"Hey! Wait!" he calls out and starts to run back over when he sees the angel writing in, and then tearing, a page of his notebook.

He cradles the object protectively for a moment once he reaches it, before putting it back down and heading back to the Hearthkeeper. "Sorry. I guess it got into somebody's room? I didn't even know that it was gone..."

"Good." She turns to address Arthur. "It got into someone's room and tried to read their diary. I don't hold you responsible for this, but because it's able to return to your location at will, most of the remedies I could employ if it keeps causing trouble would affect you as well. I think the best solution would be to disconnect this garden from the rest of my refuge and slow down time here, relative to the rest of my refuge. This would allow me to do the work to prevent the angel from causing more trouble in what you would perceive as a short amount of time: probably a few hours, two days on the high end. Other than getting your books back from the library much earlier than you expected and being stuck here for a little bit—I can bring you food and anything else you need, to be clear—this wouldn't affect you very much if I did it now, because you don't have a social life here yet. If I did it several days or weeks from now in response to the angel causing more trouble, your friends would go quite a while without seeing you. There are other potential solutions, to be clear, and if the angel did cause trouble in the future such that I was forced to do something about it, I would discuss that with you and try to find something that causes you the least inconvenience possible. But, if you think it's at all likely to cause trouble in the future, placing the two of you into dialated time now is probably the least inconvenient option for you. Does all that make sense?"

The angel...has gotten him put it literal timeout.

He feels a flash of hot anger at it, at this himself, for just a second, before it quickly drains away into a deep, cold embarrassment, and disappointment, and sadness, and self-loathing.

"Yeah, that all makes sense," he replies, doing his best to not let his voice waver or crack. "Thank you, and sorry for the trouble. I've got food and water in my pack, so I should be good, I think."

Then he'll walk back over to the little camp he's set up and sitting back down, very still and quiet, picking his notebook back up and just setting it down in his lap without opening it.

"You want to go with the time dialation option then?"

Oh, there was a question. "Yeah. I'd rather lose the time now rather than later."

"Very well. I'll make sure the door leads to a bathroom. Is there anything else you need?"

He's not sure he can muster a confident voice anymore, so he just tries to smile and shake his head.

She departs. Half an hour later, she returns with Arthur's books, back from the library.

"By the way, if you want the day/night cycle of your garden to be synchronized with the day/night cycle that most of the refuge uses, or off by a specific amount, this would be a convenient time to do that—it won't take more than an extra second or two from your perspective."

He's still sitting in the same spot as before, pretty clearly having cried with his face still a bit puffy and his glasses in a slightly different position, but he seems calmer now. His breathing's more regular, and rather than just sitting still he's back to looking through his notebook.

"Yeah, that sounds good," he replies, his voice still a little brittle.

"Do you want it synchronized, then?"

He flinches, just he tiniest amount, then nods. "If that's alright."

"That's what I'll do, then."

She departs. If Arthur doesn't indicate he needs anything, several more hours will pass uninterrupted.

Indeed he does not. He uses the bathroom a couple times, and eats some of the snacks he had in his pack, takes some sips from his thermos, mills around, and writes more in his notebook.

Eventually, he's back in action as well, after sort of not existing for a while there. He's still pretty miffed, but he's more scared than he is angry now.

Neither of those stop him from getting bored as the hours go by though, so he'll do some more exploring. There's only one direction he hasn't checked in here, and that's skyward.

He's not so good at straight-up flying, but if he grabs some leaves off the trees and blows them upwards, he can sort of follow them up. The image of the body, shrunk down to the size of an ant, riding the leaf up into the sky comes to his mind for some reason.

He can get a few hundred feet above the surface before he stops getting any higher. It feels like he's still moving, he just doesn't actually gain altitude beyond that point. The endlessly repeating grid of gardens and rooftops stretches out below him.

Yeah, figured. Honestly, it's kind of similar to how he feels when he tries to go this high up without something like this leaf or a piece of paper or whatever.

He'll abandon his impromptu vehicle and flit back to the rooftops around the garden and start poking around to see if he can find anything like a seam or incongruity, or a gap that he might be able to slip through to...somewhere, he doesn't really know where it'd go.

Nope. No windows, just roofs and walls with that impervious layer under the surface.

Boooring.

Hm...

He'll flit back down to the ground and wait for a while longer, until the body goes to use the toilet again, then he'll follow it into the bathroom and, after taking a minute to build some courage, tries exploring down the sink drain.

He doesn't get very far before he hits another impervious barrier. It looks like all the water that reaches this point is instantaneously annihilated.

The universal plumbing solution: Just Fucking Delete The Wastewater.

Hm...alright. What if he goes up the faucet, to where the water would come from? Is it just getting created ex nihilo from another impermeable barrier?

Yep!

Yeah, that tracks.

Alright. Does the bathroom have any air ducts? And if it does, do they have a similar situation as the water pipes?

There are no air ducts.

Damn. Just his luck. Looks like he's out of leads, at least in terms of finding new places to explore. What else could he do...

He heads back down underground and starts mapping out where all the trees and bushes' roots are, to see if any of them look strong enough to hold up the ceiling of a little hidey-hole.

That depends on how little he wants his hole to be, but he can probably build something under one of the trees.