– she is no longer where she was.

She is NOT DEAD and does NOT HAVE HORRIBLE DESOLATION THUMBS DESCENDING TOWARDS HER EYES. The disorientation is significant; the high of sheer relief is bigger. She shakes and takes deep gulping breaths of air for several consecutive seconds before she manages to draw herself together enough to orient. 

(She has a handprint-shaped second-degree burn on either side of her face, just below her eyes and extending onto her ears and into her harilne.)

She's on a misty Cornish beach. Standing in front of her is a woman of indeterminate age, whose eyes are, somehow, not quite correct.

"Good afternoon," she says pleasantly. "I hope my invitation was not unwelcome."

Fucky eyes are probably Beholding, which is promising, at least as regards Kareen's personal safety. Kareen is having a harder time prioritizing things that are not her personal safety than usual. 

"Thank you. You saved my life."

"It wouldn't do to assume. To deny another their given death might be considered impolite."

Well that's...unhinged, but Kareen isn't going to argue with a powerful unknown entity even if her best guess is Beholding avatar. 

"She was going to go in through my eyes," she settles on instead. 

"Then I'm happy to have helped. Though I will admit that my intervention was not solely for your benefit."

Shrug. "Of course not. What do you want?" As long as it's not a Ritual, she'll probably be game.

A small smile. "First: how much do you know of the Secret Histories? Are they spoken of at all, where you come from?"

"...Well, we have secrets, and we have history, and there's overlap, but there isn't any one specific thing I would refer to as the Secret Histories."

The woman turns her steady gaze upon a decrepit castle overlooking the beach. "I am given to understand that some worlds, more distant than any I might reach, operate under the paradigm that... 'what happens, happened'. Here, it is not thus. Our past and present are curated by the Hours, a quarrelsome pack of demi-deities. But the Hours could never agree on one History. There are five Histories regarded as true, and others... less true. One may travel between them, with the proper invocations. We stand in one of the least true, a heterodox pseudo-History in which human life was wiped out by a century of winter following the mutilation of the Sun. It is not a cheery place, but it has the virtue of making it very easy to ward off eavesdropping."

"...Huh." Soooooo an Extinction area, basically sort of, except she has no idea what's up with these Hours? 

Also Kareen is fairly in favor of eavesdropping but it doesn't seem helpful to say so. It's not like Dad doesn't go to some measures to keep his secrets. 

"Does that mean that there are five Hours, and each one has a favored History, or that there are lots of Hours and the five true Histories are the ones that have the most support, or something else?"

"The latter. There are factors other than their approval, of course; certain prophecies and rituals may lend an event sufficient metaphysical weight that even the Sun-in-Splendor could not suppress it. Which brings me to our location."

She gestures to the crumbling wreck of the castle. "Hush House is one of the branches of the Watchman's Tree, those libraries with the right to house books with secrets which could quake reality's foundation. It has lain in ruins for decades, but a new Librarian has been sent to curate it. As luck would have it, though, her ship capsized, and even now she lies, concussed and dying of exposure, elsewhen on this selfsame beach. The villagers know she is coming, but they do not know her face."

Soft gasp. 

"--So are you replacing the Librarian, or do you want me to replace the Librarian?" Kareen is NOT going to allow herself to be too disappointed if it's the former. 

"I am disqualified from the position on practically every grounds bar literacy. You, on the other hand, should be eminently suitable."

"Yes!" She physically jumps in the air, pumping her fist. 

The woman smiles, and then sighs. "I should tell you: I do not grant you this boon on the expectation of quid pro quo. I expect no specific service. What I desire is that you take the tools you are given, and make things happen. Everyone else who could has grown... predictable. We are old and dull. Be young and strange, and you may reshape the world."

"Oh, I can do that. ...Not in an apocalypse way, I have no intention of enacting any world-ending terror rituals."

Shrug. "Apocalypse is only the flashiest kind of revelation."

She holds out her hand. "My name, by the way, is Rowena. And I have high hopes for you."

Firm handshake. "Kareen. Thanks, I have high hopes too."

And then, Rowena's hand is no longer in hers.

She's on the same beach, still drizzling, but there's lights on the clifftop glowing faintly through the mist.

Also, there's a woman at her feet, bedraggled and pale and dying but not yet quite dead.

Well.

She doesn’t have to die alone.

Kareen kneels down and takes her hand.

Despite the circumstance, the woman grips back with bruising force. Her eyes turn to Kareen, and her gaze sharpens.

"Who..."

"My name is Kareen."