"Yeah, maybe. He's better at idiosyncratic people based things, and this looks like it's one of them. Um - we can go to the scrying pool now to talk to him, if you're up for it?"

"Sure."

He slides off his tree branch and lands on the ground in a graceful crouch, surprisingly quietly.

She smiles at him.

"All right, valley, take us to the scrying pool, please?"

A door appears in the wall of the courtyard. Tarakova goes through it.

To the scrying pool!

"Show me my brother," she requests of it, and she starts weaving the connection that'll let her speak to her brother while it settles.

Restless tail-swish.

Here is Rylen!

He's currently chopping firewood. Shirtless.

(It's a good way to get out aggression without actually hurting anyone. Actually helpful to the people he's doing it for, even.)

Navethae makes a face. Shirtless brother. Why. Why would he this thing.

"Hey, Rylen, do you have a minute?"

He brightens noticeably when he hears his sister.

"Hey! Yeah, sure, I might need to stop talking for a little while if the people I'm doing this for pop out to say hello or something, but otherwise, yes I'm free."

"Okay, so, first bit of news, I am definitely still stuck in here."

"Unsurprising, but unpleasant."

"Yeah, basically. Second bit of news, Tarakova thinks the person who made this spell was a - romantic, was the word you used, right?"

Sigh. "Yes."

"Yes, a romantic. So Tarakova thinks the magic needs him to make a friend, someone he cares about, and that's why I'm in here -"

.... Rylen puts the axe down and rubs the bridge of his nose.

He is related to this person. Related. He is the brother of someone that is this dense. How can a smart person also be so very stupid.

"- but I'm wondering why it caught me and not - why are you making that face, Rylen."

Sigh.

Well, it's his responsibility to swat his sister until she puts two and two together to equal four instead of fish. Better get to it.

"Just - thinking things through, humor me, I think I'd better think out loud. So you're the first person it's let in. That means the criteria is picky, it wants a specific thing, right?"

"Yes, clearly."

"Right. So. If the person's a romantic, that means a specific kind of narrative. Like a novel."

"Rylen why are you stating the obvious to me."

Because clearly she needs him to state the very obvious.

"If this were a novel," he continues, pretending he didn't hear her, "then it would be one where the pretty unmarried protagonist was pulled into a fantastical and magic world, with only a mysterious once-emperor that's been trapped for thousands of years, alone, for past crimes that he has outgrown as a person. She is the first person to ever get pulled into this place. They are trapped there, together, their eventual escape relying on breaking the spell.

"If this novel were written by a romantic, what would break the spell, Navethae."

She opens her mouth.

She closes it.

"oh."

"There we go. I'm sorry you had to deal with that, Tarakova, she can be a bit dense sometimes."

"I was - I tried but - I'm not good at - saying things," he says.

Navethae is unfortunately unable to relay this, on account of her ability to speak actual words miraculously disappearing.

She makes a sound that starts out sounding like a 'why,' except it aborts partway through in favor of a squeak that starts out plaintive and shifts apologetic. Very ranged sound, that.