?

His faith in the monkey's intelligence will remain unrestored.

Mordred does not recognize this paper from going through Louise Fauche's papers on her desk.

Oswald would also like to try to convey the vibes he got from the ritual. Unfortunately he is not very good at... talking. He stumbles through a description that includes a lot of "I don't know"s and "just felt weird"s.

🤔

"It seemed a normal ritual of this area to me. It was quite beautiful, in fact."

"Like, anything in particular about it was weird, or just, it was a ritual and all rituals are kind of weird?"

"No, like, specifically, it was-- it just--" he sighs. "I don't know, didn't it feel to anyone else like--"

This does not feel like it will be productive.

Zoe shrugs. She didn't notice anything weird.

"It felt weird but in the way that all Christianity feels kind of weird to me."

Magnificence is not sure where Anemone went. He will wait with Zoe, though. Anemone will come back. She wouldn't leave him. ☹️

Oswald celebrated Christmases by exchanging a few gifts with his sister and having a hot meal with an excessive ratio of dessert to dinner. He doesn't have any gifts or a sister and a hot meal sounds both out of reach and really unappealing.

They could sing carols, maybe.

Zoe will sing some carols with Oswald.

She attempts to acquire a pastry. A ginger-ish one if at all possible.

It is not Christmas yet, it is still Advent! The Julian calendar predates the Gregorian calender, you know. (Araari is fasting during Advent, which means she doesn't eat breakfast and is staying vegan, although she's doing this very quietly and will pick at food if the foreigners give some to her in the mornings.)

Mordred is ideologically opposed to Christmas, or like, was before his opinions of Christianity became "confusing????"

He should schedule the dinner, probably. They've probably noticed their wayward dinner guests are up and about. 
 
 

Mariam is happy to reschedule for tomorrow evening!

That night--

Araari hears a voice. Her voice. Wheezing out words in a language she can’t understand. But it’s not coming from her own mouth. Her shirt shifts at her belly, as if being pushed on from within. It dampens, more and more. Trembling, she tears her shirt away to discover a wide mouth, tongue probing, cut across her stomach like a gash, oozing pus and blood. It yells out alien words in her voice, and when she tries to call for help she finds her own mouth shrinking away to nothing, closing around her tongue, swallowing her teeth with flesh. She cannot exhale, she cannot breathe. And as she suffocates… she awakens.

Zoe has very pleasant dreams about Christmas Things. There is a tree all done up with tinsel and there is eggnog and spiced cider and cookies and someone is playing piano while other people sing and dance. She has a hat and mittens.

Cathedral of St. Mary rare book room?

Is this a place for monkeys? :D?

No.

The rare book room is also not really a Zoe place. Maybe she and Magnificence can go do things that are not books.

And so Mordred and Araari go to the rare book room.

What they know is that there was a book called the Book of Aksum, which was redacted by a person or people unknown.

When they find it and read it, they conclude that Oswald was right that someone was redacting it.

Indeed, someone has removed every trace of... whatever they were redacting... from the library.

That... is indeed the thing Mordred would expect someone who was redacting information to do but it's good to have it confirmed he supposes.