Chryse seems to be thinking about this, but doesn't ask anything further.
[OOC: I'm going to skip a bit ahead unless there's anything further Viola wants to discuss / do now?]
She's got no immediate aims, no--Chryse is the one driving this process, and Viola is just there to try to keep her from running entirely off the road.
Scott
A few days later, Viola awakens, troubled. Her old faerie friend had visited her yesterday, turning up in her lab without warning or explanation (although Viola may have her suspicions). In amidst annoying and amusing her, he dropped in a question.
"I heard one of the People of the Mind left their child with yours. How's the bonding going?"
How was it Viola responded, again?
Viola, being logical, wants to understand the question before providing an answer, and pressed the faerie for information about who the "People of the Mind" are before responding...but her best response is probably going to be a quizzical look, followed by an admission that she wasn't aware of what apparently is a new faerie.
She's going to have to sit Chryse down, and both ask questions and possibly do some magical investigating.
Scott
"Oh, old friends." The faerie laughed. "Or perhaps young friends would be a better way of putting it." And that was all she'd got out of him on that.
That she's pretty sure she didn't do yesterday. Although she doesn't specifically remember making the decision to wait.
[Now you've got Scott confused, and I'm not sure if it's intentional or not. Why would Viola not have done that yesterday, being the curious sort she is? Or is the fact that this is all in the past tense some sort of hint that fae shenanigans are going on?]
Scott
[Some sort of fae shenanigans are going on. Viola, when she thinks about it, can remember having interacted with the faerie yesterday. She doesn't remember having done anything about said interactions yet.]
[OK, fair enough. But one more question: while we've never defined the faerie friend before, Viola has known him/her for years. Briefly, what does Viola know about this faerie?]
Scott
[Less than you'd expect. Viola can certainly remember times when she interacted with him - the original initiation quest being one prominent example, but...she remembers that she befriended him and successfully completed them quest rather more than she actually remembers any details of said interactions. Maybe it's just because it was nearly 15 years ago now? There have been some interactions since, though, and whilst she definitely remembers the end result, she's fuzzier again on the details.]
Double plus ungood. She finds this friend very disconcerting. In any case, she's going to go pay a visit to Chryse, and ask her a few gentle questions about her own new friend.
In the meantime, Viola is trying to figure out what, magically, she might be able to do to deal with a faerie who's messing with her mind.
[Edit] Does her knowledge of Faerie Lore give her any insight?
Scott
It's still fairly early in the morning, so Chryse should be in the dining room, eating her breakfast. Instead, Viola finds her sitting on the grass a little short of the southern boundary wall, a half eaten roll in her hand.
As to dealing with faeries messing with her mind...it depends a lot on who and where the faerie is, and how it's doing it. One obvious answer is "increase Viola's mentem based magic resistance", but it's already 36, so either it's a very powerful faerie, it's utilising an arcane connection (and faeries can get them in non-standard ways) or it's cheating in some way (such as taking advantage of periods when Viola's Parma isn't up, or not needing to penetrate her magic resistance for some reason).
The other obvious answer is "find the faerie and get it to stop". Viola does know where she first found the faerie, so attempting to track it down physically might be an option; alternatively...presumably it can (or could) read her mind in at least some fashion if Viola was getting a response to some of her reactions?
[OOC: Viola's faerie lore gives her some information on some of the ways faeries can get arcane connections to you - speaking to a faerie counts, as does eating their food, them tasting your blood (until the wound heals) and, probably not relevantly, intercourse and pregnancy with their child. Forming a lasting bond of friendship as part of an initiation ritual has never been explicitly spelled out to Viola as a potential source of one, but it is starting to seem horribly plausible to her.
The potentially good news is that several of those arcane connections are two way.
It also makes her wonder a little about exactly how this faerie is getting vitality from her.]
An AC isn't useful without inventing a spell, and...not only does that take time, but, gross, formulaic magic. We probably need to track down the faerie.
But let's question Chryse first. Viola will observe her for a bit before moving closer, then sit down quietly opposite her, and wait for a reaction.
Scott
[OOC: You can use Arcane Connections with spontaneous magic, although obviously you have to be able to spont a suitable spell and they tend to be high level.]
Chryse appears to be alternating bites out of her roll with poking bits of the ground. Viola can't see much more than that from her initial distance, and when she approaches, Chryse spots her before she gets near and hurriedly gets to her feet.
"Domina..."
[But you can't use Range AC with a non-ritual, can you?]
Viola sits nonetheless. "Hi, Chryse. Breakfast outside?"
Scott
[Arcane connection range doesn't inherently require a ritual (unlike the other +4 modifiers of Boundary and Year). See for example Intangible Tunnels or Image of the Beast (InAn 5)]
Chryse stands awkwardly for a few moments before sitting down again.
"It's nicer outside. When it's not too cold. They won't let me go outside the walls, and Petrus won't let me play in his garden, but there are still some flowers in the grass amongst the ruins."
[Right now, I'm trying to figure out how I could have checked the board multiple times and not seen there was a new post. I actually logged on today to ping you in a PM and see if you were OK. Sorry, yet again.]
Viola sits down beside her. She looks down at the spot on the ground where Chryse was poking, and asks, "Good dirt?"
Scott
Having come closer now, Viola can see that Chryse is actually looking at a small plant - and a hole she's dug beside it. She shakes her head to Viola's question, though, and explains in her (still rather imperfect) Latin:
"The soil isn't deep. You dig and walls there. It's not good for the plants..
[She seems to have inherited Viola's incomprehensibility. Sigh.]
Viola looks quizzical. "Show me walls?"
Viola wonders if there are ruins down there, or something else....
Scott
[Part of the problem is that Chryse only has Latin 3 - which means that she can mostly talk to Viola, but isn't really fluent.]
Chryse starts digging with a fragment of stone, and is soon able to show Viola what does indeed look to be a buried wall. If Viola had to guess, it's probably the bottom of a wall or a foundation of one of the buildings of old Tana - most of the area within the modern day covenant walls used to be a town, although the covenant has for the most part only rebuilt in the more central parts of the clearing.
"It's like this a lot. Plants grow, but not deep. Not all the places - garden of Petrus in a good bit. But a lot."
[That sounds like a teachable moment.]
Viola points to the wall under the ground. "How do you fix it?"
Scott