Luto sips her tea and fishes out some of their trail rations from the bag as Ridaya prepares her spells. She sets out some for Sophie (though none for Ridaya?), and eats some dried meat and cheese for herself. 

Sophie suspects, with the only-sleeping-two-hours, that Ridaya may not need as much sustenance of various sorts as an ordinary human. It's no difference to her, except that their rations will last longer. (Assuming she can't just work up a cake like she does the tea, which is hardly guaranteed.)

Once she's broken her fast, she starts in on those reagents. She finds it easiest to keep a memory of power tied down if she attaches it to a physical object, something small and unimportant; she's good enough at finger-crochet to make little snarls of yarn for them. Pull the thread, and the memory rushes back into focus just long enough to make it count. She's disadvantaged, right now, in what memories she can actually access, but necessity is the mother of any number of virtues. She can begin with an invocation of the old wound in her hip, then stretch that with Torgue's cleansing rite and a Labhitic tincture into a winning move... maybe she can get through a Thunderskin paean, too? It'll be tight, in fifteen minutes, but it's a useful thing to have on the tip of your tongue.

Luto watches all this happen with interest, though she doesn't interrupt.

Fifteen minutes later, Ridaya puts her magical book back in her bag, and pulls out... a pair of gloves, a mummified hand on a string, a cloak similar to the ones she and Luto are wearing, and a headband.

"Sophie, I found a few magic items that you might find interesting, earlier. And... " She holds up the cloak and headband, looking uncomfortable. "...These belong to Vakt, but it would be a good idea  for you to wear them, until we get her back. They'll make it harder for hostile magic to harm you."

"...thank you. Truly."

She accepts the cloak, putting it on immediately, and begins removing her hat to fit on the headband. The gloves and... hand... she examines as she does so. Obviously they're magical, but... "What do these do? Do you know? There are ways I could find out myself, but not trivially."

Then she gets the headband secure, and

oh.

Oh, this is not good, is it.

Because – the thing is –

the thing is, that Sophie's mind has up to now existed in a careful balance between the self-awareness necessary to function, and the self-awareness that would lead her to understand that she is miserable, and that she is slowly going mad, and that she is killing herself by half-measures.

It's not that it's more relevant than it was a moment ago. It's more salient, certainly. It's more obvious. It feels like noticing suddenly that she's drowning, like looking around and seeing that she's been talking to a mannequin. Like noticing that she's been writing out an extended letter to an acquaintance, disagreeing with their literary opinions in the most uncompromising terms, while her fucking house is on fire.

There is really very little that she can productively do about this, especially right now, some part of her says. She tries to fold this little breakdown away, to put it in a little cabinet in the corner of her brain, but her very English repression fails her. She cannot repress this, not anymore. She will face herself, and the lingering traces of her first and greatest mistake, or – there isn't anything else. She will.

(She's gone very pale.)

Luto notices first, interrupting an explanation Ridaya had just barely started. "...Sophie, are you okay?" She puts a hand on her shoulder hesitantly.

(Luto has had Owl's Wisdom put on her many times, now - Uma makes her drink a potion of it before they get into fights with spellcasters. Mostly it feels like like having an Imaginary Vakt in her head giving occasional commentary on her thoughts, which is kinda nice, but also... Imaginary Vakt is noticeably worse at this than Real Vakt is, and talking to Real Vakt isn't a second circle spell and also often comes with snuggles, so on the whole she's never been especially impressed with the experience.)

...oh. Oh dear. "Sorry, I should have mentioned, the headband works by, um, by making it easier to notice your thoughts and reflect on how your brain works, which occasionally people can find to be kind of distressing. It's not permanent, you can take it off if you want,"