- and Pexa, who has been slumped gloomily on the floor, jumps to her feet and dashes to the door. "Mommy!"

Carissa does not scoop her. The kid collides with her legs. She looks down at her, utterly baffled. "Sorry, no, I'm someone else," she says in Valdemaran.

"I missed you SO MUCH," the kid is declaring in Taldane. "I don't LIKE it here and I WANT TO GO HOME."

She's speaking what.

"You're - Lissa's friend -" Savil breaks off. Spins around. :Lancir, we have a -:

:Yes. I heard it: Another older man in Whites ducks out of one of the bedrooms. He addresses the little girl in Mindspeech. :Pexa, this is your...mother...? Who is married to Leareth?:

:Yes!: She's clinging happily to her mommy's legs and explaining about the explosion and the cat.

For a moment all he can do is stand on the spot, making eye contact with Savil, frozen.

:...Invite her in and lock the door: he manages finally.

:Er, yes, of course: Savil takes the new arrival by the arm and pulls her into the room and bolts the door behind her.

Carissa takes a second to process this because she is so distracted by the fact she is being hugged by a Taldane-speaking child who insists Carissa is her mother. Only a second, though, then she flinches. 

"- I have never met this kid in my life," she says, "I don't know what's going on here, but -"

"Mommy pick me UP!"

"I am not your mother," she snaps in Taldane.

- Pexa bursts into tears.

...All right, fine, if this is a bluff it's a clever one, but now there's a wailing child in front of her, which is exactly what Savil DIDN'T want, and she's so incredibly confused.

:Van can you -:

Vanyel still has no idea at all what's happening, though Yfandes is suddenly feeling very antsy in the back of his head, but he reaches in and scoops Pexa up again. :I, er, why don't we go sit in the bedroom again and I'll play a song for you...?:

:Savil, shields:

She can do shields, if he's going to do the talking; she's very happy with this division of labor.

Lissa, who followed Carissa in, is staring around in bafflement.

Pexa is resisting Van. "I want my mommy. I want my mommy." 

And she bites her ring, and suddenly she's - shielded so thoroughly no one can get within a foot of her physically or with magic, and also there's an alarm -

"- I don't have kids," she says to Liss. "I'd think I'd know. Your friends can, uh, do a truth spell about it, if they'd like."

Vanyel jumps back, knocked away by the sudden shields - so that's what the ring does - and staggers into the wall.

Huh, she at least seems to speak Valdemaran. :Savil. Make sure she doesn't leave:

And he fixes his eyes on Carissa. :Do you know a man called Leareth:

Well, shit. 

"...no?" she says, going for vaguely bewildered but less affronted by this than by the kid - but they have mindreaders - and she calls an invisible needle to her hand and tries to Teleport.

It's instantly visible to mage-sight, something very very powerful and very very intricate, blossoming at her fingertips, a second from snapping complete around her.

Savil has been a Herald-Mage for more than forty years and her reflexes are correspondingly well-honed, and she's very much on edge. She instinctively rips at the forming spell - and then wrenches it away from the stranger and shoves up a shield because, on reflection, it seems like the sort of thing that might explode when broken -

It does do that, at least if you break it like that! It blasts at her shield.