She frowns. She goes back to the bookplace. She picks up the bent needle from where she carelessly left it on the floor, carries it to the game board, and places it just to the right of the hungry glass. 

Back to the apartments again. Dangerous, dangerous, why did she start this now...

She looks again, again for something to balance the game, to play on her side...

... she dashes down to the place of lost things, snatches up one of the smallest of the stuffed animals, squeezes it to her chest, and grins. Down down down the alleyway back to the chessboard! She almost dances, she moves so lightly. 

She puts the palm-sized dragon just to the right of her pendant.

She tilts her head. She nods. She takes a quarrelsome grey stone from the alleyway, and sets it to the right of the bent sewing needle. Shard, needle, stone, blood. She nods again. It's good to see it all laid out like this.

She pats the tiny dragon on its cerulean snoot, and smiles. 

The board is still imbalanced, but she can leave it be for now. It's in the right direction. 

Now, then. She has less self-indulgent work to do. She needs to sort through the jewellery and see if enough of it is changeable.

The blue-black shimmery metal is the most commonly available, but as it's moved it twists and shimmers in the light. It seems energetic, but not like the storm-grey chain that was impatient and wanted out. It's more good natured than that. It plays nicely with its neighbors, the light twists in it to catch hints of colors from the metals around it.

The second most abundant is the moonlight silver, and upon study, it's the second softest as well. Delicate and somewhat malleable, it seems graceful and wise. These are not impatient to leave, though they're aware they don't belong in an abandoned jewelry box.

Softest of them all, third most abundant, the lavender of the jewelry that matches the coins seems... regal. Pure, but closed off from the others. The forms it comes in are often gaudy things, shows of power and wealth, but that's hardly its fault. It rests easy, content with itself.

Rarer than almost all of the others, the deep purple feels mysterious. Special. It swirls all on its own, powerful and strange and exotic. In this form the metal doesn't feel dangerous, not shaped into jewelry like it is - but it could be. Dangerous like wit, dangerous like change, but not bad in itself. Something to be handled carefully. Second strongest, it is perhaps not changeable enough for her purposes, nor abundant enough.

Rarest, toughest of them all, is the restless stormy grey. It feels practical and grounded, in a way that the others might miss. This is not a metal prone to idleness, nor being cut off from everything and trapped in a box - it should be out in the world. No wonder it's so rare. It seems likely that many pieces refused to come here at all, or were disinclined to stay.

She separates out the twilight lavender. Regal and haughty, yes, but some things are in need of that character. She lays out the chains and necklaces first, hoping that they alone are enough.

Many of the chains are thin, but there are several heavier and bulkier necklaces with gaudy pendants that could be stretched quite far, if used deliberately enough. They should be enough for her purposes without need of the rings.

The chains are sufficient, but what to do with the settings...

For lack of a better idea, she asks the gemstones what they think of their company.

Some of them pop out quite easily, glad to be free of the surroundings that had set the tone for so long. Others are trickier. One amethyst is quite well set in its rather large pendant and refuses to go. Another delicate looking opal looks like it might crack if put under too much pressure. It might be best to use a bracelet or some of the rings, instead.

She puts her handful of gemstones with the glass shards on the bar, then looks through the lavender bracelets and rings for the most restless of them. 

There are a set of heavy earrings that are large and slightly bent out of shape - they look restless and ready for change. A multi-strand bracelet looks like it wants to be unwound to become something else. Another bracelet is made up of heavy rectangles of metal that unhook from each other fairly easily. She can make up for the gemstones that don't want to be parted from their fellows easily enough.

She hums. She taps her fingers together. She has enough, most certainly, but she has no hammer, no chisel, no clay, no draw-plate, no pliers. Tongs, yes, but shorter than she'd prefer. 

She goes upstairs to the apartment, and looks through the spice rack.

The spices mostly don't match their containers' labels anymore - they probably once did, though. There's usually some resemblance to what they're labelled as, just - now they're a bit different. Some more than others. Unlike most of its neighbors, the salt shaker's contents is still stubbornly salt.

... she has honestly no idea what half these things are or were, given the mislabeling and the shifts. What was she thinking the first time she organized this?

She'll just... come back to this later.

Now then. She has an awful lot of alchemy ingredients to move to the careful shelves behind the bar. She had bettter get -

As she goes to close the cupboard, her gaze happens to pass over the bread basket. Her stomach growls. 

She blushes. No, it won't do to forget to tend herself, even if the world around her is all a-jumble. The bread is a bit put out: after all, she's been ignoring it. 

She gets down a plate, and puts one of everything in the cupboard on it. Then she looks around for somewhere to sit. 

Table A: Still covered in bedsheets. Table B: Buried in wandwood and plant, and a bedside table anyway. Table C: Occupied by her to-be-skirt and the clock. Bed: Still buried in books. 

She rubs her forehead. 

She sighs. Nothing for it, then. 

She sets the plate of food down on the counter.

The alchemist's tools go in the careful shelves behind the former bar. The books on the bed go into the cleared space in the back shelves of the book place where the alchemist's tools were. The sheets go back on the bed. The food goes onto the table that was occupied by the sheets. She can eat now, right? 

... no, she still has things to do. She goes and gets the boxes full of stuffed animals and tumbles them all out onto the soft bed, then takes the boxes they were in down to the airy place and sets them up to add to the muttly seating there. 

And then, finally, there is nothing immediately needed and she can sit down to enjoy her bread and strange fruits and water and - oh, the cutlery is still all amutter and, and... 

She'd wanted to try one of the preserves...

... Still, she has sweet bread and shadow fruit and none of this strictly needs a fork or a knife or, or anything. So she should eat. It would be a good idea to eat. 

She takes a bite of the bread, because it would be unfair to it to leave it any longer.

... it still tastes quite nice, actually. 

She takes another bite, and eats one of the not-strawberries, and then she looks at one of the unfamiliar berries and feels brave enough to maybe pop it into her mouth threetwoone -