It's not instantaneous.

It takes her, oh, ten minutes, maybe a little less, to walk a distance that's been taking them more like an hour.

Palla is sunning herself on her blanket, hands tucked behind her head, gazing up into the clear blue sky.

Oh, she could get used to this. "Hello, Palla dear. I'm on my way back to Lily's. How are you?"

"Pretty good. You want that second fish now?"

"Yes, please," she replies with a smile.

"Sure thing," Palla says cheerfully, and she dives into the lake.

<Well. That was certainly fascinating.>

<Our little warp drive,> Hailey snickers.

<I'm certainly impressed.>

<Thank you, loves.>

And so they wait for Palla to return, smiling softly.

A flock of birds circles overhead.

That's already unusual; there aren't many birds around here to begin with.

They're very... big birds? And red.

Yeah those are demons. They don't seem to have decided whether to descend and attack. There's about eight or ten of them, and it's hard to tell scale just squinting up into the sky but they look to be pretty short, maybe three feet tall each.

Oh bother. She draws her knife and watches them carefully, ready to dodge a dive.

Palla comes splashing out of the water, hauling a decent-sized fish. She barely does more than wave an arm at the circling demons, and they promptly scatter.

"Fucking imps," she grumbles. "Here's your fish. You might want to wait a minute for them to find someone else to harass."

"Thank you, Palla," Maya replies as she bags the fish in a sack. "Do you have any suggestions for fighting them, if cornered?"

"I just smash them flat," she shrugs. "Watch out for their lust spells, though, those can be a pain. Try not to let them get behind you, if they're in a big pack like that."

She nods, gratefully. "Much appreciated."

And then she leans there for a moment, waiting for the imps to be thoroughly on their way elsewhere.

It doesn't take long for them to clear out of the sky.

"Thank you again, Palla. I'd best hurry on."

She waves fondly, fixes her mind firmly on Lily's farm, and strides.

The lakeshore goes by very quickly, though things slow down a little once she finds the turning and gets on the path to Lily's. Still, she makes good time even there.

Lily is currently at the water pump, washing out the empty pot of stew.

"Hello, Lily," she calls out. "We've returned bearing fish, and had quite the interesting day. Is there still time to both help with the afternoon's harvest and prepare dinner together?"

"Definitely! Just let me finish up here. What do you think of putting a pot on now and having fish stew again for dinner?"

"That sounds lovely. How has your day been so far?"

"I had a nice quiet lunch. How about you? 'Interesting', was it?"

The pot is clean; she hauls it back into the kitchen.

"Quite," she replies with a nod. "For one thing, we confirmed absolutely that we have at least one soul between us, though more detail than that will have to wait on the results of Hazel's tests."

Lily inhales sharply, then lets it out and smiles. "Whew. That's a relief! I'm so glad."

"It truly is." She nods. "It wasn't all good news, however. We tried to demonstrate a device we'd brought with us from our previous world, and it failed. It was one of the more advanced pieces of technology, and seems to have run into some kind of limit in allowable complexity in a single non-living device. We'll need to study it more to be sure that was the cause, however."