:Huh. Usually men don't reach me, but it's happened before.: When she's 'asleep' and can't act on her own at all she doesn't have a choice about this. She picks up on the particular flavors of desperation that in Velgarth count as a prayer made without hope of deliverance, and compels her living bearers to come and act. Awake, she does have a choice and frankly this has the sense of a large, complicated problem.

But that desperation's still there, and for all the refinement and precision of this buried ghost, he is young and as raw as if he was still living.

Tired is a good word. Pared down works too. All kinds of things - boredom, loneliness, grief, regret - have atrophied or been cut away, leaving stubs that are felt only faintly and can be tucked away out of sight. A righteous anger is still strong, if well-controlled. Compassion, too, even love, though Need doesn't like those to show too easily.

:I'd say you should let your unfinished business be, but evidently you've put a lot of effort into not moving on. It's hypocritical advice from me anyway.: The lagniappe that comes with her Mindvoice is pretty easy to interpret - despair and desperation, pain, sensory deprivation, resolve, though apart from the last it's all a bit abstracted by time. The remains of a powerful old memory. :No, I can't see anything living people aren't looking at. I assume that was yours?: