"—and then Montgomery was all—" 

"Professor Montgomery," Jiang Cheng corrects, rolling his eyes, but he's smiling. They're all smiling.

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway so he was like, stop that immediately cadet, this isn't funny, which, it absolutely was—"

Despite her worries, Yanli quickly finds herself laughing, harder than she's laughed in months. Sitting here, with her two favourite people in the world, she feels like she's fully alive for the first time in far too long.

A-Cheng has food on his face, and Yanli, still laughing, gets up to go over fix it, because A-Ying is far too busy making fun of him to help. 

—ah, no, she got up too fast again. The blood rushes out of her head, and she wobbles as she stands.

She's too close to the edge of the pool. 

Her foot slips.

It feels simultaneously like it happens in slow motion, and far too fast for him to react. 

He dives in after A-jie barely a second after she hits the water. Wei Ying is right behind him.

All three of them are strong swimmers. They're not underwater for very long. And the pool isn't connected to any other bodies of water; there's no way they could have left it without getting out and walking. 

But, when they emerge, they're...somewhere else. 

The deep patch of lake they've surfaced in is clear of plants, but thick bands of lotus line every bank and form false islands of green in patches throughout the placid water.  The air - still hot, far more humid than Arizona - is suffused with their scent.  There are traces of wood smoke but no gasoline fumes, and the distant sounds have become the calls of unfamiliar birds and insects.

Fine buildings in a classical Chinese style can be seen peeking over the tops of the lotus in every direction.  Docks stretch out through the flowers towards them.  There are no people on the nearest docks, and thus the three new guests remain undetected.

What the fuck?!

Wei Ying scrapes her hair out of her face with one hand. She's holding onto Yanli with the other while they tread water. 

"What the fuck?"

Yanli is as confused as the others. More pressingly, she's still feeling dizzy and shaken.

"Can we—get out of the water, first?"

They swim over to the nearest dock, the other two assisting Yanil as needed, and climb onto it. 

"Did we wind up on a movie set somehow?" Wei Ying wonders aloud, looking around. 

It does look like something out of a movie, or possibly a painting.  No angle they've currently seen shows indication that the landscape is in any way a facade, however - no subtle wiring under trees, misplaced modern coffee cups, fake plants, or particle board painted to look like real planks.

Jiang Cheng walks down the nearby path, heralded by the sound of boots and the swishing of robes.  Though approaching forty, Jiang Cheng still looks to be in his early twenties, hair up with an elaborate silver ornament and dressed in layers of embroidered robes.  He wears his sword on his belt, though not his typical scowl - the return to normalcy after his seclusion has been comfortingly familiar.

He glances towards them as he passes, then stops in place to watch them.  At first, all he notices is the unusual clothing.  Two of them- is their hair really cut short, or is it just pinned up in an unusual way that makes it look short from this distance when soaking wet?  Their faces look so familiar, but he can't immediately put his finger on why.

Perhaps their reaction to him will give him the right context.

They are wearing some pretty unusual clothing by local standards! One might even call it indecent!

Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng are in shorts and t-shirts, although Wei Ying's oversized t-shirt is at least slightly more covering than Jiang Cheng's tank top. Yanli's pink sundress...was considerably less indecent before she fell in a pool, and is now translucent and clinging to her thighs, although that last part might not be immediately obvious given that she's sitting down. They're all three barefoot and soaking wet. 

Oh good, a person.

"Hey! My sister needs help, she fell in—" 

In English, because last he checked they were in the US and that's usually a better bet, but he'll repeat himself in Mandarin if it seems like that'll help. 

Their clothing would be inappropriate for any other location or time, but the lakes in the private residential areas of Lotus Pier have lax standards.  Robes are hard to swim in, and guests aren't permitted back here to be scandalized.  He still averts his eyes, checking the dock and nearby ground for where their proper robes are so as to pointedly look at them and remind them they ought to dress if they aren't in the water, and looks particularly annoyed that he can't find them.  There better not be some prankster stealing robes again, on top of whatever else is happening.

Jiang Cheng does not understand English.  He does understand the Mandarin despite the accent and unusual turn of phrase.  Are they foreign?  Jiang Cheng steps forward and looks more closely at the speaker's face.  He could be a cousin from the Meishan Yu if he didn't have the wrong accent. 

"Does she need a doctor or just dry robes?"

"I don't need a doctor, I'll be fine in a minute," Yanli insists, not entirely convincingly. She's shivering despite the humid air, and looks quite pale in the face, although of course he won't be able to see that if he's not looking at her.

Her accent is just as odd as her brother's, but she ups the politeness a few levels in response to the stranger's formality. "Dry clothes for all of us would be appreciated, sir, thank you." 

"I hope they have something other than purple hanfu," Wei Ying whispers to the other two. In English, because she's not completely tactless, thank you very much. 

"Shut up, idiot," Jiang Cheng hisses back, elbowing her. "It's rude to talk in front of someone in a language they don't understand."