She is indeed not at home.

The clouds are bright overhead, and the wind calm and slightly cool. She's on a path made of wooden boards, with a sturdy wooden railing, painted mostly-clean white, on both sides. Off one side a whole lot of water can be seen. And a steep drop to the smooth rocks below. On the other side of the path is a slice of forest-garden, a mixture of tall fruiting trees, shorter bushes full of berries, and small plants that might be root vegetables or grains. All in full bloom and looking - and smelling - delicious. Voices chatter faintly from within the garden.

Wow. What an incredible prank! "Beautiful! Well done!"

She touches the railing. "It feels so real!" She strokes the wood lovingly.

The food smells amazing. But the wood... what a texture.

pet pet pet

...but sleep. It's too bright here.

She slinks under the railing toward the forest-garden.

And remembers the food! "Oooh!"

She  flops down and slides on her back deeper into the forest, grabbing berries and leaves and what's this a carrot? and stuffing them into her mouth. "Wow this is so good mmph mmph really hope you're not trying to kill me but it'd be worth it mmmmph."

Eventually she gets her head deep enough into a bush to fall asleep.

The gardeners have to come around and maintain the plants practically every day, to keep them this lush and welcoming. Anton Maxim really loves his "traditional Kelos garden". But it's really quite hard on plants to always be in full bloom and presenting fruit - there's even some bushes that make spicy berries in winter! - so it's a good, well-paying job for five groundskeepers to keep it that way. The produce they pick doesn't pay for their own wages even before you start considering the matter of supplies. Expensive, but that's Anton Maxim for you. 

The first to notice her is a woman with a thin frame and long squirrel-like tail, for balance, leaping through the high branches which have been carefully shaped into something nearly like straight paths. She pauses her inspections for mites and bark sores, and the application of a thin paste to any she finds plus the careful picking of any fruit that seems fully ripe-

-Some lady is passed out naked in the garden?

Mitra blushes, then drops to the ground below with a soft pat, and gently touches the end of her tail, feeling out with Green magic. Hmm, that's... Strange... But not injured and not sick, kind of undernourished, seems to be just slightly poisoned - heh, she recognizes this type of 'poisoning' - and tired.

Mitra purses her lips and sighs as she sees the trail of consumed plants. Well, Anton will be pleased as peaches if they rescue a hungry traveler. 'It's meant to be eaten' and all. Okay. She taps a pendant around her neck.

"Hey boss? I've found a lost traveler or something in the garden. Don't recognize her at all. Ejer type form I think, it's weird, not in acute danger but passed out exhausted. Oh, and completely naked for some reason! Think she's from a shipwreck or something? Yeah, I don't know. The guest room in the garden house is free, right? Oh, yeah, of course ask him, but you know the answer already. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, if you could send Ves out with some clothes that'd be great, you know I'm a climber, not a hauler."

A few minutes later someone gently tries to wake Nefanie by calling out loudly. If she doesn't respond, they'll pull her gently out of the bush and dress her, then carry her to the guest house.

She starts drifting awake when they call out. Bleh, what happened? That liefling is a genius, wow. She can still almost taste the food.

And now someone is getting handsy. Not worth fighting it. (Obviously, she can't teleport away while they're touching her.)

Is that clothes? Why would someone put clothes on her? ...some kink, presumably.

She squints. Ow, it's bright. Is she still in the garden? What's up with that, anyway? There's no way this all fits in her house. Who wanted to prank her so extensively that they hired a whisshopper, and a very talented one... Not that she's complaining! She's going to remember that illusory food the rest of her life.

With sudden embarrassment, she realizes that she's sticky from gorging herself, all over her snout and hands and chest. Ew, why is that part of the illusion? And now she can't clean herself.

And now they're putting her down? Are they still there at all? She clenches her eyes open again - ow - and tries to teleport a few feet to the side, if there's a safe place to land.

The guest bed is wide, and 'a few feet to the side' is still on top of it. Ves, who looks a lot like a boark, happens to be looking away to close the curtains at that moment and yelps in surprise when he turns back towards her.

"-Are you awake? Can you understand me, miss?"

She's clean! They can put the clothes back on her if they really want, but she's not going to do it proactively.

She has no idea what the illusory boark said but doesn't let that stop her. "Well, hello. This is a fascinating prank! Did you really let me teleport just then, or was that part of the trick? You must be counting on me staying for the food. Which was amazing! Complements to the 'chef'."

She glances at him but keeps her eyes roving, looking for flaws in the illusion.

If their sudden guest wants to be naked, that's her prerogative. Ves will just do his best go be professional and only glance once. (He completely unironically appreciates the tail almost more than anything else. It's pretty impressive, more than Mitra's.)

She's in a large stone walled room painted dark blue with wooden furniture. There's some sort of art piece depicting a tree on the wall, softly glowing. Some tables and chairs. A desk. A doorway into a white painted room displays a mirror facing the bed (which she is visible in), and there's some odd square panels on the wall near the entrance. The bed is very soft, and the scent of something flowery is in the air. She can hear Ves's footsteps.

Ves indicates a small side table which has a tray of fruits and crackers, another folded robe thing. He reaches into a drawer and places down a stone disk the size of her hand with weird blue squiggles on it. "I'll leave you to your rest, feel free to call if you need anything." Then he bows and turns to leave.

Wow, what a beautiful room. Food! She gets out of bed and devours - most of it, and then stops and thinks. She takes the last two pieces of fruit, bites off a small piece of each, and puts them in her mouth at the same time. She tumbles them with her tongue several times, tucks one under her lip, and bites the other one. Yep, that's the delicious tangy-juicy-strawberry-thing she was expecting. Now, how did the whisshopper know which one she bit? She chews the other fruit - such a nice combination, she should have tried more combinations earlier... the whisshopper could be working with an undine. Scary.

But really, who would be that dedicated to pranking her.

So, she might actually be here, somehow. Which means she stole from a garden. Great. Can she teleport back to the garden to see how it's doing?

She cannot. At least not the first two spots in it she attempts.

Anton Maxim is a good, traditional Kelosian. There's a great amount of nostalgia for his homeland in him. Even if he's somewhere between a social pariah and a nobody now for having been part of the whole Declaration business, he's still technically a Baron, by the most bare of threads. He owns land, which grows crops and is worked by people in his employ, and he still has the writ from Royal White. Even if it's been appended with him giving up basically all his formal ruling power; He's the master of only the manor now, not even on the sawmill or the vineyard is his word law anymore.

But it suits him fine. He still keeps contacts back in Kelos, the only way to get really high end artificing work done, to keep his ear to the news, to maintain his place in the little merchant network. There's still a lot of excitement and activity there, if you own ships and employ the sailors to use them. The very image of the more rotund and harmless sort of old money is handy that way. An airheaded academic, friendly and a bit absent, focused only on his particular special interests. It makes people underestimate him. Though the image is real, to an extent- It's a lot more relaxing to be that way.

At any rate, all this means he's retained his original form, no snout or ears or tails or anything at all except the usual cosmetic tweaks to keep him young and handsome and wrinkle-free, and the traditional tassels and patterned shirts and fancy hat, and all the first impressions it creates with visitors. Education, artificing, merchant houses, Kelos.

His daughter he also managed to convince to at least keep it subtle. So she has the decorative eyes that belong on no natural being, the sclera and pupils a sort of golden color with a subtle sheen, and hands and forearms darkened to an opalescent green/blue with tiny soft scales, in imitation of a certain species of rock lizard she's fond of.

A complete stranger wandering into his garden and gorging herself is a little bit vexing in his heart of hearts, but he doesn't keep the garden to make money off it. You don't actually catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but the metaphorical meaning of the saying remains true, sometimes. And if she was shipwrecked or something, well, it's only decent to feed guests. Plus, the news that the stranger has an extreme and unfamiliar form is intriguing. So he'd better go say hello in person. (He is, of course, wearing several powerful wards, as he always does.)

And his daughter happened to be telling him about her day, and decided to follow along to the garden house. If she's asleep, he'll just take a nice stroll and have his letters for the day fetched over. If she's awake, they'll have a nice chat. No hurry.

So she can't sneak back now and fix the damage to the garden (or find something else that needs doing).

Well, this room is far too beautiful to be a jail cell, and - blink - she's not observed right now, so they're probably not angry, just curious. That's okay, she can be entertaining enough to pay them back!

Or they just don't have the people to keep a constant watch on her...odd, for someone rich. But the room and the food could be distractions to keep her from leaving. And the food is so, so good - could it be addictive?

Wait. They tried to put clothes on her, and the boark was surprised when she teleported, so maybe they're not familiar with kitsune? Well that's a delightful opportunity!

She paces around the room until she has been to enough places to teleport freely within it.

When she hears Anton's footsteps, she pops into the white painted room and leans against the wall... ideally she would like to be out of sight of the door, either directly or in the mirror, but it's okay if that's not possible.

The white painted room appears to be a separate bathing-and-toilet setup of some kind. There's bars of soap, soft towels, levers that make things dispense water, and the like. She'll be out of sight even in the mirror from one side.

When he arrives, Anton knocks on the door five times and waits, then calls out at moderate volume, "I know you may not understand me, but I intend to enter! Please say something if you don't wish to be disturbed."

And waits another few moments, and only then opens the door, peeks in, then opens it fully to reveal what looks like a human man. "-Wait, where did she go?" Anton frowns and walks to the nightstand.

The foreign speech doesn't sound angry, so she ignores it.

When the door opens, she waits one second* and tries to teleport to the corner by the door, still leaning relaxed against the wall (not touching any of the odd squares) with a small surprised-but-friendly smile... how about now? now?

* About 1.2 Earth seconds.

On the third now, she is behind him. Not the boark, this is a different person dressed in fancier clothes. Human-looking man, young looking, blonde hair and thin face.

He picks up the stone disk from the nightstand, then glances around and startles at seeing her. He holds a hand over his heart for a moment before recovering. "What in the- Ahem!" He blushes and shakes his head gently and nods at her with a sigh. "My apologies for intruding. I don't suppose you know what this is?" He presents the stone disk.

What a gratifying reaction. She gives him a polite nod.

She's not sure what he wants her to do with the disk, juggle it? She can't juggle.

Everyone here keeps trying to talk to her in their language... just like she was trying to talk to them. But she thought this was a prank by someone she knew, someone who probably wasn't intending harm. They might be mistaking her for an enemy of theirs.

Assume that everything she perceives, whether real or not, is aimed at producing some effect in some adversary... hm. But they're being nice (unless the food is addictive). So not an enemy, just a very confused whisshopper or some shape-changing species or something; a person who they care about, who they want to stop pretending to be a strange lost kitsune. That explains why they weren't angry about the garden, and why they put her in such a nice room.

And when this person shows up from wherever they actually ran off to, there'll be trouble.

If they don't know what she can do, she shouldn't have just demonstrated it! Just great. (It was funny, though.)

They keep trying to get her to pay attention to that disk. It's not a tool of any sort she can identify, but it's important. Maybe it's something like an elph's shrine, belonging to the missing person... if she touches it (or maybe even just looks at it too closely) and doesn't react properly, they'll know she's an imposter. (And she does not actually want to pretend to be the missing person, that would be mean.)

She smiles and bounces up and down and twirls and slips out the door and around out of the man's view, and tries to teleport to a patch of beans in a nook seventy miles tengward of her home, a place where she thinks she's the only kitsune who's ever visited.

Well, there's another woman waiting at a table in the room beyond, with a pitcher of some sort of drink. So that might be why it doesn't work. She has shimmery-scaled hands and golden eyes. She giggles and waves, then clasps her hands together briefly. At that, Nefanie suddenly knows that:

(Tone: amused) Anton needs a good scare once in a while; She approves. Also, Nefanie is considered a guest here, and she'd like to know if the garden was tasty~?

So that's what an undine looks like.

She kneels, and thinks that: the garden was 🍓 the 🥭 best 🥕 food 🥬 she's ever had and it's clear to her sober self that she has ravaged a masterpiece of devotion which she can't possibly replace, but she desperately hopes she can repay her gracious host somehow. She can teleport but she's going to stick around to see her task complete (she might want to eat only food from home though). She's willing to go into dirty places, and, with enough preparation, she can carry messages, find lost people, and watch borders.

(Tone: thoughtful) The garden is very magical; She's proud and happy that it's so impressive and delicious; They aren't too concerned about the garden but if it makes Nefanie feel better they can calculate exactly how much she ought to owe about it so it's not some looming nebulous thing; It wouldn't be ruinous. If Nefanie is really good at teleporting messages or parcels might be pretty valuable; Long-range thought relays are expensive to operate.

Anton comes from the room and looks surprised. He asks a question, and the woman responds. Anton laughs!

(Tone: amused) Nefanie really should take the language disk. It will let her understand Kelosian so she doesn't have to keep this up. The disk is not delicate but it's actually QUITE expensive, so do be careful with it, though.

Huh, okay! She takes the disk and lays it on the floor, maintaining contact with the side of her knee.

"We" people of my specialization(?) "can't" as a general weakness not a situational limitation "carry" by magic "objects" whether living or not. "Woah, that's trippy!" in a blue(??) way. "You have a fun language!" Kelosian! "Thank you for letting me use your language disk! Do you have work for me now?"

"That's very specialized. Does doing it like that let you keep it up all day or something? Oh, and welcome." Anton nods agreeably. "There was debris on the bed- So that's instant self-cleaning as a side effect, so clever!"

"We didn't expect you to pop in needing work." Katherine demurs. "Anything I come up with on the spot may well be doing you a disservice though I suppose such things are good for one's red."

"Yeah! I can keep it up all day.

I think that where I'm from, we have much less control over specialization. I'm fox-specialized, and everyone fox-specialized has exactly the same abilities, for better or for worse. You must have amazing control over magic!

I realize that I am hardly in a position to ask anything of you, but if it was possible to teach that skill, my people would be delighted to learn.

How about I go wander around and visit all your rooms and gardens? I promise no snacking. Then I'll be able to teleport to all those places if you need me to later."

Anton's eyebrows raise high. He smells some sort of massive trade potential, here. "Oh, head through town and down to the docks and the sawmill too if you're doing that!"

"Father dearest, let's give her some time to acclimate, hmm? You brought the reports from Captain Wilk, read those. And that sounds like a fine idea, I'll accompany you if you wish. Magic is quite flexible, yes- The endurance you're claiming is incredible on our side- Most people can do magic that's not just tricks-" she flicks her fingers at a cup, sending out a few small flames to warm it, "For a few minutes a day. Perhaps an hour or two if they really devote themselves to one thing. Something like teleporting? Once a day if you're lucky."