"Ooh, pretty! Are those crystal balls?"

Haley lifts one out of its protective padding.

"I mean, they're balls made of crystal, and V says they do something magic. Do you remember that inn we stayed at, right after you blew up the Gate?"

"You mean when your room was next door to ours and you had this whole conversation that sounded like you were showing V your—"

"Yeah. Anyway, we were actually talking about these. My mom used to have them… Daddy says she was a sorcerer, so I guess that tracks. I got them when I was twelve. From her brother, because she died when I was a little kid. I must have lost track of them when the inn blew up, or when we got dragged to Azure City."

Elan would squeeze her hands, but they're full right now.

"Well, they are really pretty."

Smile.

"You can hold them, if you want. Just be careful, okay?"

Elan is careful!

Eventually, once the orbs are back in their case:

"I wonder if this just works for stuff that I've lost. Do you wanna check and see if you get anything of yours?"

"Sure!"

He stands up and peers into the misty depths.

He sees...

a wooden lute. It's nothing extraordinary. Competently whittled, by someone with a blueprint and an eye for detail but no personal knowledge of how the shape of an instrument affects its sound. Strung with "whiskers," because Elan's mother knew her son and knew the word "catgut" would make him cry.

He takes it eagerly and shows it to Haley.

"Look! It's a present from my mom! It's the very first lute I ever played! Wow, it's so much smaller than I remembered…"

He thumbs the strings absentmindedly, forming chords. A couple times, his fingers reach a little farther than necessary and he has to adjust. But it's familiar in his grip nonetheless.

he is so cute

"Whatcha thinking about?"

"I think it'd be nice to meet her. Once we're done saving the world and everything."

"Yeah, that sounds fun! We could go to her restaurant and have lots of this really nice pot roast that she makes, and…"

Elan starts rambling about the fun things he liked to do in his hometown.

Haley fishes through the well for a while. She finds an occasional coin, but it becomes clear that she'd have to sit there trying for like 50 subjective years to get enough money to buy herself a bow that's on par with her current one. And she does not, in fact, have that kind of patience.

"… I guess I already accepted that the gold was gone anyway. Still, it would have been nice to get it back… or at least one of those cool magic items we never got around to assessing…"

"You do have a way cooler magic item!"

"Haha, yeah, that's true!"

She stands up and cracks her joints. And has a thought.

"Hey, Reaper. I think we're pretty much ready to go, except… we've got some things to catch up on, and we might as well do it before we have anything urgent to do. I don't get the impression that you can leave this place, but, uh… if we sat in a corner or something, would that be relatively private?"

"I can create a room where you will not be able to see me. And offer my reassurances that the mating behaviors of mortals interest me no more than any other thing that is not on the single-digit list of things I care about."

She refuses to be embarrassed about this!

"Rrright. Sounds like one of those seen-it-all immortal things. Anyway, thanks, we'd like that a lot."

There are now four doors. This latest has a hotel-style card hanging from its handle saying it is UNOCCUPIED.

And now it is OCCUPIED!

Haley and Elan "catch up."

And then they catch up.