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Timekeeper     Inside the suitcase, the difference is instantly clear: where before, the wall of windows in the sunroom were blanketed by impenetrable golden fog outdoors, now, there's an entire world beyond them. Sunlight streams through the windows to illuminate the room, unfiltered by fog, and with it, an image of a seemingly untouched natural expanse. Thickets of trees, carpets of varied grasses, hills and rivers in the distance; it goes as far as can be seen from this limited perspective, and there's no immediate indicator of any *specific* region's forest it might be.

    Vertin and Sonetto are both waiting here for the Elites to arrive. Vertin is wearing her typical outfit, seeing little reason to do otherwise, and she's in the middle of a discussion with Sonetto and Regulus when the door into the sunroom's opened. Sonetto, meanwhile, is wearing a dark green shoulderless dress with gold metal accents, with a hem high above her knees, but sleeves and tights extend all the way to her ankles and wrists, covering nearly all of her skin except for the shoulders surrounded by a ruffled cutout. She's got forest green boots on for walking, and a messenger bag slung across her body, packed full of various supplies.

    Vertin glances over to the Elites coming in and nods to them in greeting, continuing on with their advisement. "As I was saying, there's no way to be fully certain on what is waiting for us outdoors. I'd like to be prepared for critters at the minimum, but there's no way to discount that there may be some large scale arcane skill influencing the area... although I believe it's unlikely, since I can't sense anything of the sort."

    Then, to the Elites, "Thank you for coming. I'm hoping that won't end up being a need, but I've got no precedent whatsoever for this happening with the suitcase. Follow me, if you will?"

    With a "Yes, Timekeeper," Sonetto adjusts the strap on her shoulders and marches through a side door after Vertin, navigating the warm wooden hallways of the manor for a short ways before reaching a foyer. Peeking over the rails of the second floor and looking down, halfway merged into the clay pot for some houseplants, are the two shy dotted eyes of Poltergeist. Shelob was up there with her, for White to teleport to and then come down the bifuricated staircase. "G-good luck out th-there... hey, V-Vertin, if you find out you can control the sun out there... do you think you c-could ask it to chill out? H-hurts, a little bit."

    "I'll see what I can do, Poltergeist."

    The double doors open into, directly, the untamed wild, with no lawn to speak of. There's a clearing without trees that surrounds the manor-- and looking at it from the outside, it's much bigger than anyone but Regulus has personally seen-- but rather than a curated square of trim grass, there's thick vegetation and shrubbery, with a lily-covered pond on the treeline. Vertin surveys it curiously, having never seen the outside of 'her own' house before, while Sonetto crouches down.

"Timekeeper, may I pick a flower?"
"I don't see why not. They seem normal enough to me."

    Sonetto carefully pulls up a small wildflower between her fingers and examines it, and then Vertin leads the way into the woods. A botanical expert could identify the particular types, but the dense deciduous trees still leave plenty of room to navigate between, though overgrown bushes still need to be pushed through occasionally. There's movement all around, in shaking plants and scrabbling noises, some large like deer and others small like squirrels, with occasional glimpses of animals of that nature.")]
White White arrives without much fanfare in front of Shelob upstairs along with Audrey and any luggage that the latter might have brought along. The little spider gives her a foreleg salute, she gives the spider a little pinky-finger rub to the head, and then White turns to give Poltergeist a small bow. "I hope... You've... Been well." is said softly and slowly, before she turns aside and starts to walk downstairs.

There's a brief moment where she's looking over the railing instead as if considering jumping over it, though.

     Joining the others downstairs and letting Audrey fend for herself and her luggage, White glances at Sonetto's bag for a moment and gives her a brief wordless thumbs-up. Preparation is important! Then hearing the rest of Vertin's briefing, White opts to open her eyes in advance of anything happening, and as she follows Vertin and Sonetto outside she's noticably glancing around. Partly reconfirming what Vertin says about not being able to notice signs of unusual magic, but also easily following the movements of various skittish animals behind and admist the trees.

     On one hand, it looks a little like a cat imagining what it might hunt next. On the other, she *is* actually trying to be helpful; namely, by using the Evil Eye to analyze the animals and confirm that they're genuine living creatures, rather than illusions or simulacrums. The emergence of actual living creatures into a separated space could narrow down the possibilities to a reasonably small handful, after all, at least by her line of thinking. To double down on this, she very faintly asides to... Any of the people who typically live or visit here reguarly, really, "Are you... Accustomed... To hearing... Birdsong, here?"

It could mean something, after all, if they could hear the birds before but not see or interact with them. Heck, maybe their LOD setting just got an upgrade!
Audrey Basque     Audrey has spent a good part of the day bouncing around the Library. Not because Angela was bowling "with" her (she skillfully and masterfully avoided being part of the game by being busy, a daring gamble that necessitates no sacrifices because Audrey is painfully always busy for real; sorry Roland!), but because she had to do Petra's share of the work too. She'll live, it's good for her to be kept busy and working.

    Arriving with White, the threat of critters (or worse) meant that Audrey opted to get changed into EGO gear, which also served the purpose of not showing up in her General Works uniform. Or the school uniform.

    The Sword Sharpened With Tears EGO wear suits her style, anyway! She's left out the swords (and the cheek teardrop, for that matter) since a fight isn't guaranteed, and there's an extra layering of stars inside the coat, but that's just everything she wears out anyway. She adjusts the tie, makes sure her hair is alright (it is!), and as White wanders off, begins pacing about to examine the suitcase's interior. No tools, no anything. Audrey goes by feel, most of the time!

    "You weren't kidding, something's changed..." she muses loudly enough for Vertin to hear, based solely on how the place felt during her last visit. It was more... enclosed? "Shame we can't simply ask its maker. O-Oh! Where are my manners. It's a pleasure to see you again in... hopefully significantly less dire circumstances, Timekeeper, Sonetto." She remembered to say hi!

"but there's no way to discount that there may be some large scale arcane skill influencing the area..."

    "It's hard to say without spending some time here first, but if I sense anything out of the ordinary I'll let you know."

    Odds are a lot of things here are out of the ordinary.

"I'll see what I can do, Poltergeist."

    Audrey TRIES not to stare. She fails, evidently, because that is a ghost. Like a ghost-ghost. Like a--

    "Is... is your suitcase haunted, Timekeeper?"

    She seems friendly and shy, so... is this normal, here?

"Timekeeper, may I pick a flower?"

    Eyes prying off Poltergeist and returning to examining the suitcase as they all leave the manor, Audrey reaches out with her senses, less interested in the fresh green grass than the feel of the suitcase's boundaries and the stability of its space. A hand raises, to follow along an unseen line, like she's ready to just walk in a straight line until she finds an edge or end.

    "Ah, animals... do you think they'll be unaffected by the Storm? I remember that even taking people offworld didn't spare them."
Regulus Regulus is rubbing at her wrist sourly, "You didn't have to pull so hard--"

"Captain, you know as well as I do that a proper voyage requires proper preparation. As your first mate I can't allow you to face such an unknown carelessly." The apple (APPLe) says.

"Uggh... I'm sorry APPLe, I just really need to stretch my legs--"

Regulus is as she always is, though presently hatless and her scarf's a little looser around her neck.

''Follow me, if you will?''

Regulus hops up excitedly to her feet. "Alright! We're going? We're really going??" She, for one, is eager to explore the mysteries of the world much like many a doomed sailor before her.

''Find out you can control the sun out there...''

"I wonder how they fit a whole sun in here..." Regulus wonders. "If there's a sun, there's probably a moon too, right?" She hesitates but ultimately decides that Vertin's promise is about the best that can be offered for poor Poltergeist.

Regulus is barely restrained, biting at her lip, as they finally step outside. "There's even a ''pond''. If there can be no sailing for ol' Regulus, perhaps a little canoe--"

"However big the suitcase is, Captain, you'd have to be able to fit it through the entrance." APPLe suggests.

She spots Audrey and White and murmurs to APPLe, "Careful of that one," She says of Audrey. "I heard that tattoo means she ''killed'' someone."

More loudly, she looks over to White and adds, "AHhh, White, you still have those records right? Did anybody else happen to retrieve any?"

Regulus writhes in place a little bit like she wants to run and jump around the whole complex with nary a care in the world.
Lilian Rook     Though she was only here briefly, absurd Regulus party in the lobby notwithstanding, and that time was more or less eclipsed by the Storm of the 60s right after, Lilian's memory of the suitcase is both positive and only mildly indistinct. Old and slightly eccentric manors are a sort of homeland of the heart for her, and the mysterious one left behind in a quirky little luggage container has certainly seen more recent love than the one she's most used to.

    Hearing about the greenhouse secondhand made her want to visit it again at some point, and the knowledge that there are rooms that people live in had made her even more curious to know how the arcanists live. That there are recent updates, much less about an outside, makes the prospect of more outright irresistible. Unusual for her, Lilian quietly cancels plans before heading out, citing an emergency meeting.

    'Outdside the manor' means a certain something for her, so Lilian shows up in what she'd wear outside her own house at this time of year; which coincidentally means doing very little but pulling a lightweight cream-coloured sweater over what she'd just been wearing in the study before she'd left, and lacing up calf-high boots instead of putting on shiny shoes. The only real difference is that hearing the word 'critters', the only context she has for which are 'something SPDM graduates defend people from', has encouraged her to wear her sword; though, it's strapped over her back rather than at her hip, balancing out her messenger bag.

    . . . . . . . .

    "You look good, Sonetto." Lilian says, as an all-important greeting notion. After all, it's the first time she's seen her wearing something other than a uniform, so encouragement is mandatory. "And a pleasure to see you again, Timekeeper." comes after an only conversational pause, as Lilian adjusts the strap of her scabbard to sit lower over her front. "If you of all people don't sense anything, then I'll simply take your word that no one is influencing anything with magic. I see no reason not to take it as a peculiarity of a peculiar thing."

    Of course, she can say all that, but she seemingly can't stop herself from smiling about it while standing in the sunshine streaming into the room. "Or perhaps I should say that it being invisible until now was what was peculiar? What's a sun room without a sun, right?" If someone didn't know better, they might even think that she's excited by another Arcane Mystery.

    Her attitude mysteriously improves even more once she's outside, too. Seeing as most of the Foundation's experience of her has involved offices, paperwork, and training, perhaps it might not necessarily be clear that such an bureaucratically competent woman might genuinely feel more at home like this, but the deep breath she takes just outside the door, and the brisk, almost bouncy gait she takes beyond that, are adequate means of dispelling any sort of misleading image. She hardly keeps her opinion to herself for more than a minute after making up her mind: "I think this suits you quite well, Vertin."

    'Investigating' is truly a poor excuse on her behalf, though. Lilian quite quickly devotes herself to identifying flowers, talking about their properties, checking for signs of age on rocks and mosses, dallying with such things as finding magnetic and solar north, and sharing Fun Trivia about wild plants (especially how waterlilies aren't actually 'true lilies' and their once-presumed botanical significance). The fact that animals might exist here seems to surprise her, bizarrely, but she becomes quickly fixated on seeing if she can spot deer.
Lilian Rook     Truly, not even Audrey's continued existence can ruin this. There's just something particular about a Type Of Girl who has a loyal assistant and a cute manor surrounded by anomalous nature. APPLe's helpful reminder to Regulus is even cheerfully replied to, along the lines of "Then couldn't you try your hand at building one here? I think it'd be all the more satisfying, no?"
Timekeeper "It's a pleasure to see you again in... hopefully significantly less dire circumstances, Timekeeper, Sonetto."

    The 'suitcase interior' is somewhere much larger than Audrey could possibly pace, even just including the manor that was originally there, unless she vanishes for an hour. From where White and her teleport in upstairs, there's enough bedrooms to consitute a meaningful 'hotel' kind of feeling-- or, more accurately, the exact kind of house Audrey presumably lives in, with enough space to house generations of a family, or an entire conference of guests. The second floor alone has more bedrooms than she can possibly see at a glance, and there's a third above it and a basement below.

    "I should hope they are as well. Hello, Audrey." Vertin is pleasant enough, not considering the EGO to be clothing out of the ordinary enough to remark on, though she does raise her eyes in an 'is that so?' kind of way at what Regulus says to APPLe. Sonetto, meanwhile, has a pretty much solely negative opinion of Audrey, and presses her lips together to politely nod at her.

"You look good, Sonetto."

    It's really hard to tell whether Sonetto or Vertin is weirder about uniforms, but for today at least, Sonetto seems perfectly happy to be outside of hers. Technically it's not a field mission-- it's Vertin's personal thing! Sonetto beams and bounces on her feet, vindicated in some abstract way by Lilian being prepared in a similar way as her.

    "You are quite beautiful as well today, Dame Rook! With Timekeeper's confidence that there is not an arcane ritual at work, I do not believe we will encounter anything more threatening than the average critter... however, it is still good to be prepared."

"Alright! We're going? We're really going??"

    Vertin smiles faintly at Regulus while holding the door open for her like she's a dog led out for walkies. "We are. Do stay close to the group this time, however. If you simply must run off, stay within eyesight of us."

"I think this suits you quite well, Vertin."

    "It's quite pretty, isn't it? It feels oddly... relieving, in a way." Vertin marvels-- inexpressively, but presumably happy enough-- at the facade of the manor surrounded by plants, taking note of some ivy climbing up the outside of the walls. "I don't quite know what I'd do with myself if I'd opened up that door to a flat plane of pavement. Like this, it feels... like somewhere 'people ought to live', even more than before."

"Are you... Accustomed... To hearing... Birdsong, here?"

    Vertin adjusts her hat and frowns, looking up at the branches while the group walks together. There is birdsong now, copious amounts of it, along with the fluttering and leaf rustling that should accompany that. "I did, but only... on occasion. Not nearly so much as now. I'd thought of it as something like the sunlight through the fog, an arcane simulacrum of a natural space that fills the extraspacial void. Now I'm unsure."
Timekeeper "Is... is your suitcase haunted, Timekeeper?"

    "In a manner of speaking, I suppose." The idea that it is seems to enrich Vertin, putting a nearly imperceptible bounce in her step while she, too, indulges in the wilderness more than she 'investigates' it. She lifts up a branch to pass under it without bumping her hat off, and when she spies a purplish-red fruit dangling from it, she plucks it off and holds it out to White.

    "White? I recall you mentioning an immunity to poison?" It's a perfectly fine plum! But it seems silly to not check, with a poison-immune person right there!

    Then they finally loop back around to answering Audrey's question. "Poltergeist is, to my knowledge, the only ghost living here. She was in Miami until I encountered her along with others on a mission, and I offered her a room here. Don't worry; she's more scared of you than you are of her."

    Lilian's adventures with the plants all go well too, and surprisingly, both Sonetto and Vertin are willing to get their hands dirty alongside her. The plants are a weird mix of things native to the same technical 'climate type' scattered across different continents, with North American deer chewing on ginseng leaves and pulling carrots out of the ground. Between Sonetto and Vertin, there's a pretty good average point of their combined knowledge covering practical 'outdoorsy' things, and being interested by the details of any given bit of Nature Lore.

"Ah, animals... do you think they'll be unaffected by the Storm?"

    Vertin frowns again, watching a squirrel climb up a tree. "... I can't say. Humans from our world are not safe in the suitcase, but arcanists and people from offworld are. Do these animals originate from 'our world'? Is there another era for them to revert to?"

    The animals that White looks at are all, actually, living beings. Even though it looks like this must be hundreds of years of growth, in the way that the history of a forest builds up over time, the plants and trees are all naturally alive too. Some of them scuttle away when observed, as if by a predator, but when she's trying to make out a strange black shape in the bushes, peeking around like a cat...

    It pounces at her! A weirdly vicious orb of black fuzz with two big eyes and a wide mouth full of teeth, it leaps up and snaps at her in retaliation for being observed. It's probably totally ineffectual. This thing, also, is alive like normal, though it's also inherently magical in some dim way.

    After it's dispatched, by a quick swish of Sonetto's glasfeder if White takes more than a second to do it herself, Vertin watches it run away with a neutrally curious expression. "A carbuncle. That's proof that there are critters as well as mundane animals present, though it hardly tells us anything else. Carbuncles can be found nearly anywhere on the planet that you can also find people."

    This happens several more times throughout the journey. For an eight stage adventure, at least three of them need to have a sudden carbuncle appearance for a brief combat diversion.

"Mmm? Have the trees changed?" Vertin lifts her head up to look around, and, in fact, they have. The fluffier deciduous trees are behind them, but ahead of them is a stretch of coniferous forest, pine trees shading dark soil, with little ground vegetation to be found.
Timekeeper     Sonetto steps up behind her and nods. "That's right. This is a coniferous forest, and to be mixed with a deciduous forest implies... such a thing happens in the nothern hemisphere, in places like southeastern Canada, Poland and Ukraine, as well as central Asia."

    "That's quite a wide range. But look, Sonetto: it's not as though the forests are mixing; they just transition from one to the other. And the river cuts right across the boundary...."

    Audrey's sensing takes a while to really feel out a shape to the world, so it must be large enough that this thirty minutes of walking is only a fraction of it. But eventually, she does find what feels like an 'end', that she can trace around like an outline. This isn't a world sewn into the others like unification would be, but a larger bubble than before, with a flat earth void to simply fade away at the edges.

    Sonetto and Vertin begin climbing a hill, hiking up the side. Here, Sonetto takes a bit more of a lead, giving Vertin a hand up through the more slippery slopes of small rocks that crumble away underfoot, until the elevation of the hill should theoretically give a vantage point across whatever this world looks like. Reaching the top, Vertin catches her breath and then says aside, "Sonetto, may I have my telescope?"

    Handheld telescope in hand, the world seen from the top of this hill is... bizarre. The division between the two forests that they passed earlier can be seen like a line drawn in the canopy, and even still, that's the least odd thing about it. Patches of biomes of every kind, from an icy plain on one edge, to a wide area of varied grasslands in the center, or swamp opposite them, are scattered all throughout the island-- and it *is* an island. No matter which way they look, there's a coast that leads into a deep ocean, uninterrupted all the way to every horizon.

    Amongst the biomes, though, there's one more notable than the rest. Dead center in the island is a large lake, surrounded by a translucent mist, but in the center of that lake is a patch of dense golden fog much like what surrounded the manor before. Vertin closes the telescope shut and hands it off to Sonetto.

    "I see. Regulus, we may have found something more suited to sailing than that pond."
Regulus ''Then couldn't you try your hand at building one here?''

Regulus's eyes widen. "Yes! That's right! Brilliant, Lilian! We built a little rowboat before, APPLe, we can do this! And then--" She smiles mischeviously, wanting to catch APPLe's own desire before he warns her of another complication. "You could row out onto the lake, a nice book on Viennese architecture in hand, a Dr. Pepper for the each of us..."

"Oh that does sound quite lovely." APPLe says. "Though to avoid sunscald, perhaps I may suggest adding a little awning?"

Since Regulus has been warned against rushing off, she instead angles a little closer to Lilian to add, "You're having a blast, you're a natural explorer aren't you? But if this could suddenly appear, then even more could suddenly appear in the future, right? I haven't been able to visit a proper park in ages let alone a proper wilderness. Do you think if we keep going we'll eventually make our way back to the manor or will it suddenly just ''stop'' as we reach the edge."

"For all we know, Captain, there is no edge. We'd best not pull too far away from the others." APPLe says.

''Is that so?''

Regulus bobs her head quietly in Vertin's direction, but.

Regulus is thrilled to finally get to go outside. For walkies, even! But she frowns anxiously at the idea that there might be animals in here who will spontaneously reverse all at once the next time the Storm happens. She watches that squirrel clamber up that tree and imagines it disolving into stylized pixellated globs of brown and black.

"It'd be perplexing for them to appear here and yet still be subject to the Storm--this feels akin to another world, so hopefully they count as originating from ''elsewhere''! It'd be absolutely tragic if they couldn't survive in here. But I wonder how this all came to be so suddenly... Do you think because you've had more visitors than ever before, maybe the Suitcase expanded to accomodate? Or 'unlocked' a new zone now that you are ready?"

Regulus sees that a hill is coming so she immediately runs ahead, clambering up the hill, then runs back to un-catch back up so she can linger near enough to Vertin and Sonetto's sightlines.

''More suited to sailing than that pond''

"Really? You're not pulling my leg are you? May I?" She extends her hand for the telescope and if allowed to take a looksee...

"Marvy! It's a whole island, there's even ocean!" If not of course she doesn't say anything about that but will squee excitedly about the possibility of ocean all the same.

"So where to next, Vertin?"
Audrey Basque Regulus!

    Audrey is too busy minding the suitcase and the fact it's haunted(?) to hear the murmuring, much less object to this terrible characterization. She's an innocent bean who hasn't murdered a single soul, you'll know!

    That she aided in what is technically the temporary murder of dozens (and more) by now is not a notable statistic.

She's probably aided in actual murder too but that's also second-hand.

Lilian.

    Audrey both does and does not know better than to aggro Lilian. Right now-- right this second-- she's buzzing between too many questions and observations to make a critical blunder, but she's notably stiffer for a moment or five when she first hears her voice. Then she straightens her stance a bit.

"Don't worry; she's more scared of you than you are of her."

    "Oh. I apologize if I've--" Did she take that too literally? "I, erm. Maybe I should have worn something else?" Too late!

    Audrey pensively looks back towards Poltergeist before they depart, like she needs to fix this somehow. Later, but still.

"Humans from our world are not safe in the suitcase, but arcanists and people from offworld are."

    A bit somber, though.
    "I... hope that you won't ever have to find out, obviously. I'd offer to try to figure out what makes this space selectively impervious to the Storm, but that might be a bit invasive for what is likely your home."

    Another era, though... in a pocket of space?

Carbuncle vs White!!

    Deep thoughts are interrupted by White finding a critter! Audrey tenses but learns to relax when she realizes there's no chance this is threatening to White. And then it happens multiple more times, and she's tense again. Tense enough that between that, and her eyes being on the boundaries...

"Mmm? Have the trees changed?"

    "?"

    She looks up, finally. Did the trees change?
    ... DID they? She wasn't-- she didn't pay attention!! To THAT. Quick! Find an escape, don't let people know you can't identify tree species when you weren't paying attention to them at all!

"For all we know, Captain, there is no edge."

    "!!"

    Audrey gesticulates, tracing the far edge with her fingers to demonstrate. "No, no, don't wander off TOO far, there *is* an edge. I can't sense anything beyond it-- but it's there. Like... everything just stops? I do wonder what that looks like..." Didn't she just say not to wander off?

"Sonetto, may I have my telescope?"

    High ground is a fantastic idea. Maybe they can see the edge from there. Audrey hikes along-- she's keeping up, surprisingly, courtesy of not being a horribly out of shape noodle anymore. NOW she can see the split between the trees! The edges, the edges-- it's just water? Does it end somewhere on the water, or far beyond it? She has half a mind to ask Regulus if she wants to mount a sea voyage now, but elects better. For now! For now.

"I see. Regulus, we may have found something more suited to sailing than that pond."

    "... I can't tell how safe that would be from this far out, but..." For now didn't last long. "I admit I'm curious. Do you think there's sea life too?"
White White's glancing hither and thither goes uninterrupted for the most part, while she's staying at-pace with the group and taking in the conversation. She walks with a mix of stiff hand-folded decorum and familiar, comfortable loping steps that don't struggle with uneven ground or protrusions. At one point she looks up a tree like she's tempted to climb it, but the poor birds up there are spared the fright by Vertin's answers, as well as the plum held out to her. First grasping it with her fingertips and curling her fingers around it in a light squeeze for a moment after taking it, White then loosens her grip again and gives the plum a thread-cinched slice in half, examining the glossy interior and comfortably removing the pit with her fingernail. She bites into one of the half-pieces while her gaze wanders again, almost getting distracted before she returns the other half to Vertin with a brief cheek-filled glance and nod.

She didn't *have* to taste test it, but she likes fruit, always has, and it's been a while since she got to just have some fresh in the outdoors. She seems pleased!

     It takes her a few moments to finish savoring and chewing, but after carefully wiping her lips she works her way around to another comment, watching Lilian for a moment while she talks about lilies and other such things. "The animals are... Real. I don't see... Anything strange... About-" Well, she finds an exception as she's working her way through the statement. The so-called carbuncle is new to her, and it's mostly by virtue of its fuzzy and round profile that White registers it as low enough on the danger-scale at a glance to meet it with an open-palmed smack instead of something more violent. She's not the type to go looking for soft little creatures to beat up, and when it's proven how little of a threat the critter is to her she even frowns a little while looking at her hand.

She tries to be proactive with some of their next encounters, scaring the critters off or making them tired with her Evil Eye before it comes to the point of having to slap one again... Not that she'll judge the others for self-defense, it just feels a little like picking on someone's pet, to her.

     Wondering on the change in trees is something White has to work her way around to paying proper attention to, after she's satisfied with her examinations of the animals. Following Vertin and Sonetto up the hill after a pause at the base, White catches up fairly quickly and starts surveying from the opposite direction of where Vertin points the telescope, pivoting opposite her like a mirror. "The borders... Feel like... A survival game." she muses quietly, thinking of any number of almost identical titles that have you surviving starting from stone tools on an ambiguous, usually island-based landmass surrounded by water. It takes her a couple of minutes from there to finally suggest something that feels a little bit outlandish, but not entirely irrelevant. "Was the suitcase... Supposed to be... Some kind of..." She pauses, wrestling for a better word with her eyes momentarily shut again, before silently sighing through her nose. "Ark?"
Audrey Basque "Was the suitcase... Supposed to be... Some kind of... Ark?"

    Audrey stops in her tracks, pondering the possibility. "Like... the Hidden Continent?" She gives Lilian an idle look, like it's evident she would know more/better. "It... IS a secluded pocket of space, that protects Those With Magic, and essentially only Those With Magic, from a great terrible cataclysm, though how it accomplishes it is obviously different... so... perhaps it WAS made as a means to ensure the survival of Arcanists?"

    She taps her chin, turning her eyes back towards the horizon. "But if it is, what triggers these growth spurts? Is it based on how many people the Timekeeper allows to live here, like a response to a need for more space? Or is it on a timer, or based on the amount of times the Storm has occurred, or..."

    Hands dropping to her sides, then placed on her hips, she keeps shooting off questions that likely won't have answers. "Did the maker know about the Storm, or is it just a convenient quality of this space? Was it made before the first Storm, or in response to it? If the manor hasn't changed between Storm events, could it be... it's from the original world? Sorry, timeline? Era?"
Lilian Rook     'You are quite beautiful as well today, Dame Rook!'

    Lilian seems lightly winded by that one. She considers whether to try and explain why that isn't quite the same verbal payload in return, then eventually decides against it. Besides, Sonetto is just correct, after all. She settles on "Thank you. I make it my personal habit to avoid underpreparing even when it'd likely slide. It encourages bad habits for when preparation is strictly necessary."

    'Yes! That's right! Brilliant, Lilian!'

    "Naturally." Lilian says to Regulus, tossing her hair with a little self-satisfied grin. "What a pleasant surprise to know that you know how to have a good time outside of parties."

    'It's quite pretty, isn't it? It feels oddly... relieving, in a way.'

    "I understand completely." Lilian says, without hesitation. The wonder and whimsy of the walk in the forest contained within the suitcase doesn't keep her from stating what somehow appears to be an obvious fact. "You've easily grasped something of fundamental importance; as I expected." she says, on the subject of pavement versus mysterious woods. Apparently she thinks nodding is as much clarification as it needs.

    Also, she briefly interjects with, "Can we shut up about tattoos today?" a little stiffly in the other direction.

    'I did, but only... on occasion. Not nearly so much as now.'

    "Odd. Do you think there were always birds, and the heavy mist discouraged them? Or that it might have once been simulated, and now happens to be the real thing?" Lilian says, posing the question without any real urgency. "Either one has some fascinating implications. Ah, but I think I might go mad if I had to live somewhere that I couldn't hear any other living thing for too long, so I suppose it might be best not to look a gift horse in the mouth."

    'Is... is your suitcase haunted, Timekeeper?'
    'In a manner of speaking, I suppose.'

    Lilian's gaze reexamines Vertin on the grounds of tone alone, and in finding their gait especially energetic, she smiles at some private question answered between herself and no one else. The way her stare lingers before moving away feels like a tangible '+10'. Her approval score even increments another plus two bonus for having the prudence to ask White to check the fruit. Truly there seems to be very little Vertin could do wrong right now.

    'You're having a blast, you're a natural explorer aren't you?'

    "Explorer?" Lilian replies, blinking Regulus' way as if she'd never considered it before. Looking ahead again, she idly rubs a tense spot in her neck with her fingertips, thinking on the idea. "I hadn't especially considered myself one, but in a strict sense, I suppose you're not wrong." she says, after a short delay. "But this place reminds me a bit of where I grew up. And there isn't all that much nature left on my world, so wild places like this have always felt special. I think they still do, even after years in the Multiverse."

    Being jumped by a carbuncle was outside of her expectations at the point that it happens. She had been warned about 'critters', but Lilian hadn't really hammered down an assumption of what they looked like. At least being surprised about it means that it couldn't be terribly lethal; she'd have had a premonition about it otherwise. She has, in fact, just grasped the hilt of her sword, when White smacks it away, ending the encounter before her card gets played from the spelldock. "Is it really fine to let that go?" she says, watching it scuttle off into the brush, with a misgiving tone.
Lilian Rook     'Carbuncles can be found nearly anywhere on the planet that you can also find people.'

    Lilian lets out a little puff of air. "Really? And are they all that violent?" she says. "Humanity advanced to the dawn of the twenty-first century just as usual, even though they share the Earth with magical creatures that might be dangerous to them? I'd never have gathered that from London or Chicago; they hardly seem to care."

    Given that this is an ordinary occurrence, though, Lilian decides she's sufficiently read the room, and dispatches a couple of carbuncle trash mobs with a blade-flat counter, rather than bloodying the lovely little trip. The change in the forest goes unremarked-upon; it'd be difficult for her not to notice, but Lilian doesn't think of it as necessarily all that special for a magical suitcase wilderness in the first place. Instead, what's far more worthy of note is--

    'Sonetto, may I have my telescope?'

    "You carry around a telescope?"

    'The borders... Feel like... A survival game.'
    'Was the suitcase... Supposed to be... Some kind of... Ark?'

    Lilian talks to White while Vertin is busy with the telescope, idly tapping her foot in thought. "Well, I'm glad that it has them; it wouldn't feel nearly as cozy if it were an endless or looping world." she says, first, followed by, "That does seem terribly plausible, however. That would raise several important questions though. The obvious one is 'wouldn't the creator need to have known about the Storm', but the one I'm contemplating now is 'what were the conditions for expanding it'? The only thing that's really seemed to change enough to spark it is--" She glances Sonetto's way. "--the increasing number of arcanists. Who . . ." Lilian presses her lips together from a thought she quickly shakes off, delivering the conclusion she'd already thought of with a certain sense of duty to it. "Appear to be the suitcase's 'intended inhabitants.'."
White White returns to sightseeing and makes 'binoculars' with her hands over her eyes to block out a bit more of the light while she looks around. The zoom function is built in, anyway. But it seems like she's still listening closely enough not to leave Lilian waiting too long, even having to put her thoughts together in her usual careful way. "I meant... Like between the... Types of trees. I had... A few thoughts... About the suitcase... Before today." She, ponderously, starts listing them after she's done looking around, counting on her fingers.

     "A smuggler's device. Or, a persistent Boundary Field. Or, an 'eye'... Of the storm. Maybe something... That belonged to... Whoever was there... The first time it arrived. But that's... Very hard to prove." She shakes her head a little, for emphasis, then pushes a bit of hair back from where it's shaken loose in front of her face, tucking it behind her left ear while her eyes halfway-lid and her gaze slides off Lilian to the ground in thought. "... I had thought... It was possible that... The suitcase was... Associated with her... Unidentified arcanum. But the only unique thing... Analysis brought up, was... The 'Timekeeper' title, itself..."

     It seems like she's still thinking rather hard about the subject, enough not to want to put every thing that crosses her mind to words, so she seems to be more or less just laying out the lego-blocks she's been building concepts from for Lilian to look for patterns in, before going back to her own ruminations. It takes her a while to realize something else, and turn back to Vertin with a small bow. "... I apologize. I was speaking... As if you were not... Here."
Timekeeper "I'd offer to try to figure out what makes this space selectively impervious to the Storm, but that might be a bit invasive for what is likely your home."

    "Invasive? I don't see how." Vertin nods. "If your examination will require that the suitcase be evacuated, then I'm sure I can find temporary accomodations for the others. Sonetto and I have flats with the Foundation, of course. It'd be indispensibly useful information to have."

"Can we shut up about tattoos today?"

    Catching Lilian's tone, Vertin furrows their brow and looks back at her. "Of course. Did something happen?"

"Ah, but I think I might go mad if I had to live somewhere that I couldn't hear any other living thing for too long, so I suppose it might be best not to look a gift horse in the mouth."

    "I am quite glad that it's become more lively of late. Not only the birds, but with Regulus, APPLe, and Poltergeist as well. It used to be that I'd only see Sonetto come into the manor if I asked for her time too."

    Sonetto, still holding the little wildflower in her hand, nods shortly at that. "It was rather miraculous, and useful on missions, but... I could not understand why you invested so much of your time into decorating it. But... it is rather cute, I think."

    Vertin doesn't really hesitate to eat the plum at all once White hands it back, even though White doesn't say anything. Next time she encounters one, she plucks it off and hands it to Sonetto, nodding approvingly at the dynamic.

"Humanity advanced to the dawn of the twenty-first century just as usual, even though they share the Earth with magical creatures that might be dangerous to them?"

    Vertin shakes her head a little bit, while Sonetto beams a flash of light at the ground in front of another carbuncle to scare it off. "They might share space with humanity, but like any other cryptid, it's rare for humans to encounter them. Carbuncles may be the most common, to the point that there's businesses for their extermination-- in the sixties, at least-- without resorting to Foundation resources, but even then, something's likely gone awry for a group of humans to see them. Are you familiar with the term 'cryptid'?"
Timekeeper "So where to next, Vertin?"

    "The lake, of course. Can't you feel it's important?" Even after handing off the telescope, Vertin's eyes didn't leave the direction of the misty lake in the distance. Sonetto unbuckles her messenger back to stow the telescope away and tilts her head at Vertin, confused.

    "Do you mean... that there is an arcane fluctuation that you've sensed?" But Vertin just shakes her head, motioning to lead the group back down the hill. "No. I can't explain it. Either way, we ought to investigate it."

    Down the hill and towards the lake, the group has to cross a rocky plateau-like expanse, with crevasses that split deep down into the earth. While walking, Vertin responds to White with a musing expression, watching a giant long-legged bird with a tube-shaped face perch on one of the rocks, fluffing out its feathers to absorb the sun.

    "I don't know for certain if the suitcase was 'supposed' to be anything. If it found its way into my hands by any force besides chance, then I've had my thoughts on it, but..." She looks over to Regulus quickly, to whom she'd said the word in private before. "An 'Ark' is how I've put it to use. Perhaps with terrain like this, the animals *will* survive."

    She purses her lips. "If the Storm ever progresses to the point that the extinction of species in reversal begins to become a concern, then it must have escalated to an unimaginable scale."

    The collective theory on what that 'ark' would mean in terms of arcanists worsens her mood tangibly, and she pinches the brim of her hat to tilt it down slightly. "... I don't have the answer to any of those questions. But if it was created to intentionally shelter arcanists at the expense of others, then... I would have to resent it to some degree."

    Sonetto looks worried, fretfully looking around and gripping her glasfeder. "Its maker... if the suitcase was created as an arcanist supremacist tool, in order to sift out humanity with the Storm... is it possible it was created by Manus Vindictae? They are often heavily involved in arcanist separatist groups and genocidals."

    A short shake of Vertin's head. "No Manus follower I've ever encountered has seemed familiar with it." That's all they have to refute her point, though.

    Finally, they come to the lakeshore. It's got a small rocky beach, with an overhang of fog as if it were a cool early morning despite the sun warmly overhead. Vertin approaches it curiously, looking around the pale trees in search of any potential way to get to the center of the lake where the golden fog is, but they get distracted by something else.

    A clay pot, lodged in the branches at an angle for its opening to be tilted downwards, out of which a constant stream of clear water pours. Vertin approaches it and bends her head down to look up into the opening, reaching inside, and just then, the trickle of water suddenly intensifies into a geyser that sprays Vertin full in the face, soaking her.

    A childish voice, bright and mushy with phonetic mispronounciations, rings out from seemingly nowhere with a bright and malicious giggle. "Ahahahaha~! That's what you get, you nasty little wish-wanter! It's all just spring water, so you might! as! well! leave!"
White It's hard to tell if 'remorseful' is the right word, but it seems like White senses the downturn in Vertin's mood, and takes note of it. She's quieter while Vertin shares her own thoughts, and only responds with a small nod about 'resenting it to some degree', and the quiet comment after Manus Vindictae's mention that, "It's normal... To take any tool... Available. And use it... How you see fit." It's *Vertin's* suitcase now, after all. Even if there's no reason at all for her to have it, she does.

     Following down to the lakeshore, White is a little more careful with her footing, pinching the sides of her dress to hold it taut while she walks. She's in the midst of considering some kind of earth-magic bridge to cross the lake when the pot catches her attention along with Vertin's. She's fortunate not to need to move closer to get a decent look, or she probably would've been caught by splash damage! Instead, from a slight distance away, she leans slightly toward the talking pot with a gentle squint and tries to ascertain if this is some kind of creature, enchanted object, or something else entirely. It clearly has some attitude, she can tell that much. "Miss Sonetto... Did you pack... A towel?"

If White has to provide, oh well. She might as well let the star student show off a little if she came prepared though.
Audrey Basque "Invasive? I don't see how."

    "I... can't claim to be able to solve what your Foundation hasn't been able to overnight, and I suspect, exposure to the Storm might be necessary to be sure. I have a few ideas," Audrey says, coming the closest to 'passionate' as she might have so far, turning to look at Vertin intently, "But I would have to spend time here-- make detailed measurements, place a few signs here and there. I would need considerable data to compare this inner world to the outside world, and... I fear, the most important reading of all would be to be here, during a Storm."

    Audrey lowers her head a bit-- it's painful, actually, to recall, and it's obviously on her expression as her mind shifts gear.

    "During the last one, I-- I looked at your stars. I watched the universe reconfigure itself. I *felt* it, through the sky, and..." It sucked. It sucked so much! Nevermind the fact people were *unraveling* around her.

    "If I could be here, during a Storm, if I could attune to the boundaries of this space and feel out how it reacts to the Storm's energies..."

    It's a guess. But it might yield *something*.

    "If that would be acceptable-- well, obviously, I don't mean to sound as if I'm saying "another Storm is inevitable," but you understand the need to think ahead?"

"The lake, of course. Can't you feel it's important?"

    Downhill, ever more pleasant than up.

    Though Audrey is not much of a wildlife admirer, and she's a bit worried about that fog.

"... I don't have the answer to any of those questions. But if it was created to intentionally shelter arcanists at the expense of others, then... I would have to resent it to some degree."

    "Perhaps it's not intentional? The Hidden Continent-- our ark against a cataclysm-- is poisonous to "regular humans". She presses the words. "But I don't believe it was by design. It is simply a font of magic so potent that people who can't process it have a bad time there. So-- I wonder..."

    Could you luck out into making a haven for Arcanists, and only Arcanists? Surely, it'd have to be by design... but maybe not?

"is it possible it was created by Manus Vindictae?"

    Audrey opens her mouth.
    She closes it almost immediately.

    Schneider did mention shelters... but she didn't mention if they're selective. Arcanist-only or not. It'd make *sense* for them, sure.

    She decides to keep that musing to herself.

"Ahahahaha~! That's what you get, you nasty little wish-wanter!"

    So it's convenient her thinking and agonizing silent time is interrupted by... a talking clay pot??

    That splashes Vertin?

    "Timekeeper, does your suitcase have more than one ghost?"
Regulus Regulus is glad at Lilian's positive mood. Ever since their talk about passion and rock and roll, Regulus has felt like she finally understands a shared wavelength to linger upon. Sort of like she and Sonetto have loyalty to Vertin despite often getting along like, well, cats and dogs.

"Parties are important but they're not the only important thing." Regulus admits. "I bet not every Multiversal out there has an Explorer's spirit even if by the Multiverse's nature, they all explore."

Regulus bobs her head to Vertin. "Right you are, love, we best see what's so important before we have too much of a party."

"Perhaps the suitcase just responded to you, Vertin. If you see it as an ark, it is only to have animals on board too. That's how the story goes, anyway, though most arks don't come with their own ocean. Or lakes. ... Or trees." She looks to Vertin and adds, "I'd like to think it was less made to shelter arcanists and more they didn't know how to shelter humans. But it is odd, isn't it? We aren't all so different that it is easy to imagine a phenomena like the Storm being particular in this way." She looks to Sonetto. "But if it were Manus Vindictae, why would it be given to Vertin?"

Vertin then gets splashed!

"H...hey! Hold on there! Nobody said anything about wishes!" Regulus is the sort of person who whines about misfortune but less one to make wishes upon a star. Despite this, her cheeks are puffed out with barely disguised humor. She is loyal to the Timekeeper but it is a little funny and she is not considering at all that she might also end up a target by protesting. "Is um. How'd you get here, love?"
Lilian Rook     'Of course. Did something happen?'

    Despite the perfect day, the gorgeous wilderness, the joy of exploring the mysterious forest around a magical mansion, and the pleasant company, Lilian is somehow able to clench her jaw and squeeze her arms to her chest.

    "No. Nothing. She's a liar. She doesn't have the guts."

    At least the perfect day lets her shake it off quickly.

    'I could not understand why you invested so much of your time into decorating it.'

    "Why not? Wouldn't it just be too sad to leave a marvelous thing like this all dusty and barren?" Lilian says. "Even with no mind to practicality, it's a . . . an affirming practice, I think, to add beauty to something unique. You could invoke psychological health, or call it a sort of spirituality that we've fallen out of in modern days."

    'Are you familiar with the term 'cryptid'?'

    Lilian mostly thinks about Madeleine's scooby doo machine and camping out in the woods. Then the gnomes. She frowns. "I'm aware of them, conceptually."

    . . . . . . . .

    Heading down the rocks at an unhurried pace, Lilian has simply accepted Vertin's nameless intuition as perfectly adequate fact. Where she'd have to clamber manually, she descends in elegance with tiny pulses of black static and weightless controlled fall, intending to stay at the front of the group rather than have to hurry after teleporters. For whatever reason, the increased physical activity makes her more predisposed towards thinking and not less, digging deeper into topics rather than being distracted.

    'But if it was created to intentionally shelter arcanists at the expense of others, then... I would have to resent it to some degree.'
    'Its maker... if the suitcase was created as an arcanist supremacist tool, in order to sift out humanity with the Storm...'

    "I wouldn't necessarily assume that straight away. We already don't know why arcanists are safe and humans aren't. It may be that it's simply a technical challenge that the creator was unable to solve; if indeed that is its origin." Lilian says. The thoughts come more easily, with less pause, with a task to get through. "After all, it doesn't select only for arcanists, seeing as offworld humans appear to be compatible with it. It may be that the suitcase takes advantage of some sort of reaction or interference that occurs around arcanists within it, and a certain critical mass supports additional functions."

    Hitting grass again, Lilian sighs. "I suppose I just don't see a reason to read malice into mystery. And I don't know if Manus Vindictae is an organization that's capable of producing something of beauty like this. I'd be forced to think more positively of them if they were."

    'But I don't believe it was by design. It is simply a font of magic so potent that people who can't process it have a bad time there. So--'

    Lilian finally looks at Audrey. Her stare is hard; conflicted yet quietly derisive. Her lip curls by a fraction of an inch, and she keeps moving again.

    She slows down as the group finally approaches the lakeshore, however. The contrast of cool shade to the warm inside summer is pleasant enough, but Lilian would rather let Vertin examine it first; there's nothing that her own senses would reveal any better than theirs, or so she says to herself. It'd also be nice if, for instance, there were a dangerous problem, that it get Audrey first. Pacing around the edge, Lilian contemplates to herself the similarity of--
Lilian Rook     'Ahahahaha~! That's what you get, you nasty little wish-wanter! It's all just spring water, so you might! as! well! leave!'

    A great big hose to the face isn't exactly an attack, but it's noise and motion and Vertin reeling and a sudden mysterious voice hidden in the fog, so Lilian snatches the hilt of her sword over her shoulder anyways, shrugging it lower into drawing position as she scans around the lakeside.

    "You first." says Lilian, calling blindly into the fog. She's already adjusted her breathing, ostensibly so that she can better hear a reply and gauge its direction. "Or are you going to tell us the same tired story about having 'no concept of' land ownership?" Beach gravel scrapes quietly as she adjusts one foot, and slowly lets down her messenger bag. "This wasn't all here yesterday, so it's certainly not yours." Though she trusts Sonetto to have it, Lilian spares another quick glance for Vertin to affirm that their condition isn't changing. You never know with this sort of thing. "And I'm afraid I'm not in the market for a wish either; already got one."
Timekeeper "It's normal... To take any tool... Available. And use it... How you see fit."

    White's reassurance especially is one that addresses the heart of Vertin's concerns. The particular wavelength they share is one that's hard to precisely define, but transmissions across it reengergize Vertin to shake away the brief spell of unhappiness that was clouding the wilderness expedition.

    "You're right. Whatever its intended purpose, and despite having failed to save lives with it before, there *are* two people with us who otherwise wouldn't be because of it, and I've given a comfortable home to several others as well. There's no need to become caught up in what could've been or what ought to be."

"If I could be here, during a Storm, if I could attune to the boundaries of this space and feel out how it reacts to the Storm's energies..."

    "If only I could promise that the next Storm will be less frantic." Vertin sighs, hand on top of her hat to hold it in place when a gust of wind blows across the wilderness. She gives a sidelong glance to Audrey, with a faint solemn smile. "If there's never another Storm, I'll accept any number of wasted time and useless plans thrown away because of it. I'll see what I can do to guarantee your place here when this era ends."

"Timekeeper, does your suitcase have more than one ghost?"

    That bratty little voice sourcelessly scoffs at Audrey, affronted. It's got little gasps of air when it laughed too hard, and an accent that sort of chews up consonants, so it doesn't really sound *ethereally menacing* like a ghost should be-- though, Poltergeist doesn't either.

    "A *ghost*? No. Of course I'm not a *ghost*. What..? I am a *Spring Elfin*, dummy. But I won't grant you any wishes, no-no."
Timekeeper "Miss Sonetto... Did you pack... A towel?"

    Vertin gets completely hosed by the pot for several extended seconds, like a broken fire hydrant. Her hat flies off her head, and that's the thing that breaks the spell put on Sonetto and causes her to leap into action, catching it before it can hit the ground, and then hurrying over to Vertin with her messenger bag bouncing against her leg as the water spray eases off.

    "Timekeeper! Allow me to provide you a towel!" Sonetto flips open the messenger bag and carefully but quickly extracts a full sized towel from it, wrapping it around Vertin's head and squeezing out their hair for them. After a second, Vertin takes the towel with one hand themselves and wipes it down their face, blinking their eyes clear. Apparently, they usually wear some eyeliner that's noticeable in its absence, and the wetness and loose hair emphasizes the tiny freckles across their nose.

    "I'm alright. But look, Sonetto:" Vertin holds out the hand that they reached into the pot with before getting sprayed and uncurls her fingers. Sitting in the palm of her hands is a pile of various coins, tarnished to various degrees too. "Coins. And not only that..."

    "A two pence that could only have been made after 1971. And look here, a farthing with a printing from before 1937, and here, a gold coin from the 16th century. There's sharpodontys as well."

    The voice speaks up again in wary surprise, curiously frustrated like she's being left out of the quieter conversation between Vertin and Sonetto. "What? What are you doing? Oh...? You're cleaning up the coins...?"

"And I'm afraid I'm not in the market for a wish either; already got one."

    "Hmmmph! Well *I've* never met a person who would stop at one. Greedy daydreamers insist on *three*. But,!" Somehow both the comma and exclamation point are audible there. A series of ripples appears on the surface of the lake. "The great and wise La Source will concede and mag-- magnin-- *generously and wisely* believe you! If such a person did exist then they would be only traveling with a kind guy like him!"

    The figure that emerges from the water is all of eight years old, a girl with a simple sack-like dress and brown hair with a flower tucked into it. She sloshes her way ashore, effortlessly moving through the water and then tottering on the beach with her arms folded crossly. She blinks and then reassesses Vertin. "Oh. You're a girl."

    "Aaand besides! This is my spring. I live here and you wandered up! So..." The girl-- La Source-- double takes and looks around, seemingly baffled by her surroundings. "What...? This is a different spring? Did you take me here?"

    Vertin shakes her head and then holds out the fist with the coins in them. "I'm sorry, were these coins yours? Would you like them back?"

    La Source scowls and scurries past her to snatch the pot out of the tree in both arms and hug it to her chest, shielding it with her body from the coins. "Nno! I would not. You may take them away now!"

    "Alright. I've truly got no intention of harming you or demanding a wish from you. My name is Vertin."

    La Source eyes Vertin suspiciously for a moment longer, and then puffs out her chest proudly. "Well! *Ver*tin! You have chosen smartly to be nice to the powerful La Source! For this, I will grant you one wish!"

    "What...?" This time it's Vertin's turn to be completely bemused.
White White is always glad when someone understands her easily, especially when she's trying to be helpful, so Vertin's quick recovery has White slowly nodding in a 'that's how it should be' kind of way. She could ruminate more on that feeling, but for now the not-a-ghost of the pot has most of her attention. Being sprayed with water like that probably caused more emotional damage than physical discomfort, but Vertin has proven and will continue to prove that she can bounce back quickly, as evidenced by talking about the coins. Her Evil Eye can't tell her much about the coins beyond what Vertin can rattle off the top of her head anyway, probably, so she treats that like a different front being handled by a suitable force in battle, and ignores the coins entirely.

     The small girl- La Source, supposedly- manages to baffle White enough with the confusion about Vertin's appearance that White's brows are uncharacteristically raised when she squats down to be closer to eye level. It's more of a habit than a conscious decision or necessity; it's just ingrained in her by this point that trying not to scare kids goes over better for her in the long run.

     "Are you..." she starts, looking La Source in the eyes but briefly glancing in Vertin's direction, then looking back with a little tilt of her head. "Disappointed?" She can't quite put her finger on why that'd be the case if pressed, she's just getting vague fey-trope vibes... Maybe La Source is going to be Vertin's mascot and unleash her true potential? Wouldn't that be exciting? Timekeeper Magical Girl!

It's in this state of mind that White reacts to the announcement that Vertin has won herself a wish, by slowly golf-clapping for Vertin. 'Go on then! Say something clever!' she thinks. Nobody will blame you for wasting a wish on something funny or thoughtful! ... Well, White won't at least. She's already kind of assuming the wish isn't really all that notable in practice.
Regulus Regulus tenses as the voice speaks out again, no doubt anticipating that a second spray of water's about to smash into her (this suggests that Regulus experiences such immediate comeuppance enough that she instinctively prepares for it) but when it doesn't come, there's a vaguely suspicious expression on her face like something's not going quite right. Maybe it's just waiting until she lowers her guard... Again. Like she just did. But more so because the first time didn't result in any problems.

''Greedy daydreamers insist on three.''

"Isn't that genies?" Regulus blurts out.

She gets a look at the coins. It's all over the place.

"...Huh..." Is this 'Spring' this elfin girl from also timeless? Is that how it ended up in the suitcase? there's so many questions, but maybe it's okay to just let mysteries be mysteries right now.

''I will grant you one wish!''

"I thought you didn't want wishes..." Regulus scratches at her head. "Are you fine so long as it's one?"

She glances at Vertin and gives her a shrug.
Lilian Rook     'I'll see what I can do to guarantee your place here when this era ends.'

    "Though it may be rude of me to say so, I'd advise you against putting too much stock in her abilities. Especially if it means going out of your way at a time like the Storm." Lilian says, not sounding sorry about it at all. If there's anything to it, it's only an abundance of caution for Vertin's sake. "You have quite an admirable attitude, though. I'm not certain if I'd call it 'optimism' or 'gratefulness', but whatever it is, it isn't common."

    . . . . . . . .

    For whatever reason, even stanced up with a sword in hand, Lilian naturally avoids looking at Vertin with no hat. With the pressing need to pay attention to her surroundings, she can't help but 'seeing in that direction', but her eyes slide over Sonetto helping her; like she'd see something vaguely inappropriate if she dind't. Not that it's helping much to be on the lookout right now anyways.

    'What..? I am a *Spring Elfin*, dummy.'

    Half an inch of Night Mist's blade clears the scabbard. Lilian slowly lowers her hold to her waist.

    'A two pence that could only have been made after 1971. And look here, a farthing with a printing from before 1937, and here, a gold coin from the 16th century. There's sharpodontys as well.'

    "What does that mean?" Lilian asks, brisk and all business now. "It'd have to be from several storms ago if so, and that doesn't check out." Only a half-beat passes. "Are you certain they aren't just being manifested by magic? Faerie types always love to conjure up all sorts of things to get your attention."

    'Hmmmph! Well *I've* never met a person who would stop at one. Greedy daydreamers insist on *three*.'

    "Having one granted was quite enough for me." Lilian says. She sounds a little bit like she's just shooting banter back and forth with the mystery presence out of mindless Elite-ness, but it's also like she's taking the premise a little too seriously for the situation as well. "So I'm not exactly keen to start on a second or third. I'm afraid your little spring is quite useless to me." she says, now focusing on the clay pot as a hail mary. "And daydreaming about 'what if I had three wishes' is the province of the terminally lazy in the first place. So isn't reverse psychology a bit childish? " Well, the voice does sound like it. But who knows if it'll be a provocation instead?

    'If such a person did exist then they would be only traveling with a kind guy like him!'

    Lilian spins around suddenly, looking for the appearance of a Hidden Boy. Her eyes fall on APPLe, then cloud with doubt.

    'Oh. You're a girl.'

    Night Mist slides to three quarters of an inch exposed, then is snapped back into the scabbard out of embarrassment. Because the ~spring elfin~ is like a tiny baby and it'd just look stupid to still be stancing up. That's definitely why.

    'Alright. I've truly got no intention of harming you or demanding a wish from you. My name is Vertin.'

    Lilian exhales, then straightens up. "Lucky you, Timekeeper. It's not a very dangerous one." she says. "If French." comes across like a non sequitur. Perhaps registering that La Source has a name is responsible for shifting Lilian's tack, given she changes to saying "If you ned her shown out, only say the word." next.

    'For this, I will grant you one wish!'
    'What...?'

    "What?"

    Lilian double takes, looks back at La Source, blinks, and then follows up with "What . . . ?" to White before she's even said anything.
Lilian Rook     'Are you fine so long as it's one?'

    "Hey-- I wouldn't if I were you." Lilian hastens from her stunned standstill, moving towards Regulus at a brisk pace, as if proximity could make her less silly. "I know you pathologically hate rules and all, but there are rules against doing what you're thinking of doing, and for good reason." She's definitely convinced Regulus is about to try One Wish in a sufficiently broad context to try and get three wishes of value now.

    "If she's just being a little quirked up for now, I'd prefer that you stick to talking it out." Lilian says, making it totally unambiguous by her tone alone that she'd begrudge Regulus for having to intervene on her behalf much more than she would Vertin.
Audrey Basque "If there's never another Storm, I'll accept any number of wasted time and useless plans thrown away because of it."

    "Yeah..."

    The girl who has absolutely thrown her lot in with the people who intend to cause more Storms, still finds the ability to be truthful. "I'd rather not witness another Storm if it can be helped. But if it can't, I'll be ready to try decrypting at least this mystery."

    She has interest in Manus' own shelters, too. It's not even strictly about solving the problem, it's motivated by protecting *herself* too. There's no telling how far it might spread, and she does *not* want to unravel.

    And a bit, just a bit, about the mystery of it.
    The suitcase is relevant to a little side-project of hers, and watching the way it behaves, feeling it out... data is data.

Lilian!

    It's hard not to notice the Stares. She's been noticing them since her last time at Trideag, and clearly nothing has improved! Does she know? Tamamo surely told her everything.

    But does she know it's pretty much over?
    Well, it wouldn't matter, would it?
    Things are shot either way.

    There's a desire, to stomp a foot down, spin on it, and demand an answer. And the equally strong desire to crawl into a hole and keep playing the silly ignore game, for what little it'll do.

    Maybe whatever's in this pot *will* spring out and eat her head and spare her the rest of this. Or Lilian's head? If only. No such luck.

    Audrey frowns, the whirlwind of thoughts interrupted by--

"Though it may be rude of me to say so, I'd advise you against putting too much stock in her abilities."

    "You--"

    Audrey grits her teeth.
    She's so close to actually saying something!

    She takes a deep breath, lets her body deflate, and sighs.

    "I can come back here on my own, now that I've been here and taken a second to feel around. I won't waste the Timekeeper's time during a crisis, so rest assured I won't be a burden when the time comes."

    Deep breaths. Don't be Sarracenia. Don't be Sarracenia fucking Sundew. Petra's voice still echoes that one.

"A *ghost*? No. Of course I'm not a *ghost*. What..? I am a *Spring Elfin*, dummy. But I won't grant you any wishes, no-no."

    Audrey turns back away from Lilian and Vertin, to inspect the girl whose land they are supposedly trespassing upon. "Oh. My apologies."

    A wish, though?

    The coins-- so it's not just bound to this pot, or maybe the pot has been other places? Like one of those fountains you're supposed to throw coins into for good luck, but that just raises *so* many questions.

"Did you take me here?"

    And she's answering none of them! She's just providing more.

    "Do you remember the last place you were at? You mentioned "your spring". Where was that? Evidently not here."
Timekeeper "Especially if it means going out of your way at a time like the Storm."

    Earlier, Vertin nods at Lilian and Audrey, considering their opposing words. "It wouldn't be fair of me to put the entirety of the pressure of solving any aspect of the Storm on a single person. I don't intend to force my hopes onto one project."

"Isn't that genies?"

    "If you want a genie then go and find one!" La Source retorts angrily at Regulus, seemingly entirely missing the point of what she said. A bloop of water splashes out of the lake and sloshes over Regulus, presumably at the fey's command.

"Disappointed?"

    Arms acrossed, La Source pouts at White when she squats down, and then stretches up on her tiptoes so that she's now *taller* than White and can look down at her. "Disappoint-ed? Why would *I* be? *I'm* totally happy in *my* lake, and if *you're* disappointed at *me* then I don't care. I'm as powerful as anyone."

    She seems to really have a hangup about *something*, but it's hard to tell what! The pot is, on White's inspection, a 'part' of the fey, bound to her in a personal magical item way. It'll always eventually find its way back to her if lost, it generates infinite water, and its hurtbox can basically be considered equivalent with her own.

"And daydreaming about 'what if I had three wishes' is the province of the terminally lazy in the first place."

    "Right, right you are!" La Source dances a little between her feet, sloshing water out of her pot. She seems pleased in a maliciously vindicated way, rather than scolded, by Lilian's words, but it's all mostly drowned out by eagerness to be... agreed with? "The wishers are all terminially *lazy* bums who can't even do anything for themselves. Shouldn't they know you can't get something for nothing?"

    The next time anyone looks at her, Vertin already has her hat back on. It, and the rest of her outfit, is utterly drenched, and the teal ribbon tied around the hat is dripping onto her shoulder, but somehow this does absolutely nothing to change her aesthetic. If anything, it fits her more this way.
Timekeeper "It'd have to be from several storms ago if so, and that doesn't check out."

    Despite being soggy, Vertin is precisely professional right back at Lilian, either from their personal demeanor, or from interpreting Lilian's nerves. They hold the coins out for Lilian to see, angled so that La Source still isn't exposed to them. "I'm not sure. There's no record I know of in the Foundation of such a fey, and even though she's plausibly that long-lived, that doesn't explain the coins from the future."

    Vertin tilts her palm, searching for a gleam of something that isn't light. "I don't sense any arcane fluctuations off of them. Either the coins are very very old illusions, or they're real."

    Sonetto, matching Lilian, has her fingers gripping her glasfeder. Maybe to Lilian's vindication, she's in her usual stance of having her left hand folded behind her back, but her footwork is noticeably more in line with a fencing guard. "Timekeeper? Dame Rook? Do you believe that she's dangerous?"

    "Hold off for now, Sonetto. Let her explain how she's ended up here."

"Do you remember the last place you were at? You mentioned "your spring". Where was that?"

    "The *forest*! Not some weird place like here!" The area near the lake is, in fact, a forest. It makes sense, maybe, that a several century old water fairy wouldn't necessary define her home by political boundaries, though.

    La Source stomps her foot with a helpless wet thwacking noise on the rock, then starts clambering around to get a better look at the environment. She teeters around, using both arms to hold onto her pot and therefore having none to help herself balance. "I remember... there was a biiiiig rainstorm, and all the birds and the shrews and the foxes were acting all weird. And *then*, my precious, precious spring water, instead of coming up from under the ground, it went up and up above it!"

    Her voice confusedly squeaks at the end, childishly careless. There's a verbal shrug like 'iunno!' while she regains her balance. "And theennnn... I don't remeber, because I was sleeping for a while, probably. And now I'm in this *weirdo* forest. Who *are* you?"

    Vertin says aside, "She doesn't seem like she means any harm. If she's that long lived... perhaps there's odd side effects with entities that lived throughout the entire 20th century, and so the Storm can never reverse 'away'. Stay on your guard, but I have an idea."

    Vertin steps forwards to address her. "La Source, I do have a wish after all. Would you be able to transport me and my companions to the center of this lake? Is there an island there?"

    La Source squints at her, tipping the pot over to splash water onto the rocks. "Oh, that's *easy*. That's barely even a wish! You *know* that's super easy, don't you?"

    "It's very easy for the powerful Spring Elfin, maybe, but not so easy for me. In return, maybe I can do something easy for me that's hard for you? Such as ensuring that no one comes to your lake to ask for wishes from you?"

    "What! What?! You can *do* that?! Well, go on, get in the water!"
Timekeeper     The lake isn't that deep, at least not at the edges, but when the group steps into it, ripples start swirling around them at the elfin's command. Vertin says, low under her breath, "Sonetto, prepare a teleport ritual disk in case anything goes wrong. White, Lilian, be on guard to teleport whoever you can as well."

    Nothing actually ends up going wrong, when the current shifts to carry slash drag them across the surface of the lake. The golden mist at the center obscures the tiny island within an island until they're past the perimeter of the mist, and it only gets denser deeper within. The swampy ground only rises partway out of the lake, with cattails and long grasses slumped over to show where's shallow enough to walk, and Vertin and Sonetto pull themselves up onto it with a boost from La Source.

    There's an odd dreamlike quality to the island. The mist shifts and swirls around, superimposing hazy colors without sight, scenes from moments that aren't this one, like a dream. Vertin seems entranced by something, but when she lifts up her hand and cups it around something, there's nothing there.

    "There's... a thread? What is this place? It's... insubstantial, like smoke. I can't...."

    The fog lays weightless on your skin, and the water around your ankles parts as easily as air. The boundaries between the reflection in the water and the eddies in the gold mist blur and swirl together, in a steady, intangible flow, like fingers of ghosts running through your skin and hair. Vertin follows a line only they can see, towards the perfect center of this world, where a wooden spinning wheel rests just barely out of the water.

    The dreamlike state of the island blurs on the brink of unconsciousness, losing moments between each step and leaving patches in awareness that fill in with warm memory. Vertin seems unaffected, reaching out to the spinning wheel, until a splash from Sonetto collapsing causes them to whirl around and then dive for the disk in her hands. "A spinning wheel...? --! Sonetto! What's going on?! La Source, get us out of here!"
Regulus Regulus waves her hands at Lilian in protest. "Ah--no, I mean, I wouldn't...! Where's the adventure in that?" If Regulus were the type to make wishes she definitely would be the type to wish for three wishes, but the things she'd wish for don't seem to be right to get by simply by wishing for. She doesn't necessarily think she needs to work hard for everything but...

"I mean if I were to--"

She is distracted and that means it's time... FOR LA SOURCE SEVEN STAR HEAVY WEIGHT LA SOURCE TO STRIKE!

SPLOOSH

Regulus is now drenched. "C...Captain overboard..." She says in a daze before sitting down right there and the floor and then flopping over onto her back as she drip drip drips.

"I was just saying..." She whines on the floor there. "I didn't even wish for anything..."

APPLe patpats consolingly on REgulus's shoulder.

''To the center of this lake?''

"Really admire how you can roll with anything, Vertin. One second." She rolls back up into a crouch and then upo to her feet. Still dripping. "Alllright, then... This pirate's ready to go."

On the plus side, she's already wet, so she might as well start ... going into the water?

The mist shifts and swirls around and--

A thread?

"I don't see it, love." Regulus says. "In case you were wondering."

She lets out a faint yawn as she steps forward, strangely and--

"I do see the wheel but--"

But then Sonetto collapses.
Audrey Basque "And *then*, my precious, precious spring water, instead of coming up from under the ground, it went up and up above it!"

    "You... survived a Storm?"

    She looks at Vertin, whose expertise likely has no answer for this either. "Or maybe you were unwillingly transported here, which is what saved you...?" She couldn't say or know. But at least she's friendly?

Lake.

    Audrey contains her protests. And it's surely for the best, because the lake's odd properties affect her the same as everyone. She's following after Vertin, insofar as the strange sensations and gradually worsening dreamlike state makes it possible. The center-- she can feel that. Not the wheel, but the properties of the area, the special qualities of the space itself.

    Though she can see the wheel, barely, between heavy blinks and the sudden feeling of losing whole seconds between them.

    Sonetto collapses, and it takes Audrey entirely too long to process it. By the time she has, there's no doubt they'll have been pulled out already, and she's going to need a fair few more seconds to snap out of the eepy state.
White White is, for just a moment, stricken with the slight impulse to be competitive about height with the little water-fairy when she strains to be 'taller' after White squats. Thankfully she's able to control the impulse, leaving her blankly staring at La Source for a few extra moments. "Nevermind... Then. Thank you... Miss La Source." She doesn't know if she's supposed to be omitting the 'La', but given somehow nobody has ever challenged her universal use of Miss or Mister with their names she's not inclined to put more thought into it now of all times.

     White might not be good at swimming, but she's unafraid to wade partway into the water and wait. When the water does shift to carry them across, she spreads her hands out to steady herself and stay upright until reaching the other side. This won't be the first time she went home from a 'mission' soaking wet. In fact, it's starting to become more common than the alternative. At least her boots suit her well here, and she doesn't struggle to trudge out of the water again... But the sensations caused by the fog, the lapses in awareness, those are another story. It's her reflexive attempt to use the Evil Eye to examine the fog itself- and more specifically the struggle to concentrate that results from it- that actually tips her off to something being genuinely wrong.

     She could be said to be advantaged, having multiple 'backup' minds to rely on while the active one is faltering, but it's all relative when her Parallel Minds still feel like they're being knocked over as fast as they can recover, and constantly shifting between active minds isn't exactly good for control of the body. Physically, she probably starts to drop not long after Sonetto even as one mind or another keeps her somewhat conscious and more or less upright on her knee.

     In the moment, taken by surprise, it's the best she can do to recognize that the cause can't be asphyxiation or strange fumes, and to make good on the warning she was given before they made it to this point. Like it's becoming a questionable habit White reaches out to hook her fingers a bit too roughly into Regulus and Audrey's collars (or else casts out slightly haphazard web-strands to haul them under her arms if they're a little too far) and effortfully begins the teleportation back across to the opposite shore. There's a momentary flicker of energy before she resorts to using a proper glyph to keep the spell properly shaped, and White crooks her arms tighter around whoever she's grabbed in order to reach her own face and smack her palms against her own cheeks.

It's, well, the first thing she could think of as a non-sleeper to try and keep herself focused. If Vertin and Sonetto teleported somewhere else via disk, she can always go find them later. If Vertin or Lilian succumbed to the eepy vibes themselves, White should probably still be able to get back to them and get them out... Provided she has a moment to get her Minds back in order and maybe hype herself up a little first. Woof, she does not miss being a sleeper...
Lilian Rook     'You--'

    Lilian sharply breaks her habit of ignoring Audrey's existence for that. In the space of one word, a single syllable, her focus is nowhere but. The sound of her voice falls from casually prim to softly edged. "Yeah? What about me?"

    'I can come back here on my own, now that I've been here and taken a second to feel around. I won't waste the Timekeeper's time during a crisis, so rest assured I won't be a burden when the time comes.'

    "Tsh."

    Lilian gives up just as quickly, and looks away again, as if she couldn't care less. "That's what I thought." she says, rolling her eyes with her tone alone. Subtly, her fingers slide away from the hilt of her sword at her waist a second time.

    'It wouldn't be fair of me to put the entirety of the pressure of solving any aspect of the Storm on a single person. I don't intend to force my hopes onto one project.'

    Lilian shakes her head. "All I meant was to be careful where you place those hopes in the first place. The Multiverse can seem wondrous and filled with limitless miracles, but those familiar with them will better tell you just how predictable they really are."

    'Right, right you are!'

    Honestly, after how wary and hostile Lilian just was, very obviously, towards La Source, being giddily agreed with surprises her as much as anything is surprising Vertin; or at least nearly as much. Succumbing to the bad habit of looking around suddenly, as if trying to find who is really being agreed with, Lilian replies on a slight delay. "I mean, everyone has wishes. It's not wrong to yearn for things. But being dead serious about the idea is-- no, even spending your time pining out loud about how much easier it should all be is just humiliating." Even if she'd begun that sentence 'in defense of people wanting things', Lilian just ended up blurting out unalloyed feelings by the end of it anyways.

    "I mean, they could at least-- I feel like I'm always talking about this." she says, continuing in a bit of a co-conspiratorial huff. "People are always so staggered when I beat them to everything, but it's really just because I put in more effort than they did! And it's always because they only think they were trying, because they don't know the difference between 'effort' and 'ritual', you know?! Rather than seriously researching what they need to do, setting goals, drafting a plan, and seriously trying to improve, they just, like, go through the motions of working towards what they want, and hold their hands out for someone to just give it to them! Like it's a trade! You know?! 'I did the thing I'm supposed to, so reward me with success'! And if it doesn't fall into their lap then they're undervalued and victims of the universe; oh my god bite me!"

    Lilian realizes she is exasperatedly meangirling with a nine year old a second later, and clams up all of a sudden, face partly red.

    'Timekeeper? Dame Rook? Do you believe that she's dangerous?'

    "In as much as any faerie is." Lilian says, somewhat unhelpfully. As if Sonetto should be as familiar with the subject is. "If it were me, I wouldn't exactly worry, but I wouldn't be quick to take my eyes off of her either. Though, for what it's worth, if she typically had malicious intent, she'd be far better at lying." She pauses, glances down at Sonetto's stance, and smiles very, very slightly.
Lilian Rook     'And theennnn... I don't remeber, because I was sleeping for a while, probably. And now I'm in this *weirdo* forest. Who *are* you?'
    'perhaps there's odd side effects with entities that lived throughout the entire 20th century, and so the Storm can never reverse 'away'.'

    That's a lot to take in. Lilian has her theories, but she only shares one. "That'd be convenient if so, but it's also possible that the Storm's medium of 'water' applies differently to spirits inextricably bound to water. Either she's 'rained back down' before, or the previous owner of the suitcase had it out in the rain no earlier than the seventies."

    'It's very easy for the powerful Spring Elfin, maybe, but not so easy for me.'

    Lilian looks over at Sonetto, eyeing Vertin approvingly, and says, "She does know how to handle them, doesn't she? Almost better than with humans."

    'White, Lilian, be on guard to teleport whoever you can as well.'

    Y-yeah. Lilian can. Definitely do that. Teleport. She holds her breath unconsciously, before realizing that Vertin didn't ask Audrey, and that gives her enough momentum to confidently nod. The caution she shows is mostly in her footing, and as a distant second, La Source's generalized intent. That caution heightens when they reach the island, but out of instinct, followed by general unease, rather than anything specific. These sorts of figments, scattered and incoherent, without a specific alignment with any one sense or form, are something she's been taught to feel more tension towards than any faerie illusion.

    'There's... a thread?'

    "What?" Lilian turns around to look, and seeing nothing in Vertin's hand, trains her magical senses on it next, metaphorically squinting to try and make out whatever Vertin can. Surely it's a difference in sensory fidelity. Otherwise, it's a mind-altering effect that's ostensibly singled them out of the group for no foreseeable reason. In the midst of trying to discern the two, Lilian feels a subtle mismatch in the pace of her own elevated heart rate, and then realizes that she can't recall what she was trying to think, specifically, for the past six seconds. Her next step, automatic, plants unevenly in the marsh, and her balance wobbles dangerously as her knee doesn't quite fully engage.

    "Wait . . ." Three seconds. "This isn't good." Four that time. It's like being more exhausted than she can remember, but without the ambient grain of misery like in the final days of Lobotomy Corp. Lilian runs through her entire mental checklist, greenlighting everything she can assess; five things, four counts, three steps of induction, two opposites, one contiguous concept; and then becomes groggily aware of the fact that she's been staring at a wooden spinning wheel for ten seconds without really noticing. In a hurry, she concludes that her senses are failing rather than her brain, as she were half-asleep, and then finds nothing useful about knowing that. "We should--"

    Sonetto splashes into the water. Lilian catches herself on her sword instead. Perhaps it should be expected from a woman who's said that she was trained to the point she'd guard herself automatically even when shoved out of bed, but it's still a worrying sign that she had to at all. More worrying is the fact that she can't actually 'teleport' out of here like White can; there is a distinct point of no return where she'll crash back into the lake on the way back if this sleepiness doesn't abate with distance, and she isn't eager to stay long enough to test it.
Lilian Rook     Lilian pushes herself up with Night Mist as a support, tries to say "Sorry Vertin." only for it to come out inarticulately tired, and leaves behind a ripple of black static and a lingering arc of very faded arcane energy, pointing to somewhere on the shore, close to where White is. She doesn't dare use cold water to wake herself up; the next best thing is deliberately punching a rock, and hoping her stifled whine of pain doesn't carry too far.

    "--Oh fuck me running. Regulus!"