be awkward with the gown she was wearing. Sleep would have to wait a couple more minutes. Besides, Zandrue was probably here to tell her something.

She held out her hand and let the rats climb onto her and up her arm, then turned back around.

Hedromornasta had taken up his customary spot in the corner by the window, while Zandrue waited by the door. Felitïa let her gaze linger on Hedromornasta for a moment before sighing and beginning to undress.

“I always feel a little off undressing in front of him,” she said.

“It’s the perpetual pout,” Zandrue said, coming over to assist. “It puts everyone off.”

“He just...I don’t know...he disturbs me somehow. I don’t think he likes me very much.”

“Feviona says she thinks he’s jealous of you. He knows that once you’re properly trained, you’ll be far more powerful than him. Isyar don’t like it when humans outclass them.”

Felitïa shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Honestly,” Zandrue said, “I prefer him to his mother. He may be a grouch, but at least I can be fairly certain he’s not rummaging around in my head.”

“You don’t think he’s capable?”

Zandrue chuckled. “Oh, he’s probably capable. I just don’t think he’d be subtle about it. His mother, on the other hand…”

“Fair point.”

Once her outer clothes had been removed and she was down to just her shift, Felitïa turned to the bed and sat down on it.

Zandrue plucked Nesh of her shoulder and placed the rat down on Felitïa’s. “I don’t know how you put up with those clawed feet scrambling all over your bare skin.”

As Nesh climbed up the side of her face, Felitïa grinned. “You get used to it after a while. It’s actually kind of comforting to know they’re there. I take it you wanted to talk to me about something?”

Zandrue sat beside her. “There still hasn’t been any reply to Anita’s messages to Arnor City, so tomorrow, I’m going to go round to the cathedral to do a little investigating.”

“They won’t like that.”

“Which is why I’m making sure you know I’m doing it. But I don’t think there’s any other choice. Something’s interfering with communications, and it’s either on our side or Arnor City’s. And Arnor City has Ardon, so…”

Felitïa nodded. “Yeah, I get the point. It’s probably on our side.”

“Anita’s doing up the paperwork to allow me to take a contingent of City Watch with me. She said she wants you to cosign the warrant.”

“Of course. Have her send it to me as soon as it’s ready.”

“Will do. I’ll also have Jorvan with me as back-up if things get rough.”

“Sounds like you’ve got everything in hand,” Felitïa said. “Anything else?”

“Trying to get rid of me?”

Felitïa shook her head and laughed. “No, of course not. Just tired. Still so tired, Zandrue.” She leaned her head on Zandrue’s shoulder.

“Hey, it’s only been a week. You’ll recover soon enough. You already look a lot better than you did when I first got here.”

“Mm. I do feel a bit better.” She let her eyes close and her breathing slow.

A nudge from Zandrue woke her back up.

“Sorry, I’ll let you sleep, but there were a couple other things to tell you.”

Felitïa lifted her head. “Yes, of course, sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep on your shoulder.”

“How dare you,” Zandrue said with a mock sneer.

Felitïa stuck her tongue out at her. “So what else did you want to say?”

“Feviona’s going to go down to the docks tomorrow to investigate those fires from when they arrived. It’s probably nothing to do with Darker activity, and the trail is probably cold by now, but it’s worth a check.”

“Makes sense,” Felitïa said, letting herself fall over onto her side on the bed. Unfortunately, she couldn’t lift her legs up yet while Zandrue was in the way. Gods, she was still so tired, but at least she could be certain this was natural tiredness now.

“Finally,” Zandrue said, “Agernon wants the Pearl. He says it’s vital to his continued research, which, I suppose, it probably is.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“He wants you there initially though.”

Felitïa sighed. “I probably should be, but it’s only been a week. Tell him to give me a couple more days. I’m doing so much better. I don’t want to ruin that by over-exerting myself too soon.”

“He also doesn’t want Hedromornasta or Mikranasta present.”

With a groan, Felitïa hugged her legs up so she could roll over and stretch them out behind Zandrue. “Unless he wants to wait months, that’s not going to happen.”

“There’s still a lot of bitterness over Mikranasta refusing to aid the wizards at the Hall of Knowledge when they needed her. Agernon almost died, and you know he holds a grudge.”

This had been brought up—by Pedrin, Angelida, and a couple others—several times over the last week, and Felitïa understood their complaints. If Mikranasta had assisted as she’d originally agreed to, she could have ended the attack on the Hall of Knowledge easily and saved lives. However, if she’d done that, there was a good chance Felitïa would be dead instead.

“I understand that,” Felitïa said, “but the situation isn’t that simple. I can’t control my abilities yet. If I go there without Mikranasta or Hedromornasta blocking them, I could… I honestly don’t really know what I could end up doing. I don’t even know the extent of my powers. But at the very least, I could end up probing people’s thoughts in ways that could make them very uncomfortable. And me because I don’t want to do that to people.”

“I know,” Zandrue said. “I just thought you should know. You should probably talk to Agernon though.”

Felitïa gave a slow, tired nod. “Hmm.”

With a pat on Felitïa’s leg, Zandrue hopped to her feet. “I’ll let you sleep now.”

As Zandrue headed for the door, Felitïa forced herself awake and propped herself up on her elbows. “Zandrue?”

Zandrue stopped at the door and looked back. “Yes?”

“How are you doing?”

“Fine. Why?”

“Just curious. You know, with Rudiger and everything.”

Zandrue smiled an obviously false smile. “Yeah, maybe I’m a little worried, but as I’ve said before, Rudiger’s a big boy. He can take care of himself. Besides, if I spend all my time worrying about him, I won’t be able to help him. See you at dinner?”

“If I don’t sleep through it.”

“Fair point. Get some rest.” With a wave at Hedromornasta, Zandrue walked out the door.

Felitïa slid down onto her back and then rolled onto her side. When Mikranasta had first put the shield up, Felitïa had worried that she’d spent so much of her life receiving other people’s emotions that she wouldn’t be able to effectively read other people without them. However, it seemed she was good enough to pick up on obvious Zandrue lies.

Gods, she hoped Zandrue was going to be okay.

Her vision blurring from sleepiness, Felitïa yawned and let her eyes drift closed.

Then she was standing in the Room, blue-grey and the smell of flowers—roses? daisies? she’d never really paid attention to particular flowers’ smells—zipping past her, other sensations all about.

Asleep, but lucid.

This had been happening more and more over the past week. It was getting to the point that she was spending at least part of every sleep period lucid. Hopefully, it wasn’t slowing her recovery. Did being lucid while sleeping negate the benefits of sleep? It was kind of like being awake after all. She honestly didn’t know though, and should probably ask Mikranasta about it.

However, she hadn’t actually told Mikranasta about it yet, though given either Mikranasta or Hedromornasta was always monitoring her during her sleep, it was hard to imagine Mikranasta didn’t know already. Still, she should probably ask Mikranasta about it at some point.

She resolved to do so.

For now, however, this was as good a chance as any to explore her mind and the ways in which it worked, and that would start with learning about the sensations and what happened when they collided with each other.

Nearby, the sound of dripping water collided with a baby crying. Both just vanished. What could she make of that?

Neither were things that held much significance to her. They were obviously things she had heard before, but she had never really needed to deal with babies. She certainly had no desire to ever have a baby of her own. As for the water, it probably held a bit more significance to her as water had a larger impact on her life, but try as she might, she couldn’t really think of a way in which dripping water held any significance.

Off to the side, the orange-red of the dawn sky collided with the croak of a frog and both sensations vanished. There were a lot of ways the dawn sky could be significant, but a croaking frog?

So no significance or relevance meant no memory? Maybe.

Of course, those were just two isolated collisions. The majority of sensations just flitted past each other with no collision. Waiting for random collisions could potentially reveal of lot of information, but it was also going to take time. Probably a lot of time.

But memories didn’t just happen randomly. Sure, sometimes a random memory popped up in her head, but she could choose to remember things, too. What about that memory from her session with Mikranasta earlier? Could she just bring it up in here?

As she thought of it, the chill of a cold breeze shot past her and collided with the squeal of a rat. Then she was in the memory again.

Okay, that was easier than she’d expected.

She held onto it this time, didn’t let it fade away despite its shortness.

Although his smile was clear, the rest of Elderaan’s face was indistinct. Even the brown of his skin was inconsistent, not due to shadows or anything like that, but simply a darker brown in one spot and a lighter in another. The simple matter was, she couldn’t precisely remember the colour of his skin. Or the shape of his eyes. The thickness of his eyebrows. The shape of his nose.

She tried to pull up other memories of Elderaan. Sensations swirled around her. The smell of pipe smoke, the sound of his laugh, the dull white of his robe she’d lost, the shop bell, the feel of warm water on frostbitten skin, and more. The sensations collided with each other, forming other memories, providing other images of Elderaan to help her form a more complete picture.

But they were inconsistent.

In one, he had thick eyebrows; in another, thin. Sometimes, he had a pointed chin, and other times a rounded one. Height was reasonably consistent, though in later memories, he was a bit shorter, but that was presumably due to stooping over with age.

Indeed, some of the differences could be explained by age, like the thickness of his hair. But other things were not so simple, like his nose. He had a prominent nose. That was consistent in her memories, but the shape? Was it turned up at the end like hers? Just how thick was it?

Gods, he’d only been dead a year and a half! Was her memory of him really so bad?

Of course, these were small details about his appearance. Should she really be so bothered by not remembering them perfectly? Memory was fickle. She knew that.

But the problem was, the images she was able to put together were so incomplete. Even combining images from different memories didn’t produce an image that looked like a real person. It looked like something a really bad artist might paint, with too many solid colours and no subtlety or nuance, no use of light or shadow.

Maybe this just meant she was a bad artist. She’d never actually tried to draw or paint something. She doubted she’d be very good at it. What would Sinitïa’s memories be like? She was a good artist. Would her memories look more real than Felitïa’s?

Felitïa took one last look at the patchwork Elderaan she had created, then dismissed it. With a gentle push, all the sensations abandoned the Room as well. She shouldn’t be disappointed, but she was, and she wanted to be “alone” for a while.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there—minutes? hours?—but it was a while. She tried meditating, but meditating while asleep just seemed strange, so she couldn’t concentrate properly. Eventually, the emptiness of the Room began to bother her.

She missed the line-up, the voices, the Staff, but they were blocked by Hedromornasta’s (or Mikranasta’s at other times) shield.

They had reappeared a week ago through an unknown method, but had vanished again not long after that. It had heavily bothered Mikranasta at the time, and Felitïa suspected it still did, though Mikranasta had not talked about it since.

Somehow, they had just bypassed the shield without breaking through.

It bothered Felitïa, too, that Mikranasta couldn’t explain it. If it were just something Felitïa couldn’t explain, it wouldn’t bother her. There was still so much she didn’t know or understand. But Mikranasta?

She wandered over to the grey walls still attempting to block her—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she brought the grey walls to her. She was beginning to think she never really moved through the Room or her mind, but rather she moved the Room around to focus on whatever point she was looking at.

A gaping tear ran along one portion of the grey walls. It was possible to look through the tear—she’d done it many times in the last week—but all that was behind it at the moment was the shield, and she couldn’t see past that. Most of the grey walls were still intact, though, forming an n-dimensional sphere around the edges of her mind. Were they still actually blocking anything, or was the tear enough to allow everything through? Perhaps not as much could get through at a time, but nothing specifically was prohibited?

It was impossible to say for certain while the shield was there. Perhaps once she could control her abilities and the shield was no longer necessary, she could investigate the grey walls and their effects more thoroughly, but there wasn’t much she could do right now.

With a sigh, she pushed the grey walls away and waited in the middle of the room. How did one end lucid sleep and go into normal sleep? She didn’t want to spend the entire time she was asleep lucid. Being able to explore her mind would be a good thing, but for the moment, the Elderaan situation had destroyed her enthusiasm for it. She could explore her mind another time. For now, she just wanted to have normal sleep.

And so she did. Her last lucid thought was how nice it was to be able to sleep again.