Scene #9575: Scorched Woods

Owner	Pose
Ein	Field Agent Moissan, the Foundation HQ personnel attached to Chicago and undercover as the Sotheby's live-in maid from the old country, had made herself available to the Team Timekeeper on the grounds of the Sotheby Manor as well as by encoded telegram for 'weather reports' of the local state. With the Foundation securing the manor, Moissan was more free to operate in the area and so intelligence gathering had increased with her redeployed. Having been relayed by Sonetto that Team Timekeeper needed around a dozen informational packets and invitations for the Walden, Ms. Moissan put her talents to work wringing what she could from the streets of Chicago, and two days before the operation arranged to meet with Vertin and Sonetto to pass off the materials and assist with any recon of the scorched wood path leading into the Walden-controlled woods. "Miss Vertin, Miss Sonetto, you'll have to forgive the arrangements - after the Foundation increased presence at the manor, it became clear trying to get a large party into the Walden under the family's auspice wouldn't be prudent. So, instead, I've made particular arrangements you'll have to assign day of." The Bavarian woman brushes a side-braid back behind her shoulder and shifts her messenger bag across the blue pinafore of her dark working dress and pulls out a cord-tied waterproof folder thick with documents, offering them first to Sonetto while directing the briefing towards Vertin. "For the Timekeeper and Miss Sonetto, I've twisted the arm of the Foundation-sympathizing dean of the Chicago Academy of the Arts to claim they've sent two of their brightest students for a salon which will be happening at the Walden - it will pass you through the door, they're good for the salon's whole weekend. There is a solo, set apart, an appraiser from Hugh & Milling Company, who's looking for alcohol supply. Hugh & Milling were invited by the Walden, but I couldn't secure a back-end alibi, so I can't promise the cover will hold to scrutiny. Finally, a trio from the Alchemist's Trades Assembly. These will hold, as we had a local agent approve them through the Trades Assembly - they're expected, no itenery. I can arrange at least one, perhaps two more with alibis if you provide me at least a day's notice before using them. At the back of the packets are blue chip stock certificates, assorted companies, all traded highly, secured in the last month." She finishes the hand off with a crisp, instructing stop with her tone. "Door fees and expenses for the operation. Money has become more unstable so trading directly via stock grants is becoming more common. I'll leave the briefing of your own team to you, Timekeeper." Shifting her pack - and the length of her shoulder-hanging mallet, Moissan turns to gesture deeper into the forest. "I've been asked to put myself at your disposal. The only path I've found to the Walden is directly through this forest."
Ein	. . . It does not take long for the Critters in the forest to take note, impossible to miss the shifting around them. The woods are not young to ashen solemnity, the ash of the burn having been rained down and mudded back into the charred-dark soil, but there is no springing-forward bounty of life rallying in its place. 'It's burned too badly,' 'This monochrome is the natural state,' 'Even the air chokes,' 'The rain only washes the truth deeper,' These aren't idle thoughts but faint, raspy whispers that begin initially sourceless and steadily find sources in ragged and tatter-shambling shapes that scarecrow ephemerally in the empty space between bare boughs. The woods crawl with the whispers of ghosts, and Critters sussurate threatening in the surrounds. Ms. Moissan, crunching her boots to a stop, takes a moment to unlimber and heft into couching of arm her mallet, giving the peripheries of the sooty dirt path a stern look. "... Without a vehicle, we might be forced to choose forward at double time, or back at the same, Timekeeper."
Timekeeper	Today is the result of several avenues of information and preparation all coming together at once. With the Ainsworth girls monitoring a series of phone calls that confirms that Forget Me Not is away for business dining with a local elite, Sotheby's analysis of the Walden's potions and the Alchemy department of Laplace sourcing reagents to sabotage them, and now Moissan's provisions, the collective effort of the Foundation's resources isn't anything to dismiss. The last step is simply gathering up and getting there, and then putting everything into action. Obviously, it wouldn't do to just walk into the Walden wearing a Foundation uniform, for either Sonetto or Vertin, so they've both dressed accordingly for the classy speakeasy. Vertin's wearing a long-sleeved and high-collared black dress, with wide flowing ruffles at the sleeves and calf-length skirt. Her blue gem affixes a black cravat instead of white, and a silver-laced corset is stitched into the midriff of the outfit. Her hat, because she can't be without one, is a slouchy woman's hat in black with a wide, wavy brim, which covers one of her eyes in nearly any angle she's looked at. Sonetto is wearing a pale yellow dress with a black outline along the edges of its layers, and pearls on her shoulders and wrists. Sonetto's demeanor is still as if she's wearing full body armor and watched by an entire team of her superiors, though. She takes the folder from Moissan with a focused nod, thumbing through the enclosed documents to sort them out into piles for distribution to each of their associates, pearls rattling as she does. Vertin takes it as a given that Sonetto has it handled, and keeps her attention on Moissan instead. "Understood. Thank you, Agent Moissan. ... Those stock certificates, aren't they...?" Vertin's head twitches to the side, surprised as if she's heard a noise, and her eyes land on the packets of papers Sonetto is sorting through. "I see. Those weren't present in the records of the historical 1929, were they?" Looking at the woods, Sonetto slips off her heels and replaces them with practical boots that clash horribly with her outfit, sliding the former into her purse. Vertin's calf-height black boots don't get the same consideration, with Vertin choosing to tromp through the forest dirt in them no matter what. "Then that's how it'll be." Despite the atmosphere of the forest, Vertin is in a cheerful mood on the walk through it, lightening the dour ashes with calm chatter and jokes. While she's attentive to the trees that she passes by, brushing a finger along a charred section and thoughtfully rubbing the soot between thumb and forefinger, that this area is 'dead' and remains so doesn't infect Vertin's mindset. That is, until the critters start to make their presence known, and Sonetto, jumpy as-is, whips her wand out in an instant. "Ghosts?! Carbuncles? Something worse? Whatever it is, Timekeeper...." Vertin's eyes drag away from shapeless shapes in the branches, to her worried assistant's face. "Forwards. If we're forced to backtrack, we won't have a better opportunity."
Ein	'... Those stock certificates, aren't they...' "Yes," Moissan confirms, voice low but face impassive. "They're a difference in the timeline. An arcanist trading network. Headquarters hasn't posted an opinion or threat profile of the practice, yet," Which defines what the agent, naked before what amounts to a tactical team of child soldiers, will tell her allies. She doesn't know the Timekeeper, and she has to go back and report after. Her opinion is that this sort of fieldwork would be better for a squad like Razor Team with radio support and backup in armored cars, but, Ms. Moissan looks back at the Timekeeper, eyes just-over shoulder, not entirely turning towards the young hatted commander of her own irregular company. Her eyes shutter. She doesn't want to be here. They open. She is, anyway. Deeper in the woods. . . The critters around the Timekeeper's party shift through a February mist that clings to the scorched woods' floor and allowing the creeping 'phantoms' with empty bodies of loose leaves and drapery. They blend with the broken-up and smeared groundcover, such that it is. Streaked with ash themselves, a ghille of soot and darkness and consumed promises, the 'ghosts' of the forest (or the Critters shaped as them) advance slowly at first, giving the group just enough time to come to a stop and assess their chances. The heat of the moment, the uncertainty of the choice. Would they follow? Would they allow the team to flee? The forest doesn't provide good avenues. If the battle spread too far, would they lose the path? Burned-empty, scoured and inhabited by whispers of wind and specters and the distant interest of corvids scavenging in the middle distance, the distance forward melts into mist that reveals no Walden and no more strongly-beaten path than this. Yes, a path, but... 'Forwards.' "They're coming -- !" Announces Ms. Moissan, forcing a scramble while head-and-shoulders rises of spectral threats spread through the mist and rise up to jumpscare claw, drag at, and trip up the trio in the woods. Light on her feet despite her heavy hammer, Ms. Moissan keeps away from the leading edge of reaching hands with the reach of her mallet, swinging down and admonishing the Critter firmly on its 'head' - the tattered scraps of wood and rag and leaf congealed together around mist ectoplasm that is flattened into the groundcover and dissipated for a moment. They don't really... die, though, and casual strikes against them merely scatter their coverings. Perhaps there's a way to stand and banish them... but there's a whole ambush, it seems, threatening the team on-foot! Vertin's idea is sound, and Ms. Moissan shoves with her weapon as she rounds about the wave-like charge of one of the ghosts in the mist to charge through a tidally low set of the other ghosts in the ashy mist and part the path with a different kind of white chalky powder. As she charges through and leads Vertin and Sonetto in their own fights towards a breakthrough, the wake of them is covered by that chalky dust, heavy upon the empty drapery of the Critters that threaten them. Such escape can't last forever, though, and certainly not with three of them against every creature in the mist attracted by their defense. Coming in waves, the surrounding specters mass up for a second attack, and then a third. By the time the group has to defend themselves against what feels like the fourth wave, but may just be the lingering aggression of the second, Ms. Moissan spots a three-way forking in the path. "Timekeeper, Sonetto - we might be able to split up and draw them away. The path will fleur ahead - the paths to either side, if followed on the outside line, will loop back to side exits to the forest. Forward remains towards the Walden. Timekeeper, what are your directions?"
Timekeeper	The cursive scrawl of light that Sonetto's glasfeder spills from its tip at her gesture sear through the darkness of the phantoms in the same moment as Ms. Moissan's first syllable. Where the quest'ermo colle hits, it sticks and shines brighter until the ashen ghost is enveloped and vaporized, but merely turning the ash and leaves to ash again won't put them down for long either. Now that Sonetto's got a target to attack, her fear can be directed into determination, but her nerves are still all on end. "Timekeeper! They do not stay down when defeated, and my holding arcanum is ineffective against them!" Vertin's fingers trace the edge of a floppy disk hidden within her dress while she warily retreats backwards behind the protection of the two women. A fireball, though, would cause more trouble than it would solve, surrounded by calmed-fire phantom and dry leaves. She looks for another way out, and only finds the trio of split paths. "Right. These spirits are the result of passive accumulation of the negative atmosphere soaked into this forest after the fire. As long as they're densely clustered, we'll never be rid of them-- we'll split up." Vertin, practically weaponless, still doesn't feel like she's the most at risk from these ghosts, and positions herself at the furthest and most-wandering path. The hazy camoflauge of their movements is crystal clear to her, glowing in arcane second-sight in the gloom of the woods, and Sonetto was already stressed and uncomfortable before they even appeared. "Sonetto, you go down the middle path. It should lead you straight to the far end of the woods, where you will stand and watch for us inside the treeline. Agent Moissan, I'll go this way. Keep a brisk pace, don't let them catch up, but avoid running at full tilt if you can help it. I'll see you soon." "Timekeeper...." Sonetto worriedly protests, but falls in line with the order quickly. "Uguale raggio mi chiude in un centro di buio. Please be careful." The protective light that Sonetto imbues the trio with will only linger for a portion of the time it takes to cross the woods, but it's the best protection she can give. It'll glow to light the way too, as long as it lasts.
Ein	Ms. Moissan, having given the choice to Vertin, still makes a quarter-step error in her motions, surprised when it's Sonetto carrying on. In Moissan's mind, Sonetto would be falling back, Moissan would be drawing off, and Vertin would be moving ahead. . . She doesn't turn or abort the plan as it is called, forcing her way through one of the ghosts as it rose to come into contact with her - to hug, to claw, to hold and cover - and explode into leaves as her mallet center-mass bashes the ghost into component globs. The forest was unquiet. In truth, it was not dead, not a burned match crisped and spent but a wound. Rent with deep furrows of pain, the lingering mist rose up around the path and spilled onto the way forward and back. If there was all of the Elites, or a full squad of Foundation operatives, this would be easy, but with one agent plus Sonetto and Vertin, there's little chance of handling all the threats they face. It's stifling, throttling, the rising of rotting leaves and tattered dreams. Countless possibilities bear a swell of grudges, and as Moissan breaks off with Vertin going the opposite way, she turns and lifts up her hammer, swinging it down in one loud crash that heaves up a great white heave of powder-chalk and letting the forest behind the trio fall to a momentary quiet and a great wall of obscuring fog displaced in its wake. Vertin, looping around, is quickly alone, boots crunching on the less-trodden side path's dry walk as curls of mist drop from higher embankment to lower. The ghosts that follow seem least interested in Vertin so her flight can change to a more measured march through the dark forest, threat becoming a suggestion. She walks past a leaning tree and a hiss from above comes from agitated Carbuncles, all in a tree in a line, and the Carbuncles hiss at the ghost that lamely follows like a shadow at middle distance from her, one of several chasing predators defeated by a stiff walk or an occasional brisk admonishment - simple enough for Vertin as empowered by Sonetto. The light she casts on the surrounds shies away the mist and spirits as well, and the path rounds a tall tree which seems to stand as monument, sprawled out over the path's walk as fingers of charcoal-dark branches. Ahead, a dip in the path down a small hill leads into a solid fog wall, and a threat of another mass of ghosts while Vertin is alone. Around, the path goes somewhere else, deeper in the forest without sign or mark - just, losing Moissan's outside edge guidance to make her way out of the forest. Behind, the trailing encounter the dwindling light cast from Sonetto's glasfeder casts the area in a moonlight-like lit paleness. Drawing to a stop to evaluate, or even, as she passes underneath the tree, something... odd, happens. There is the briefest of moments of a soft flick or slip occurring, and then an equally brief whisper-whistle of falling, and then, Atop Vertin's hat lands a woman's heel, landing thankfully on its side and not point or tip down on Vertin's hat, and sliding off the brim to drop into her hands as she walks.
Ein	Should she look up to find the source of the shoe, there is no tree sprouting strange fruit above but instead a burnt branch cradling the nauturally-settled lean of a woman with soft ginger-red hair is there. Arms wrapped loosely about a bundle of flowering and budding green stems, the idling and half-unshod woman looks down with a curious and confused expression of. . . Someone, there, instead of no-one. "No offense," Begins the dry-toned lounging woman, her attention narrowing to a single object. "But could you give me back my heel?" She asks, draped just-so, the first living natural piece of this entire forest. Dressed in gown, choker, and even a fashionable hat, she makes herself somehow perfectly in place despite the absurd perch she finds herself on. To the contrary, It is like the light that Sonetto cast, from a moon instead of a match. Naturally falling down, dispersing the mist, the woman peers down at the sole presence she doesn't understand in her space and awaits an answer to the only question she deigns.
Timekeeper	Vertin had known about the fire that raged through Chicago's forests some time ago, from records and newspapers and reports. The forest itself, though, is a different thing-- not simply an event in text, but a conglomeration of emotions, the swirl of trauma and magic that picks up and carries ash as easily and tempermentally as the wind does. A forest fire, in its natural state, is nothing to be sad about for a forest. But this forest mourns, and it clings to its mourning, like a smothering blanket to block out... something worse. Vertin can't intuit the nature of it just from the atmosphere of the woods or from the groans of the spirits that follow her until losing interest and dispersing, but it's clear enough to see that this forest languishes in the tragedy of its destruction. The green shoots hold their breath rather than poking out from the ground, and the soot lays over them like a funeral veil. Vertin pauses to catch her breath on the small hill, hand to her chest as it rises and falls from the exertion of lifting her boots at a pace to escape the ghosts. She eyes the carbuncles warily, the dim glow of Sonetto's words enough to muster up one last repelling shot but not much else, and the path ahead seems like it'll ask more from her than that. She breathes as slowly and evenly as she can in order to not agitate the carbuncles further, and steps forwards until.... "But could you give me back my heel?" The shoe thunks and then slides, dropping neatly into Vertin's hand too suddenly for her to hesitate and drop it. The voice draws her attention upwards, holding her hat by habit to keep it from slipping off, and seeing the woman stuns Vertin into silence for several seconds. The oddity of the situation justifies itself, bizarrely making the moment calm and still, so that Vertin's voice comes out as placidly neutral even though she was just on the run. "Of course." She holds the heel up by the tip of her fingers, as high as she can reach. "May I ask who you are?"
Ein	Mourning as if time stands still. Mourning among the mists, mourning as a whisper, mourning as the procession of moving 'specters'. Upon the slight hill that Vertin comes to a stop on, the mist seems just low enough, the spirits just disinterested enough, that this crest is a peaceful island in the middle of the cauldron of clinging misery. That this crest is the eye of some great and lingering storm, and she's come out into the clear of it with the ashen-leaf specters unwilling to breach the ring of quiet. It cannot be called 'peace', but it is quiet. Retreating her now-bare leg, initially thinking almost animalistically to reach down with an extension of leg that is just started before discarded, the faint awkwardness of perhaps doing something normal if the barest-bit frustrating... And now having an audience for something otherwise and always before private. Reformulating plan and turning to reseat on the branch she tries again. With a lean-down, couch of branches gently holding her as she adjusts, the mysterious woman reaches down index finger to first brush, and then hook into the faint curve of the shoe's interior edge. Retracting up into her perch, she brings shoe first into lap as she re-settles into the tree, resuming her previous pose with heel joining her grasped bundle in settled against her. Pillowing cheek and jaw and the faint frizz and shag of self-cut hair in her lean, she spreads hand across cheek in support. Uneven, longer on right side than the left, the color seems washed-out rather than natural. Still, her paper-bundled bouquet is arranged without flaw, green and berried, and her bow-tied gown is immaculate, and she would be just from high society. . . . . . if there was any of that still nearby. She shifts, and re-appraises Vertin with eyes that move from dull lack of processing to blinking into focus, at the blue gem on Vertin's black dress, and the way Vertin calmly addresses her, and. . . . . . The woman in the tree cycles a breath, and parts lips with thoughtful pause while crafting the statement, or, recalling the truth to be shared. "This is my... 'promised land'." She begins, and then pauses, and looks at the little witch beneath her. For a moment, she is here, and she is someone else, and draws hand down to more somberly address the one before her: "I am Druvis III." Her hand moves to touch collar. "It is my pleasure to meet you, young woman. If you've come this way," Her eyes track away for a moment. "You must have taken a wrong turn." And then, sympathetically, return. "I can clean up this... mess, if you need it to be."
Timekeeper	The display of reaching, hesitance, adjustment, awkwardly-worn dignity and the gangly discomfort of being consolidated into one human body by the presence of watching eyes, is something that Vertin absorbs with seemingly infinite patience. Wordlessly, she twists the shoe just so in her hand, so that Druvis's finger can catch the angle of the strap and retract it upwards, neither hurrying Druvis along or attempting to hand it back all on her own. Sonetto is very likely close to the edge of the woods by now, and Moissan isn't far behind. It's only Vertin, drifting and wandering, who's been caught like a leaf in an eddy of wind, that's been carried deeper into the woods beyond where any traveler would have a reason to be. Coincidences like these often bring her to meet unlikely people, insofar as she believes in coincidences at all. "Hello, Ms. Druvis. It's a pleasure to meet you as well." 'Promised land' is accepted without question, but not without consideration. For some people, the city during the day is another world, and the city at night is their 'promised land'. A forest, burned? Vertin's eyes find the mistletoe, the dress, and the heels, each one at odds with the state of the woods in different ways. "I was headed in one direction, and then I ended up here instead," Vertin agrees, but without the dispassionate unpleasantness that Druvis faintly communicates with her own tone. "I'd be appreciative if you could." "Are you headed somewhere as well?" The heels, again, but she had no intent to move from the tree. The kind of person who would end up in these wounded woods without anywhere else to go, though....
Ein	'Unlikely people' certainly describes Druvis III, settled into bough and branch in homely recline despite her going-out state of dress. She had been there, before, silent in the clearing, and only her moment of awkwardness had made her violate the silence with need and voice, and now... "Then," Druvis begins, pushing arm to sit up in the meetingpoint of branches and peer down, fingers curling over the edge of lap and knee-bend crease. "-pardon the mess." She ends, eyes tracking away. There was something not quite bridged for Druvis, though not crossing into indulging her full dispassion and accepting the premise leaves Druvis less in a position to speak. Losing standing, losing voice, she is reminded by Vertin's 'if you could' and nods. Shifting one final time in the tree to apply shoe back to her foot and secure it to the back of heel and snug, she pushes off with a little motion and lands easily on the ground. Practiced, simple-made-difficult by the shoes, but she had put them on instead of taking them off before landing. "Going somewhere?" She asks, the question a kind of foreign. Unexamined, but not one she doesn't have an answer to. It's just telling when she almost laughs, and just gives a depleted look. "This is where I go." This is where she is. "If you were coming - or going - then perhaps you know of the Walden? The establishment is... in my forest. So we are..." "Neighbors." She speaks, and her eyes track to the blue gem on Vertin's witch outfit. "You may enjoy them. I find most of them... hard to hear." She speaks conversationally, as intimate as in aside at salon, as honest as two women on a balcony discussing a party deeper within. "But here, it's quiet. So I can hear you." She retains the poise of someone with her clothes and bearing and something else, the just-slightly-awkward piece of attempting attachment, the assignment of being contacted and looked up to. Of course, Vertin would look up to Druvis without metaphor. Druvis, now looking out, sees the mist to fore and back and scowls by increments, frustrated and letting the anger build rather than stifling it immediately. The passion drew her to action. "Which makes this mess embarrassing." She announces, and draws hands before her, low to waist, palm over palm. A green weaving stiches beneath her, and as an archaic circle appears beneath the pair centered on Druvis, a dark wand that had been discarded on the ground besides the tree snaps to attention as if by magnet, and then is dragged vertically through the air to snap between Vertin and the standing-and-channeling Druvis. Coming thrumming into position through physical transition through space without impulse beyond afflatus, the wood of the wand does not turn to her attention but leaps literally, and the winged head design centers her channeling.
Ein	On feeling, and by pressing the working into the forest, the mist is 'blown' away without wind, abjured through the forest as a great wave of leaves that leaves a mistless scattering of ashen detritus and clear dirt paths through the forest, of which the central hill of this juncture is just the roundabout of paths. The circle's glow dims and wafts away, so much jade smoke leaving grey dust behind save for the pattern left in knot-rune. Druvis exhales, moving wand with palm-hovering gesture to besides her where it waits as if magnetized to her gestures if not her touch. She never quite... touches it. "I will walk you to the edge, at least. Are you going to the Walden, or, outside, young witch?" Druvis asks, a little casual as she stands, the forest banished of its critter-thick fog entirely in a single motion for the passage of a single jewel-bearing young lady.
Timekeeper	"This is where I go." This confirms all of Vertin's suspicions about the woman, from the moment she saw her. She steps back just enough for there to be space when she lands, and turns her attention to the 'this' indicated by Druvis's tired amusement. Both of them wearing heels in dirt, witches with one foot held outside the forest, Vertin nods in quiet acknowledgement. Being given what's almost advice from the other arcanist is soothing and familiar in a certain way, a patch of warmth in the dark, chilly forest. Vertin herself eases into more comfortable speech, chatting like this is a house call and the ghosts are just an impermanent hassle. "I might. If they speak up, I'll listen, even if I'm not sure I'll like everything they have to say. Are they tolerable neighbours to have?" "I enjoy the quiet too. The silence here will make the first bird's song brighter than anything." Vertin goes silent again when Druvis begins her incantation, watching with fascination the circle be drawn along with the baggage its lines and curves carry. Genuine druids are all but gone, even in an era as early as the 1920's, and the impression that Vertin gets from an incantation so casually done is that Druvis doesn't feel any differently than that. One of the last known druids, using an immigrant's arcanum in an American forest that's in perpetual deathly stillness, brings Schneider to Vertin's mind immediately. With the view of the woods now cleared of the mist, Vertin looks out at the trees that, rather than being scary, just seem sad. The single breath of fresh air that Druvis's magic provided to the forest isn't enough to rejuvenate them instantly, but the arcanum itself feels gently fond in a way that keeps Vertin talking even when she doesn't need to. "I heard birdsong where there hadn't been any before, just recently. Right outside my door. When I looked outside, it was as if it had been waiting for me the entire time." Over the clear view of the grey and black ashes, which could still be soil, "Your woods are beautiful, Ms. Druvis." Vertin adjusts her hat, trying to find the path among many that she'd be following. "My name is Vertin. I'd love to have your company for the rest of the walk to the Walden, thank you very much."
Ein	"Tolerable neighbors?" Druvis asks, turning over the thought. A beat passes, her eyes distant. Her initial reaction had been something politely true about her friends in the 'art club' she was in, but, being so clandestine felt poor before what was clearly someone lost on their first trip to one of Forget-Me-Not's free music salons or private art shows. Asked again, her breathy considerance is genuine, and as she thinks she tries to fill in one and two words at a time. "I lack a phone, so like you, the proprietor lost himself in my forest. And, in the way of my messes, he was brought to me. This was... some time ago, after the forest..." "Burned." Stands alone, a statement, true by every single sense, but it shouldn't be so lingeringly true, as Vertin had observed prior. It is frozen there. It is being held there. The one doing so is obvious, a statement in and of itself to the wise, even if the wielder may not know the wisdom. 'The silence here will make the first bird's song brighter than anything.' The wisdom, in turn, is matched by Vertin, and Druvis doesn't speak for a short time, eyes closing. It ached and also she didn't have anything to say against it. It ached but didn't hurt, and it was not Vertin who was hurting her at all, but a question from within: How long had it been since she heard the spring birds? Long enough she thought first of people, and counting one now felt sickening in its humor. How long had it been since the taste of ash became normal in her throat? Did she even remember the place before? Did she remember the boat? She thought she did, but mostly she remembered the new house. America. Their woods. Her woods. "If you listen sometimes you hear ravens, but the first sound I heard was..." Another glance to the witch outfit, to the blue crystal. "... musical. So you're right and a poet, too." With the assurance of an elder among the group, Druvis promises: "They will like you." Eventually though, as Vertin turns, Druvis does too, with much more decisiveness, and starts walking towards a path, looking over her shoulder, wand following at palm's beckon tightly. "Have you been waiting for me, Vertin?" Druvis asks, airily-thoughtful. The fall of her shoe, a strange ritual of return... "Once, they were even green." She speaks, wistful-rent in memory, and points with wandtip deeper into the forest. Without the mess of fog clinging to the woods, the faint and distant orange glow of lights in the woods can be located, giving some guidance as to paths and bends to take to cut through and reach the grounds by taking the natural routes. Led by Druvis, their path is direct and unhampered through same charcoaled tree-corpses, off the path but growing closer and closer still to their destination with the delay turning into a slight time advantage.