"Sure - I don't have anything really good, but," she picks up a satchel bag, "here's my go bag, I can replace everything in here, it's got mana crystals, liao, some honey that acts as spring magic, glowstones.

Let's get back down to the stream and see if the coven have turned anything up, and if we can get you home."

"Thank you."

Pelape hurries a little, tripping and rolling once, on the way back.

Allegra reaches out to steady her before she's really considered if she should be touching the nice stranger.

"Thanks." She accepts the arm and proceeds apace.

The clearing in front of the stream where she appeared currently contains a circle of people with knives out, who appear to be having an argument about who should be standing where.

She's gonna let the locals work this out and stand well back!

"Sorry, have you started yet? We should walk her through the area a few times in case it's a return portal keyed to her," Allegra calls to them.

One of the people in the circle slices into the side of their hand, and the others start following around the circle; one of them calls over, "Yeah we've started, two minutes?" just before their turn.

"Started what," murmurs Pelape.

"I expect they're looking for curses - there's a Winter ritual that does it, it's the one ritual they all know so they love to cast it whenever they think it might help," replies Allegra. "That does sound like they didn't find anything with detect magic, which means it's probably not a regio portal, which is a pity because that's the kind that will stick around and we can figure out how to open later."

The ritual team have started a round robin call and response, along the theme of "The Blade is Balanced" and "We call on the Wisdom of Winter" and "Our blood flows through the patterns of the world".

Man, Pelape really wishes her pocket everything were working so she could take notes. Scratch that, the charge if it had any would be too valuable.

(the go bag contains a notepad and lots of pencils for approximately this kind of thing!)

Allegra asks a bystander, "Did they find anything earlier? I'm assuming not?"

They reply, "Nah, they did the magic detect thing, Bran wandered back and forwards all over, then they got into an argument about Cuckoo's Egg, then they decided to cast this because that's what they always do."

There is a series of distinctly unsanitary bloody handshakes which appears to be the climax of the ritual.

Probably if they do this all the time they can be pretty sure none of them have any bloodborne illnesses.

Finally, the ritualists all look expectant for a second and then very disappointed.

"Nothing," one of them confirms. They all slope off to one side and the man who approached Pelape first unrolls his tool belt, which is full of bandages and various bits of moss and little containers of green salve, starts putting stuff on the cuts and wrapping them up.

"Right, let's walk you through the area you came in and see if you disappear. Usually it's quite obvious to the person doing the walking - if it doesn't take immediately we should have a small hike around the vicinity to see if the exit dropped nearby instead, I'm afraid."

Pelape will obligingly walk through where she came in, in as many directions as seems called for.

Nothing happens.

Then she will follow her local guide around on a hike.

"Whenever I've been through the Gate, I've been able to see the return portal as a kind of shimmering gateway in the air - kind of like a soap bubble - so keep an eye out.

We'll go once round the Steading, then try the road to First Voice which is the nearest significant landmark, and then I suppose try the forest a bit, although normally if it is a split portal it's somewhere obvious."

"If you say so. I'm really going to need a comprehensive explanation of magic and everything if it turns out I'm not going anywhere and we have time."

"I was actually wondering if I could manage to teach you to detect magic, you can sometimes use that to get the time remaining if you're out on a timed portal, but that's normally something that takes at least months to pick up, unless you've got a natural talent."

"Which would be a lot to hope for."

"It's not terribly compatible with concentrating on something else at the same time, like not falling over and looking for signs of a portal. And I only have one actual strong magical signal around to point you at, which is - quite a complicated one to start with.

You might be able to get it from first principles by studying the mana crystals, if we do get you home - they give off a magical signature most people can read without training, just letting you know they're charged."

"Oh, that's good to know - what else should I know about what's in here?"

"The little purple vials are liao, that's probably the most important thing to try to replicate if you've got good herbalists and alchemists? It's a derivative of vinum, there are a few vinum chewies in there too; vinum is the sap of a particular vine, it gives you dreamless sleep. Liao puts you in touch with your soul, essentially - it lets you, usually with training but people can just figure it out if they have access to enough of it, align people's souls to a virtue, give people virtue dreams, see the status of souls, imprint a virtue on places or objects or people for a limited time, write on someone's soul... I should probably give you the rundown on Virtues, unless you are about to tell me you know already?"

"I am not about to tell you any such thing. I didn't even know about souls."