"If you say my name anywhere on this mountain, I'll hear it and whatever you say after it," he says. "Don't be afraid to bother me, I promise I won't be annoyed. Might take me a while to come find you if I'm asleep or in the middle of something, though."

"All right," she agrees. "What hours do you tend to keep, anyway?"

"Oh, most days I stay up all night and then sleep till noon," he says with a shrug.

... That fits with the swan thing, doesn't it. Of course.

"So, don't expect anything out of you until after noon at least. Good to know."

He smiles. "Yeah. But if you find yourself hopelessly lost in the forest at dawn, you can wake me up to come fetch you and I won't mind."

"Thank you. But if I go exploring the forest, I shouldn't do it near dawn if I can avoid it."

"That would be the sensible thing to do," he agrees.

(He really wants to kiss her. He's wanted to for a while. But he doesn't want to do anything that will make her feel unsafe or unhappy, and that seems likely to do both.)

"I try to be that!"

(Yeah, pretty likely.)

He smiles at her, and - there's something in the way he looks at her, for a moment, that might indicate he is thinking about kissing her - but then he shrugs slightly and says, "Be seeing you," and dissolves into a breeze that ruffles her hair on its way out of the room.

"... Yeah," she agrees, a little blandly. Trying not to shiver and failing.

Did she imagine that expression he had? No, she doesn't think she did. But he left her untouched, so, she doesn't feel she has anything to really complain about.

Instead she's tired, and drunk. She doesn't want to analyze the risk factors involved in her actions to try and figure out the most efficient way to leverage her current situation without leveraging herself right into - unpleasant circumstances. She would like to go to bed, and sleep.

So she goes to her lovely guest room with its gorgeous view, and she prods the wardrobe to give her something better to fall asleep in. She picks out a long lavender nightgown in a style so ancient it seems more novel than old-fashioned, decides that she shouldn't waste time fretting over if her host is going to peep, and changes into it accordingly. Then she goes to bed, wondering if she'll be woke by someone else's echoing screams.

There are no echoing screams.

(Some - in fact, most - of the places where people tend to scream on this mountain are thoroughly soundproofed.)

Her windows with their view of the lake also offer her an excellent view of the sunrise.

Yeah maybe later she'll enjoy the sunrise but right now curtains closed she is sleeping in because everything sucks.

Hangovers. The great equalizer. In retrospect she should have gotten some water and food to go with the wine.

When she does wake, there's a glass of water sitting on her bedside table that wasn't there when she went to sleep.

???

Is there a note or something? She'll take it, obviously, she's kind of parched, but is there some context here or does her bedside table just dispense water?

There is indeed a little square of paper on the table with one corner under the glass. It says For you! and something that might be an abbreviated signature in the Ansati style.

She doesn't know if that's sweet or creepy, and she finds she doesn't really care.

Playing the 'is it drugged' game is kind of a waste of time when one's dealing with an all powerful sorcerer. So, bottoms up.

It's not drugged!

Well -

Her hangover is now gone without a trace, as is every other physical malady she may have been experiencing. Does that count as drugged?

Nnnnnno she doesn't think so. She stares at the empty glass, as if she can make it spill its secrets if she puts it under enough emotional pressure. Except it's a drinking glass, and the only thing that it can possibly spill are its contents, of which there are none.

She's pretty sure that was water from the healing spring in the ruins of the old capital. That's the only thing that makes sense. That's - really thoughtful, actually? And what does she even do with that. After a brief reflection, she decides to just. Get dressed, go get breakfast, and thank him when she sees him.

The clothes offered by the wardrobe are - weird, but she figures out the mechanics of wearing them soon enough. She picks something out (it's a lovely shade of green) and then goes to see what breakfast the dining hall offers.

Plates and cutlery appear before her a few seconds after she sits down, and food appears on the plates a few seconds later, all with that same characteristic effect from when Lord Tanaikon conjures things or goes windriding - as though they're condensing rapidly out of the air, clear air turning to mist turning to solid objects all in not much longer than a heartbeat.

Some of the food is recognizable, and nearly all of it smells very tasty, and it's not difficult to figure out how to eat even the unrecognizable things.

Well, this is actually pretty nice. She's open to trying the newer bits of food, though she turns out to not like everything offered to her. Those can just be moved out of her way so the magic can figure out her food preferences sooner rather than later.

A few seconds after she stands up and tucks in her chair, the remaining plates and cutlery and food all neatly vanish.

Magic is cool.

It comes from horrific torture and she certainly doesn't think the trade's worth it, but it's still cool.

Her host isn't likely to be up yet, she thinks. So she needs to figure out something to do until then.

........

Library!!!

(Eeeeee!!!)

The library is just as huge and beautiful and full of books as she remembers. If anything, with the sun coming up high enough to pour its light in through the ceiling, it's even prettier.

She lets herself have a minute of pure unbridled glee at this many books. Eeeheehee there are so many books.

Okay. Okay. She's good now. Let's go actually see if there are any books that are relevant to her current situation. That is, books on magic.

The library is organized, but it's organized according to principles that remain at least partly unwritten. One of the easiest-to-guess aspects of the system is time: the oldest books live at the bottom, the newest at the top. Then each floor has its own subsections, usually labelled but not always labelled in a way comprehensible to her - sometimes in Ansati, sometimes just in very cryptically phrased Nathuremi.