"—Strawberry Shortcake."

"It's impressive how you almost manage to make it sound intimidating."

"In fairness I've already made a foe or two rue the day they met me." She thinks for a second. "Briefly."

"Goodness. Um, was this the monster you said you found in the Academy?"

"Yeah, the other was this monster man in the dark rainy place. The details are a little gruesome, actually."

"...do you want to talk about it?"

"Ah." Hm. "Well, to keep it vague, this giant monster man had been doing bad things to prisoners. I got really scared, then I turned it around and used the darkness and teleportation to scare him into making a mistake that let me kill him." She pauses. "I've been procrastinating on going back for a while."

"That does sound very scary. I think if I were in a similar situation I would run away."

"That sounds pretty smart. I should try it one of these days."

"...it's better for the prisoners that you didn't, though."

They weren't responsive after she had freed them. They had been just like the emaciated man, there was a hollowness to them. She doesn't know if they will ever be ok again. She doesn't say any of that. "...yeah."

"But... it matters what's good for you, too."

She smiles. "I could say the same thing. But, I'm ok."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so." She looks around at the maps. "If I find that I'm not, I'll let you know."

"Okay."

She goes back to making a fresh copy of her map. A few more carefully labeled landmarks, and she can tug the page out of her notebook and add it to the sprawl.

Berry's own notebook is basically a legend of what is appended to the maps, more like a manual to assemble the sprawl beneath them. There are also notes on variations between universities: Which ones had computer rooms, maps, communal restrooms, vending machines, vacant dorm rooms, etc.

Very little of that sort of thing made it into Groundskeeper's map, but she does have descriptions of all the bridges she's found, as well as a few other points of interest such as a library, some especially nice trees, and a swimming pool.

"Ok, so we've covered a pretty wide area. We have a bridge to the dark and rainy place, a bridge to Robot city, a bridge to Arbor, a bridge to Brazen and three bridges to Earth. Am I missing something?"

"I think there's a bridge to the Prison somewhere—that's another of my worlds, but it sounds scary and I'm not sure I ever want to go there—but wherever it is, it's far enough away that I haven't gotten a good sense of it even now that I have a bicycle."

"Hm, well I can take a look through the bridge and see if it's dangerous on the other side, and I could come with you, if you ever want to explore it. Remind me, have you checked the other side of any of the Earth bridges?"

"No—I can't see through bridges and I don't... want... to go there. I've, um... I've heard that not all Earth bridges go to the same Earth? But I'm not really sure what to think of that."

"Oh. There are many Earths. If that's the case then it may actually be impossible to find our way to our original Earths. Hm, Regardless I'll make a point of going to each of these Bridges and taking a look on the other side to see what is around."

"That seems reasonable."

She starts trying to draw a copy of Strawberry's map. It... will take more than one session to copy it all, probably. But that's all right, she has time.

She thinks about drawing a copy herself, but gives up on the idea. "Oh, all of the universities have copy machines. I could sneak in and make a copy of your map to take home. Or whatever you need copies of, really."