Again, maybe at least warn a girl first!!!!

"Sit down," Daly says distractedly, gesturing at an armchair as her braid starts to come undone and her hair begins to sway to nonexistent wind. "No need to be uncomfortable for this."

Elaine obligingly sits, and attempts to be easily readable by spirits, which seems to be how?? they are searching??? for her lost memories?? It's not really clear how she is supposed to accomplish this mission, but she's going to be trying her best.

Dunn brought a briefcase from the carriage; he obligingly opens it, and starts assisting Daly in ritual setup. Three candles, several vials of incense, and a silver athame.

Daly's hair is now fully free of her braids, and the unfelt wind agitating it is getting progressively stronger. She takes out two thumb-sized glass bottles from her waist pouch and says, "This will help you relax for me, make you feel nice and cosy, allowing me to loosen you up so that you can indulge in those feelings..." She walks over to the various candles in the room to drip the contents of her bottles onto the flames, causing them to turn blue and begin to emit a sweet scent. "Night vanilla, slumber flower, and chamomile, all distilled and extracted to form this aromatic floral essence. I call it 'Amantha'. It means 'tranquility' in Hermes."

James is much too professional to snicker.

They aren't.

... Is she feeling nice and cozy already? It's hard to tell. She's definitely trying to cooperate and relax, though.

Some part of her still feels unmoored from Daly's enforced reality, and it distantly recognizes that this might be something like hypnotism. But it's easy enough for the unmoored part of her mind to stay out of the way, and let the part of herself anchored in a body do the steering.

"Technically speaking it's also in reference to the tranquility of death," says Elaine, helpfully, because while she isn't as good with Hermes, she has some experience with it. "Which I suppose makes sense in this situation, considering you're a spirit medium, which sounds like it deals in dead things. Hey did you know that in Intis, a little death is also a reference to an orgasm? But this usage is pretty contentious with the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun, both for it being against their sensibility reasons, and also because apparently they find it symbolically inaccurate?"

... It's a little embarrassing that it is inclined to babble. At least it's about world appropriate topics, though. Is this what she's like when she's drunk?

"Oh, in my experience it's pretty accurate."

James starts coughing.

Dunn is not going to cough. Coughing would potentially disrupt the ritual.

So James gets prodded with an elbow; keep your snickering quiet, please.

(And if Dunn Smith is blushing, it's certainly hard to tell in this light. .... For most people.)

She has such pretty eyes. Such a nice shade of blue-green. Like the sea...

The part of her that is being drawn deeper into this is not self aware enough to note that there are physical effects to this induction. She attempts to ignore how kind of hot this is, watching a pretty woman turn her(?) into putty in her hands, with a small part of her watching unable to act like some kind of voyeur. ANYWAY. What's she babbling about this time?

"Yeah I don't really see what their problem is either, but it was something about the higher connections of death and sex not intermingling actually, but like, the Blazing Sun is one of the only two gods they even like over there, you'd think they would at least listen instead of just doing whatever they wanted. I suppose that's people, though, they are in the habit of doing whatever they want, and then if their state church gets upset that's just funny and they'll do it more."

"Will they?" she wonders mildly. "What an interesting relationship with their churches." Her voice sounds both like it's impossibly far and like she's whispering into Elaine's ears. The blue light of the candles drown out the lights from the gas lamps without becoming any brighter, and the room begins to swim in a blue haze, the edges slipping apart the moment Elaine takes her eyes off them.

This is objectively a little spooky, and she can tell that there is something off about her, but. She has been expecting spooky, today, and she was expecting to be mentally affected by whatever this is, so. She doesn't try to resist. Why would she look away from these pretty, pretty eyes?

It's interesting that the comment about her expectations of churches behaving differently than here wasn't followed up on. Is that just good scene direction manners, or is the stuff carried over from home invisible to Daly?

"I think it's because it's bad about not having stupid rules, which is more important than many might think. If you make half of your rules stupid, and then the other half not stupid, people will just think all of them are stupid by association. Plus it also makes it hard to even tell what is a serious rule and what is one that was made because one guy had a strong opinion about the proper usage of gold in religious art. Which is one of their rules, by the way, they're really finicky about the best way to use gold, or even just the color yellow, it's deeply silly. Oh, but don't tell them I said that, they'd be very offended."

"I don't think we have anyone from the Church of the Blazing Sun in the force, but I'll make sure to remember that," she says, sounding amused.

"Mhmm. Thank you. I hope I'm doing this right, I think I'm being very cooperative, but I don't have any data to compare against, so it's hard to objectively tell..."

"Specifically, am I being cooperative enough for your purposes, or do I need to actually entirely let go? Because I don't think the me-in-the-fog can help with literally any of this, so as long as she/I am not in the way of this search, I'd rather not go completely under, if I can avoid it. Look, miss, you're very pretty, but literally none of you have even bought me dinner!"

"Oh, you are," says the voice coming from all directions, the voice that blends the colours into one another, both more and less defined than in reality, both more and less real than reality. Now the crystal blue eyes are directly in front of Elaine's, but her voice is right by Elaine's ear. "I want you to be a good girl and help me swim in the oceans of your mind."

"I'm not really dressed for that but okay~"

Apparently this is cooperative enough! Excellent.

"Memories can be excised from the surface of your mind, like a flooding sea submerging an island, but the island is still there, just below the surface. There are always traces, projections of what had been there before.

"Go back to yesterday for me. You came to Mr. McGovern's place... when...?"

"Yesterday...?" she murmurs, confused. "Was there a yesterday? Are you sure?"

There certainly was for me, but. That is not Elaine's yesterday, which is the relevant one here.

"I'm sure. Days follow each other; if there's a today, there was a yesterday, and a day before. Do you remember the day before? When did you go to sleep?"

"Mmmm... feels like it was a long time ago..."

She doesn't think Daly's going to get anywhere, Elaine's memories were well and truly trashed by whatever took her.

"It was, but you were there, and you can find it again. What were you doing? What do you do every day? Have you been studying for your interview in a few days?"

She nudges Elaine's memories, pulling images to the forefront of Elaine's mind: her apartment, Khoy University, a pile of books, Welch McGovern and Naya Bannister, trying to find what Elaine's mind feels most pulled towards.

Her apartment feels the most natural to wander towards.

"I think I've been kind of bad about studying, irresponsible of me, distracted by.... what was I distracted by...?" Her brow furrows.

The apartment seems out of order, though. A while ago it was... hmm... what was it like...?

Oh. Yes. It was a mess.

There was so much blood.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles, "I think I made a mess..."

That is all after she woke up, not before. So Daly is able to see her (subtype: after arriving in Elaine's body) memories, but only after she got here. Good to know.

The bullet... must've grazed...? But Elaine doesn't look hurt.

Hmm.

"It's all been cleaned up already," says Daly, pushing the mess away. "But go back before that. Where were you, before you made the mess? What just happened?" Elaine holding the gun, pointing it at her own head. Then reverse that, lower the gun, what comes before...?