I locked myself in the scrying tower

and took shelter behind a bookcase for a while, until the panic subsided and it became apparent that the ghost was not pursuing me.

As I huddled there, mulling over recent events, I came to a few realizations.  Everyone and everything was out to get me.  Even Lady Fuma herself seemed to have some sort of vendetta, because her blessing of Luck had led me inexorably to my current situation.  To add further insult, the few people who seemed to genuinely want to help me wound up suffering for it.

There was no avoiding the conclusion that my life sucked.

After a while I got tired of hiding.  I got up and decided I might as well try to do something constructive.

I peered into the scrying orb, but of course there was nobody around to spy on, and my range of vision stopped short at the edge of the forest.  That meant the rabbits' prayers were still having their effect.

I continued practicing the martial exercises Adoyret Sam had taught me, so I wouldn't lose my fighting edge.

I decided to pass the time by experimenting with the Gate.  I needed to be able to precisely control the time slips, and there was nothing else to do, so I devoted all of my remaining energy to this task.  Working from what I had read in the theory books, and advice that had been given by various elves, I traversed the Gate over and over.  I walked, I skipped, I jumped, I perambulated, I lunged, I hopped, I writhed, I slunk, I slithered, I even Pooked.  Each time I tried to gauge my results, but there was a problem.

I had no means of precisely measuring time on either side of the Gate.  I could set up an hourglass, but if the sand ran out I'd have no way of knowing how long ago that had happened.  On the Faerie side, everything was dead and absolutely nothing changed.  I could tell the difference between morning, noon, and night, but beyond that there was no way to know if it was the same day, or a week later, or a year.  On the lowfolk side I could at least consult the trees, but their concept of time was very vague.  They paid attention to the dates for budding, flowering, fruit, and fall ... but in between was kind of a blur.  In the spring, some of them could count days since the last frost - but only up to five.  After asking them several times how long I had been gone, and being told "it's still the same summer," I gave up on them and started trying to figure out how long it took a dandelion to wilt after picking.

I was engaged in this research when Lana Lynne showed up.  She hadn't made a sound; not even her bell jingled to alert me of her approach.  I simply turned around from my dandelion experiment, and there she was.

PREV http://www.patreon.com/posts/89294384

NEXT http://www.patreon.com/posts/90005661