On the first day of the second week of Loshis, when the near-constant rain and the earth had had plenty of time to grow acquainted and large mud puddles had begun to spawn on every patch of ground, the school bells began to ring out for the first time in a week. Distracted, Harper Moore walked directly under a stream of water falling from a drain spout.

He scrunched up his face and stood in one place for a moment, sulking, but there was no time for that; the carriage, and Abeline, would be waiting near the gates.

Regretting that his hat was not the water-repellent kind, he strode on past the dormitories and street after street's worth of row houses, all bustling with morning activity as the younger students attended their classes on practical magic and other academic subjects. His rainboots squelched in the thick mud and the sodden grass in the patches of broken cobbles, which were many (he had to wonder why such a wealthy school couldn't do proper repairs, or if they simply preferred the austere atmosphere of disrepair) and irregularly spaced. On his back was a large modified knapsack, the contents of which clearly were not meant to fit inside an oil-silk tarp of any shape; it was heavy enough to stretch his spine backwards as he walked.

The gates were usually busy in the early mornings, but that particular day there was practically a stampede of activity; returning students, laden with gifts from St. Grumbles and large unwieldy trunks and suitcases, hurried to get their papers signed and re-enter the school. Yells and catcalls and laughter bounced off the red stone walls and hurt his ears. The professor wasted no time in hurrying past the outer gates, nodding to the one guard he recognized.

A rented carriage, plain and black and aggravatingly last-century, had been waiting for them by the pavilion for some time. It was little more than a buggy with room in the back for stoage and a thin cover over the driver's seat. Upon closer inspection it appeared to have been in several fender-benders - with large mammals, with sharp teeth - as scratches along the side would indicate. An irritated old nag was tethered to the front.

"The University spares no expense," muttered Harper to himself as he stood looking at the forlorn little vehicle.

Abeline was, indeed, waiting there. To occupy herself before the professor arrived, she had taken to critically inspecting the buggy's structural integrity. The dilapidated, beetle-like conveyance didn't look like it could withstand a stiff breeze, let alone a long journey into territory claimed by frightful entities of unknown origin.

And this was why she hadn't slept well. A startling variety of dreadful scenarios had occurred to her over the last few days, and her imagination seemed to take perverse delight in generating new ones at every waking moment. And every non-waking moment, for that matter. The potential calamities of the day had played out in her mind in so many and varied ways, that she was not entirely convinced she was presently experiencing the final facts of the matter.



On hearing Harper's voice, she turned to him slowly, still lost in detached contemplation. Her eyes, darkened by insomnia, lingered quizzically on his soggy hat, and she glanced at the grey, rainless clouds above.

"I now see your paranoia is justified. Even the weather is out to get you," she remarked, a gentle, endeared smirk briefly touching her lips. Almost forgetting her manners, she hastily added, "Oh, and good morning, sir." The healer bowed lightly, hesitatingly, clearly more distracted than intentionally brusque.

She pointed timidly at the knapsack. "I know we've been over this before, but are you absolutely certain you wish to join me on this fool's errand? Running off on a wild ghost chase can't exactly be healthy for your reputation.. which, I'm sure I needn't remind you, is hanging by a rather thin thread..."

In truth, she was profoundly thankful for his aid; his knowledge and experience were invaluable, his brilliance incalculable... Difficult though it was to admit, especially of a man she hardly knew, she would be utterly lost without him. Well. Perhaps not lost, per se, and surely not helpless, but.. something about having an earnest colleague by her side was deeply reassuring. Possibly even delightful.

"Seems like it," he replied brightly, pleased that she was already here. He returned the bow, a little unsteadily as he had to balance the extremely large and cumbersome pack as he did so. "Cheers. It is indeed a good morning, but I admit I have seen better..."

Groaning, he set the pack down in the grass beside the carriage, where it was protected from the heavy dew by a leather padding (haphazardly sewn on that morning).



Harper held up a finger chidingly as he hefted the sack into the storage compartment in the back.

"Now Abeline, please," he said, breathless with the effort of lifting the pack, which apparently contained the heavy machinery of the motion picture machine they had modified. "Not a word further about my - oof- reputation, or lack thereof. At least ghosts eventually come back to life." He smiled as he leaned into the stubborn machine. "On any given day, a good puzzle is far more worthy of my concern, and damned if this isn't a - uhff -"

He gave the camera spectra one last push and it landed neatly on the cushion in the back. With a crow of victory, Harper clapped his hands.

"Next time, I shall make it out of wood," he said, rubbing his aching back.

"If worse comes to worse, we can use it as a shield," the healer quipped with a jolly, if slightly manic, grin.

She had considered helping him load the heavy machine onto the carriage, but the awkwardness of the sack and the smallness of the space it was to occupy would make a second pair of hands counter-productive. So she contented herself with hovering nearby like an expectant bee. When all was said and done, she lifted her own bag (containing a first aid kit, some light reading material, and a notebook) and cautiously placed it atop the shapeless mound of cutting-edge technology.

"That's it, then?" She gave Harper a fleeting, owlish glance, seemingly to check that he hadn't vanished. In the back of her mind, she still expected him to lose interest in her odd introverted self, as so many others had -- but that was a tiny, sheepish detail on a mountainside of far more concrete anxieties.

The hummingbird of a brunette flitted to the buggy's side, levering herself half-way into it. She paused there, one leg dangling free, stopped short by an amusing thought.

"Say, I know this vehicle is rather small, but our selves and the equipment will lend it a certain, erm, gravitas, and I'm not sure the locomotive engine," she nodded to indicate the wheezing animal, "can pull us to the end of the street, let alone our destination." She fell into the seat next to the driver's, and her voice lowered with an antsy sort of bitterness, "Wouldn't that be fun."

Harper put a lanky leg up and hoisted himself into the driver's seat, feeling slightly surprised that Abeline had not insisted on driving herself. The roof over the buggy brushed the top of his head so that he was forced to crane his neck uncomfortably.

"Oh dear, that could be a problem," he said, turning to the old mare, which looked close to death. Cocking an eyebrow, he looked over at Abeline, noticing with an awkward crushing feeling how very small the carriage actually was. He chuckled nervously. "Er, I don't suppose you could modify an Adrenaline spell to keep the old girl going? Or some sort of stabilizing combination? I don't know anything about equine anatomy..."

"I'm afraid I don't, either," she said, nervously scooting away to allow room for the spindly fellow. She couldn't get very far.

"I'm no country veterinarian. I'm from Vienda, where you either walk or hire someone to drive for you.. so my experience with horses is limited to watching where I step." She adjusted her spectacles and squinted at the creature, trying to determine its sex and remaining mystified. "Besides, I don't think our aged friend here could withstand monic meddling. I fear for the poor thing's ticker."

"Let's.." Abe started, scrunching up further. She had been hoping the voyage would allow the two time to get closer, but not quite so literally. "L-let's just get there already."

Harper held up his hands in a mock "no offense!".



"As you wish," he replief, secretly planning on at least securing the wretched thing's horseshoes if they had a stop along the way; taking up the reins, he gave them a quick crack.

Nothing happened for at least five seconds. A light pitter-patter of light rain began on the roof of the carriage, and the sweet sound of birdcall sounded in the distance.

After five seconds, the horse's nerves had apparently had sufficient time to react and carry a signal to its brain, which spend the next half-second trying to catch up, and, by a kinder estimation than Professor Moore's next uttered syllables, might have overcorrected a bit.

They were jolted back into their seats as the horse took off at a physically improbable canter, which soon evolved into a breakneck gallop. Fragments of startled yelps, mingled with laughter and the squawking of chickens, rose up all around them as they tore out of the carriage station; Harper had to wonder where the chickens came from, and why they always seemed to accompany these sort of mishaps. The wheels bounced on the muddy cobbles for several moments until they reached the dirt road, which led west away from the University.

After he had finished swearing creatively under his breath, Harper remembered there was a lady in the seat next to him, and cleared his throat as he attempted to slow the horse's pace. It seemed a little more comfortable off the cobbles, and slowed gently to a slightly wobbly gait after a moment. The cabin held, if creakily, and the luggage was still mercifully safe in the back compartment.

The day was pleasant enough despite the rain; as Loshis mornings go, it was a bit less dreary and grey than most. The road along the Brunnhold wall was well-worn from ages and ages of travelers, and it looked down on a shallow valley, a forlorn landscape of heather and rocks and thick bushes. Up ahead, small copses decorated the rolling hills, and they could see ahead to where the road dipped off beyond the red walls of Brunnhold and became lost in the mist.

Unprepared for the sudden acceleration, Abe fell back in her seat with a tiny, startled, "Oof!"

Once she processed the scenes rapidly flying past, she laughed. The noise could hardly be considered musical (unless said music involved an out-of-tune clarinet and a frolicsome goose; it was perfectly at home among the squawking chickens), but her bright laughter was at least a genuine display emotion from the otherwise reserved healer.

As they passed dodging pedestrians, she tried to give them apologetic looks, but found she couldn't. Her eyes refused to be anything but happy crescents, and her cheeks, flushed with embarrassment, couldn't release their hold on her wide smile. It occurred to her to worry for the children in the street, and she did, but the morbid thought only spurred her inappropriate fit of giggles.

At last, their borrowed animal -- apparently a retired racehorse -- had seen reason, thanks to Harper's coaxing. Just how he had accomplished this was clean beyond her, and, to avoid staring at him stupidly, she twisted around to check on the luggage. After giving the machine a conciliatory pat, she collected her notebook and a pen.

Holding the notebook close to prevent the rain from damaging it, she smiled meekly to him. "Might as well start the record now-- oh."

An errant white feather was sitting smugly on his shoulder, presumably a parting gift from gallus domesticus. Her hand twitched, but, either too polite or too cowardly, stayed in place, incapable of removing the offender. However, she couldn't allow such anarchy to persist. She pursed her lips resolutely and puffed on the feather; it departed obediently.

The untidy room of Harper's mind was already full to bursting with artifacts from his thought process; he was too preoccupied to notice the feather. Bits of ideas and sentence fragments passed through him like a stock ticker. Ghosts and the antelife. Film shutters. Monic pathways and their connection with the land. Chickens. Moving pictures. Angus' drawings. Fred's concern for Alisoina. Passive nexus. Abeline's charming laugh. What was that last one? Nexus...

The professor glanced over, and was at a loss as to why she was blowing air at him. He did a double take.

"What? Oh. Records? Yes. Did you just...?" He frowned in confusion. "Sorry. I was just thinking..."

Forcing himself to pay attention to the road so as to avoid a potentially fatal crash, he flicked the reins once more in a vain attempt to get the horse to run a straight line as opposed to a drunken, weaving one. His frown turned from confused to thoughtful.

"This idea of yours, capturing a ghost on film. If it works...well, hah, you'll be famous, did you think of that? No one's ever done it. Certain scientists have studied them, of course, but they're only considered a theory without concrete proof." He grinned a little.

She met his confused gaze for a split second, equally confused. But soon, like a shooting star, a gleam of understanding entered her dark eyes. She turned away instantly, the befuddled arches of her eyebrows collapsing in self-reproach.

Clearly, she'd overstepped her bounds. What was she thinking? He was a grown man -- a professor for clock's sake. What gave her the right to nitpick him so casually? More importantly, what about him triggered her hitherto vestigial mothering instincts? And why did she feel the need, no, the desire to--

"--Famous?" Abe repeated, shocked out of her introspection. While her mind tried to pick up the pieces, she belatedly noticed the bleak landscape. It was lovely, in its own way. Lonely and depressing.. intimately familiar.. serenely regretful... Lovely.

She removed her glasses to clean them, stalling for time, and the misty scene blended together like watery ink blots on a grey page. It forced her to wonder if there was a psychoanalyst behind it, holding up a test card. Was this truly real, or was her whole pitiful life a delusion in ink?

"Famously moony, more likely," Abe said, looking to Harper dubiously. Oddly enough, he was sufficiently close to be seen in focus. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm young yet. I haven't proven myself to the scientific community. If I debut with something like this..." She donned her spectacles, returning the thick, glass walls to their proper place. "Well, I'm sure you know how it goes."

It was not the first time Harper had sensed this sort of pessimism from Abeline, and he had chalked it up to a lack of self-confidence, but more and more it was seeming like she had become discouraged because of his own situation. He frowned.

"My experience is not...typical," he said gently, pausing as the carriage ran over a series of bumps in the road. The horse whinnied. "I was, if you can believe it, relatively respected to start, and I had plenty of insane theories, more than seven-tenths of which turned out to be wrong. And I was also young when I began to work at the University. Twenty-two, to be precise," he estimated. He wondered privately how old Abeline was. She might have dressed like a dowdy old professor, but behind the thick glasses was a pair of young eyes...

Shrugging, he glanced over, peering at her from behind his spectacles. "My point is, I don't want you to become discouraged," he said. "It is the subject of my research that is the trouble, not me. Ghosts...now they are another matter. Uncharted, undiscovered, left relatively alone not because of any social taboo, but because we simply lacked the technological resources to study them. Until now, of course. Whether or not you use this discovery for your own benefit, I...I think you have a brilliant mind, Abeline, and you are bound to do well."

He grinned and added "What's the matter, wouldn't you like to be famous?"

The pessimism she had shown was not entirely due to a lack of confidence in herself, but a lack of confidence in people. A radical shift in one's understanding of the world was difficult for anyone to swallow, but this was especially true for scientists. They were trained to be skeptical. And a distressing number of them missed the point of skepticism; that is, to reserve a little doubt for the well-established theories as well as the new ones.

Her face went blank at the word 'brilliant,' as though he had put her in mild shock. She may have had her moments of absent-minded idiocy, but she knew she was intelligent. Still, knowing it and hearing it from someone else were completely different -- particularly when that someone else was a genius. She received compliments so rarely that she had no idea how to respond eloquently, despite how much she wanted to.

Instead, Abeline stared into the mist ahead, leaning forward, partly leaving the protection of the carriage roof. A light dusting of rain accumulated on her bun, and the droplets sparkled faintly as they were absorbed into her hair. The damp went unacknowledged, silently borne. Her stare penetrated the mists as though she wished she could bypass the intervening space by sheer will alone.

"Famous," she said again, her voice distant. "Heavens, no. A little recognition would be nice, but that's not what I'm after. I want the truth, or the closest approximation we can get. We need to know what the ghosts are. How they work, I mean. If we can devise a cure for Alisoina's possession..."

The shadowy form of the next hill was just becoming visible as the aggravatingly unhurried equine drew them slowly, so very slowly, closer to their destination.

The healer slumped back in her seat, pinching the bridge of her beaky nose. She released an exhausted sigh, and a thought escaped with it, "What on Vita is going on?" Tilting her head back and closing her eyes, she quietly confided, "Harper.. have you ever had the feeling something disastrous was about to happen?"

His face transitioned from joking to serious in a matter of seconds. He knew what she meant, about the truth; that was a trait they shared, the reverence for the way things really were, deep down, the truth, not just the superficial appearance of things or a quick fix to make a problem go away. Impractical, idealistic, and impatient - a searcher at heart.

"All the time," he answered, "though a bit more often, these days. I must admit, when we made our discovery the other day, I...I thought that must be it, you know? The thing that's going to muck everything up. If anyone were to find out about it...but it's my work, you know, and I must release my findings eventually, or else there will have been no point. And if I cannot find a cure, some other, better mind eventually will.

"But then you told me about the ghosts," he continued soberly. "And this seems even larger now, much more frightening."

He drove in silence for a few moments.

"But," he added, "we're doing something about it. We're not just sitting idly by and letting it happen. And I think we have a chance at finding the truth, I really do."

She'd always expected to be alone on her quests, to venture dangerously into the dark of night without friend or ally. And, yet, there one was, right next to her, so close she could feel a hint of his warmth languishing in the cold air.

Behind closed eyes, she watched a red thread of gratitude spool down endlessly, lost to invisible depths. She longed to show him that thread, to let him fathom her boundless appreciation. But how..? Words could easily be misinterpreted, and, though circumstances were likely to demand their continued collaboration, she didn't want to risk the kinder bond that was growing between them.

Harper, my fellow seeker...

Perhaps.. perhaps they had met for a reason. They were so like-minded, it seemed strange that chance had put them together. But if there was something out there watching over them, guiding them... which decisions were hers and which were fate's? She had planned to meet Moore -- was that plan not her own? And what of other thoughts, even feelings? Was it all fate? If so, she would be no better than Alisoina, her heart strung along like a puppet's, her free will, her most secret emotions, all a meaningless illusion.

Her eyes opened and drifted to the professor. That beanpole of a man, so tall he had to bend everywhere just to fit in the buggy. How dearly corporeal of him. If fate were their master, at least it had a sense of humor.

"I sincerely hope so," she voiced with a skeptically-mitigated smile. It soon faded in favor of a look of confusion. "I'm afraid I don't quite follow you on the nexus-to-ghost connection. I don't doubt there might be one, but what makes you think there is? Is it just a hunch on your part?" She shrugged lightly, part befuddled student, part hatcher's advocate.

"I only ask because, well, it's quite a leap. We musn't get too taken with a hypothesis before we have the evidence." She added quietly, head bowed to hide a reverent blush, "I learned that in your class, actually."

"Good lady, you've taken my class?" he said, chuckling. "Now I really feel self-conscious...but you're right, of course, that is to say I'm right, or past-me as it were..."

...a brief pause to contemplate the nature of timelines...

"...it was the emptiness," he said, after a moment had passed. "You mentioned emptiness. I felt something similar in the air of the gardens, but it was insubstantial and fleeting, and I thought it might have been Triston's nexus for a moment. It's that same feeling of blank space, almost a place with no mona, if that isn't heresy...or even possible."

Her cheeks were flushed, and he was finding it difficult to concentrate. It was a most befuddling and damnable thing. Perhaps he was tired.

"That was a terrible explanation," he added apologetically.

"No, it's-- I think I understand." Sorry to have flustered him, Abe waved a forgiving hand. Her guilt did not last long, soon surpassed by thoughts of more consequential matters.

"Like you, I have sensed something strange in the garden, as if the mona there were.. I don't know..." She trailed off, searching in vain for a description. Words were not normally elusive to her, and she paused to wonder at the sudden divergence. Finding no answer, she gave up, and took a different tack.

"If only I could sense a nexus, I could corroborate." Mystified, she frowned at the muddy road ahead, determined not to be too envious of the professor. There was something strange about him, too, something more than a quirky personality and an excellent intuition could account for...

She surfaced from her contemplation with a wry smirk, "Until then, it seems I'll need you."

He quirked an eyebrow, suddenly concerned.

"You do believe me?" he asked, sounding vaguely worried. "Only I know it's a touch shady...I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, of course. It's very difficult to prove a theory when you're experiencing a sensory phenomenon that can't be replicated or explained."

There was something slightly ashamed about his expression, like a puppy who had been caught defrauding a bank.

"I did wonder if I was simply mad," he added conversationally. "Scientifically, it's lunacy to base so many assumptions on something so personal and subjective. But I went to see the head Matron. She has experienced the same phenomenon! I believe it's simply a matter of consistent exposure. You experienced it with the ghosts, perhaps because you had been around them enough, or because they emit a stronger signal. Like a wireless telegraph."

Briefly he hoped that she had heard of (and was interested in) the new wireless wave technology; it would make for wonderful discussion later on. A non-magical means of scrying! Sometimes he felt as though the secular world was more fascinating than the magical one he took such an active role in.

"Believing is the easy part, Harper," she assured, shaking her head subtly.

"While I do think we've stumbled past the edge of currently known science," she reasoned, "without those tried-and-tested rules to bind us, there are so many possibilities, innumerable connections that could exist... We need the data-- proof-- to narrow them down to approach a functional reflection of the reality."

Lost in thought for a moment, she idly ran her fingers over her notebook. But she didn't open it just yet.

"You may have something with the wireless telegraph analogy," she mused. She was indeed interested in the technology, and she had been following its progress for some time. Since he mentioned it, she assumed he knew all about it, too. "The ghosts may be emitting energy like a stop-gap transmitter.. except that this energy somehow acts on the mona itself instead of transmitting messages."

A shaky smile touched her lips as she glanced over. "At least we'll be testing that soon enough. If we ever get there."

The professor lapsed into thoughtful silence for a while. They drove on, rain pattering intermittently on the roof of the carriage, turning the dirt road slippery and, in places, cakelike. The horse's hooves made a gentle slopping sound through the mud. Overhead, a gentle thunder sounded in the distance, though not threateningly; it was a complaining grumble at most.

There were no other travelers on the road that day, which allowed Harper a moment to think quietly to himself. Part of him was chiding himself for indulging in this side mission with Abeline, without any empirical proof or even real evidence to suggest that it would be fruitful or explain anything at all. So little time was to be had, and as Devlin would have said, he should have been working at Brunnhold rather than going for rides in the country with pretty girls.

But this was the only lead he had, as pathetic as he felt for admitting it to himself. He had managed to come up with very little on his own. Being there on the road to the phasmonia felt right, in the way things used to feel right back when he was discovering things and writing spells and impressing people. It was a gut feeling, about as far from scientific as one could get without running straight into madness.

Half a mile from the phasmonia, there was an unexpected dip in the road. The mare that pulled the buggy, as oddly energetic as she had been an hour before, had grown weary and forgetful; she was neglecting to do very basic horse things, such as not breaking into a sudden gallop for no particular reason.

There was a cracking sound and Harper glanced to one side to see his driver-side wheel rolling merrily away down the hill. He looked back at the road just as the carriage began to skid wildly around in the muddy road. On the event of another crack, he had decided not to look, but the corner of his eye caught a glimpse of the countryside as it spun around them.

The carriage game to a teetering stop on the very edge of the road. Behind them, the luggage compartment had slipped free of its restraints; the entire trunk had fallen into the mud, along with their equipment, which thankfully had been well covered.

There was a whining sound and a tiny lurch.

"Best hop out, then," said Harper in a matter-of-fact way, hurriedly and gingerly stepping out of his seat as the carriage creaked, threatening to tumble down to the ditch. "Quick, quick now..."

There they were, merrily coasting along on their day-trip to a cheerful woodside resort for the dead, when a disturbingly familiar CRAACK!! violently threw Abeline out of her contemplation. It nearly threw her out of the carriage, too. Luckily, she had the reflexes of a cat (albeit a myopic, inebriated cat), and she swiftly grabbed hold of the nearest anchor. Which, as one might expect, was Harper.

Immediately, once the scenery decided to stop spinning, she released him. Her heart was racing, though not from the faux pas; that hadn't quite registered in the chaos.

All her senses were mobilized, each trying to relay urgent information back home. Headquarters was, subsequently, swamped. What she could gather from the ensuing tide were these troubling facts: first, that the sky had turned to mud; second, that the ground had opened up to a vast, bottomless grey hole; and, third, that the hole was spitting at her.

As in Anaxas, there are men of action in any government -- patriotic loose cannons who will stop at nothing, even bypassing the plodding machinery of an overwrought hierarchy, to achieve what they deem best for their country. Such 'men' existed in Abeline, in the form of neurons, and they instigated a coup d'etat, seizing power from their base in the spinal column.

Thus, there was a small but vital gap in her experience of time. When her senses finally did return to her control, she was standing all aquiver (not sitting all aright or sprawling all amud), and doing so well away from the buggy she so recently occupied. The broken, creaking, distressingly teetering vehicle was all she needed to comprehend the situation. It felt less than real, in fact -- like a memory of a dream, or dream of a memory.

After finding Harper and the luggage to be superficially unharmed, she rested a hand on her hip, willing herself to cease wobbling like a mentally-deficient moa.

"Now that," she huffed, her nervous energy coming out more frustrated than frightened, "that is more like what I was expecting."

The carriage made a slow, majestic bow.

As if in a dream, Professor Moore lifted his right arm and signed a few symbols. The leather harness attaching the old mare to the teetering carriage snapped like a brittle twig, inadvertently whipping the horse; she took off at a brisk trot, but did not go far. She was tethered by destiny to the carriage. At that moment, it decided to take the plunge to the gully below, and with a hideous series of crunches transformed into so much splintered wood. The professor half expected it to burst into flames, but it was only a sad little pile of broken framework and split canvas.

Harper looked over to Abeline, making certain she was all right before patting his bare neck absentmindedly.

"My scarf," he muttered gloomily, realizing he must have left it in the carriage. After a moment he hurriedly patted his coat, checking the contents of several pockets. The spec was still there, slightly crumpled and damp at the bottom of his breast pocket; so too was the puzzle box from Abeline, and the heavy book about trains from Triston. He was not sure why he had brought them along, as he did not expect to have much time for diversions.

"Well," he said, turning to Abeline as he processed this new challenge. "That just happened." He rubbed the back of his neck, pondering what to do next. This was his fault, and he would have to get them out of this mess. "They just don't make carriages like they used to, hmm?" he quipped, trying to stall as his brain slowed to a crawl.

While the professor considered their options, Healer Ixbridge strolled to the edge of the gully. Since this scenario had occurred to her days previous (or scenarios much like it (most of them significantly less favorable)), she already had a contingency plan. Although her first choice required a stronger horse, a slight modification would fit it to the situation at hand.

"I'll rescue your scarf," she announced, in a tone that implied she was trying to find a way to make herself useful. Her plan was so obvious to her that she didn't think to mention it; she only glanced from Harper, to the unwieldy luggage, and then to the horse. The sadly skeletal horse.

Before he could respond, she removed her coat, tossed it to him, and rolled up her sleeves. Soon after, the healer buoyantly hopped down the slope. A penchant for climbing rugged surfaces was one of the few lasting things her adventurous once-friend Millie had given her. So she traversed -- sliding, skipping and scrambling -- with surprising adroitness for a city-slicker.

Once at the bottom, Abeline picked her way along the bank of a small creek that had formed in the rain. In truth, her mission was twofold. She was to find his scarf and her notebook (both of which were probably soaked by then), and to get herself elbow-deep in carriage guts. She needed tactile confirmation of the buggy's demise before she could properly pronounce its death.. and before she could quit shaking.

Professor Moore noticed that he was suddenly holding a coat.

"Whoa, whoa," he said, blinking as she suddenly leapt down into the gully. "Are you...er...be careful..." He looked around for somewhere dry to set her coat. A deeply ingrained and instinctual part of him was saying very firmly that strolling around in the mud was a man's job. She does have trousers on, he reminded himself.

Setting the coat (which smelled faintly of spices) onto the leather trunk, he scurried down the edge of the gully like an awkward grasshopper, eternally grateful for practical boots.

The carriage had seen better days. It had landed upside down in the ditch; its back axle had been shattered, but the front axle was intact. Two wheels were missing. The interior was a mess of splintered wood and split cushions.

"Wonder if I can get my deposit back," he mused, spinning the front wheel morosely.

Damn. He followed her.

Abe had been hoping to steal a moment to collect herself, alone, well away from Harper. As much as she enjoyed his company, his mere presence was enough to produce a disturbance in her attention span, as though the sheer gravity of his intellect caused her thoughts to orbit him. The loss of control irritated her -- yet another, if small, example among the many that had been looming in her mind of late.

She delicately placed two fingers on the carriage's front axle, exactly as if checking for a pulse. Ducking to examine the interior, the healer mumbled absently, "..perforated epidermis.. internal hemorrhaging..." Coming to a conclusion, she straightened, tugged at her vest with a dignified sniff, and solemnly turned to her friend. "Professor Moore, I regret to inform you that your buggy is de-- oh!"

Staring at a point in space directly behind and above him, she bounded past the professor, an aromatic hint of coriander disappearing in her wake. A scraggly old tree was her destination, perhaps five hundred times older than the mare, but about the same ancient, withered grey in color. Harper's scarf was caught on a vaguely claw-like branch, swaying forlornly in the rain.

"I'll get it!" Abeline began to climb, calling out with the sort of eager determination one might hear from a knight's squire or a master's apprentice. She wasn't trying to show the man up or prove she was just as competent as the males or any of that cliched nonsense. She just wanted to do him a favor. The professor had taken time away from his busy schedule almost solely to help her; it was heartening and terrifying all at once. She owed him so much, she needed to return the generosity, to clear a minuscule amount of her debt to him.

Additionally, there existed within her a deep-seated compulsion to fight entropy, re-establish order, and fix things. Of late, far too much was spinning out of control -- the carriage, her career, Alisoina, Vienda, the nexus conspiracy, the ley fabrics of Vita, even her own heart had decided to unnecessarily complicate matters. The bespectacled healer yearned to achieve something right, anything at all, simply to prove to herself that she still could.

"Almost.. have it.."

The scarf eluded her for a brief period, blowing and tossing about in the wind, before the very tip finally fell between her fingers.

Harper watcher her climb the tree with a sort of helpless, befuddled look. Some curious and effervescent sensation was driving him to distraction; he didn't even notice the red scarf dangling from the branches. Shaking his head like a dog shaking water from its ears, he noticed something sticking out from under the carriage seat. He bent and retrieved it.

The notebook's cover was slightly damp from lying on the dew-soaked grass, but the inside was dry. Harper felt consumed by a sudden and inexplicable urge to look through it, quickly, before Abeline returned from the tree. It was a very childish thought, he said to himself, and not one befitting a grown man of science. But this fit in nicely with his other experiences around Abeline, many of which had reduced him to the mental processes of a young mischievous boy.

His colleague was climbing a tree, and he was contemplating reading her diary. What had the world come to?

"Found your notes," he said brightly, waving the pad in the air. He blinked several times as he noticed what she was doing. "Oh...my scarf! Good. I would have hated to have to knit another."