...looking at her garden makes her feel like it is worth it to not be a tree.

With renewed cheer and vigor, she wanders over to her bark stash and takes some of it to the kitchen island to fiddle with. She doesn't quite feel up to constructing a whole new skirt just to give it pockets, but perhaps she could manage some sort of belt with attached pouches, which would be useful if she ever encounters something she'd like to put in a pocket. Less useful for tucking her hands into as she walks, but you can't have everything.

Now where did that book on leatherworking run off to... right, there it is... and then if... hmm...

Triumph, success, pockets.

Now the question is—

Does she go back?

Having a sobbing breakdown because no one in the world will look at her is unpleasant, obviously. She didn't like doing it and she'd like to avoid doing it again.

But it's surprisingly survivable. Look at her, she survived it. She didn't even seriously consider doing otherwise. Her bones are all present and accounted for and she is not at all lying in the dirt waiting for new ones to wiggle into the shape of a body.

This seems to imply she could survive it again, if necessary.

She could take another semi-disposable book out to the gazebo and sit and read it. Or if there isn't enough light there to read after dark, she could just go for a walk in what is probably a poor excuse for starlight. There might be a moon, though. If there is a moon she could look at the moon.

She goes to the library, and gets an English-language book off the shelf, and puts it in her specific book-sized belt pouch that she made because she knows herself, and returns to the foyer to head back out. The book is called 101 Bad Jokes and she's morbidly curious how bad they are but doesn't expect to be disappointed if she has to wait a while to find out.

There is, indeed, a moon.

Looking up at it, she can't figure out if it looks like Earth's moon or not. Well, obviously there's a resemblance. But are all the splotchy bits in the right places? Maybe she could tell if she had a telescope, and also had paid more attention to the moon. It doesn't really matter that much. She just feels like being able to tell whether the moon looks the same as you're used to is an important skill for a traveler between worlds, and she's disappointing the person who wrote that travelogue by being so bad at it.

That is an objectively silly thing to worry about, and instead of worrying about it, how about she doesn't.

She makes that same hands-into-pockets motion again, and again encounters an absence of pockets, and laughs softly at herself, and steps out of the gazebo.

A hint of movement in the corner of her eye.

?

There's nothing there.

...?

...it's probably nothing. She keeps walking. The path is well lined with little garden lamps casting their light sideways across the gravel, so she's in no danger of tripping on an unseen obstacle. The air is crisp and the moon is beautiful.

She could keep doing this, she thinks. Even with the occasional sobbing breakdown when she gets caught out in the open at an unexpectedly crowded time. She could keep doing this, and in a year—well, more like two years, since she's still sleeping in her Bevin—she'll be able to gain her first power from this world, and a few more years after that, she'll have gained enough of them to feel at home here. If she manages to arrange good eavesdropping opportunities, she'll learn the language along the way.

It's nice to think about. There's definitely something more than a little scary about this plan of hers, but maybe she's okay with that. Maybe she wants to try doing things that are a little scary.

Is that a human shape, silhouetted against the lights out front of that dormitory?

No business of hers if it is.

Her steps do quicken for a moment, but the fact of the matter is that she's not really afraid of mysterious figures in the distance at night. Ordinary people up close in full daylight are the source of most problems in life.

Leaving the whole train of thought aside, she looks up at the moon again. It's pretty. She's glad there's a moon.

The moon is indifferent to her approval.

Fair enough.

She keeps walking. Idly, she reattunes her internal compass, seeking the nearest bridges to Brazen, the Prison, and Earth. Earth is closest, ahead-ish and off to the left, though still not as close as the bridge to Arbor behind her. Brazen feels quite a bit farther than that, mostly to her right and a little ahead. Her sense of the nearest bridge to the Prison is so faint she's not sure she isn't imagining it. Probably she isn't imagining it. It seems like it might be behind her, but she's not very confident of that.

...she isn't sure, new as she is to interpreting this sense, but she thinks the closest bridge to Brazen is significantly farther here than on the Arbor side. Maybe at some point she can walk to it and check. Something to do with her next outing here.

For now, she walks. She vaguely intends to go home either when she starts getting tired or when the walkways start flooding with students again. She isn't sure which will happen first.

...turns out it's the first thing, though the sky is noticeably lightening by the time she finds herself stifling a yawn. She returns to the gazebo for her future self's convenience, meditates (yawningly) through to her Bevin, and stumbles into bed with only a moderate amount of clothing-related awkwardness.