I've been thinking a lot about Heart Reading lately...
How does it work exactly?
Like I get it's a type of telepathy, but is it a passive sense or does it have to be activated like other magical abilities?
What we've seen more recently seems to suggest it's passive, like hearing or seeing.
Sixtus, Lancelot and even Harlequin seem to be unable to not hear other people's thoughts, but when we were first introduced to the ability, when Elaine used it on Ban in the flashback of their meeting in Season 1, we see her eyes glow when she looks into Ban's heart like she has to do it on purpose. Plus Helbram and his friends were fooled by an ordinary human, if Heart Reading were passive, shouldn't someone in the group have been able to tell the guy had ill intentions? We also see no indication from background Fairies that they have any idea what other people are thinking. The Fairies in Echo Gorge were convinced Nasiens was doing something bad, even though a simple look into his heart would have easily revealed his intentions.
So which is it exactly?
Is it a passive perception? Or do these three boys just lack boundaries?
Elaine mentioned that Harlequin could Heart Read before he left the Forest 700 years prior to the series, and suggested that being away for so long had caused him to lose the ability -till he got his full wings-. Is that something to do with being separated from some inherent magic of Fairy spaces, or did Harlequin intentionally refrain from using the ability around humans and it sort of weakened like an unused muscle?
