On the other side of the campfire, the air a few feet up twists with color. The apparation swells and seems to crystallize at the fringes, before it shatters into burst of—glitter? Pink and purple glitter, some of it swirling as if streamers of confetti. A woman falls out of the colorful blast, clothed in only a white, fluffy bathrobe, her arms flinging out. She has long black hair and is clearly muscular under her robe.

She comes to an abrupt halt just before she slams face-first into the dirt.

The campfire flares up, and the woman on the ground shifts, reaching for something at her waist -

- but the other one puts her hand on her shoulder and speaks a word, and she stops.

There's an impression that she's trying to communicate, but it doesn't get past Rebecca's Iron Will.

The glitter is vanished without a trace at this point, perhaps gone back to wherever it came from.

The newcomer, still hovering without touching the ground, begins to rise and right herself, swiftly but in no particular hurry. She jerks when she feels something touch on her mind, not pressure, just a—query? It takes a moment for her to identify what exactly is interacting and allow specifically this effect, communication only.

She finishes righting herself and locates the two other figures. Her eyes flash iridescent green as they automatically cycle to night vision.

(—that's new.)

Both of the others are watching her; the woman on the ground (tall and lean and muscled in a way that suggests she works out regularly, long-haired, mid-30s) looks vaguely miserable, while the one on the stool (a silver humanoid covered in enameled flowers) is harder to read, at least until she starts trying to communicate again. The effect doesn't seem like telepathy so much as an unaccountable awareness that she's somewhat in the middle of something but is assuming that the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed sent Rebecca and therefore she's not upset at her presence, and that she'd like to know if she's all right and if she needs anything in the immediate moment before she talks to her companion.

She was at her reading desk a moment ago. During the pause, she's mentally registering all of her new powers.

She can see out of both eyes. Not as obvious that's what it was before the night vision kicked in, but now—she has depth perception. She doesn't have a bead on her physical enhancements yet; flying and moving feel the same. She's trying to run through her mental list of powers for what would flag in her senses and what she should be trying to use, and there are so many—

When she receives the message, she suppresses the instinctive urge to slam her walls down again. She was expecting something more discrete. She tries to think at Iron Will that she wants to only transmit thoughts she intentionally tries to transmit, and not just everything, but she's not sure it's doing anything; she can't find the same lever she used to allow the communication.

Does that mean the silver woman another chosen of the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed? Or the human one? She did take There's Another One, but she didn't expect the result to be this immediate. She's clearly interrupting something, but she doesn't know what, and she doesn't know what to expect. Their body language is non-hostile, but the silver one is non-human, and she is an intruder.

She attempts to send back the impression that yes, she is, and is one of them another chosen of the Spirit? She doesn't need anything right now.

At the back of her mind, she's mentally gearing up to strike a flying retreat in case this turns out to be a fight (low probability) and in case either woman attempts to come onto her (disconcertingly plausible).

The silver woman's communication magic is expressive-only; Rebecca will need to find some other way to answer if she doesn't have anything similar. She will understand nodding for yes and head-shaking for no, and she's good at picking things up from body language.

(She murmurs something to her companion, quietly.)

She could nod, or... Backchannel. What was the wording? She takes a moment to step back, looks deep in her heart, and tries to figure out how to make the silver woman understand what she just tried to tell her.

Okay.

She points at the sky then back down on her head, then nods. Then she taps her chest with a thumb and mimes drinking, then shakes her head, and floats back a bit.

That's okay by the silver woman, then. She thinks Rebecca should stay nearby; the social situation is complicated here and she could really badly hurt someone by accident if she goes wandering around. She'll have more to communicate about where she and her companion would prefer she go after she talks to her companion.

Yeah, she's from the Spirit, she signs. You okay? Should I send her to the house or something?

    Nine isn't expecting her. She can stay.

You're sure of that? I know this is...

    And the Spirit dropped her right on it.

That's true. You want me to tell her about it?

    You can.

Okay. Love you.

    Love you too.

The silver woman thinks it's fine if Rebecca stays; this ceremony is usually pretty private but her companion (whose ceremony it is) is all right with her being here for it.

    I can't Force-sense her, she adds.

Also if Rebecca can allow the silver woman's companion to sense her emotions, that would make her more comfortable, but it's fine not to if she'd prefer that.

Rebecca continues drifting backwards until she's in the trees, but still visible.

A private ceremony. A bank of candles, and the human woman is upset, the silver one consoling... some sort of grieving, or remembrance. If the lens of symbolism Rebecca is importing from Earth applies. The two are close, terribly so; with the way they move with each other and the themes she's seen of the Spirit, perhaps lovers.

The Spirit wouldn't have dropped her somewhere she would immediately get in trouble. Whoever these people are, she can only presume they're not immediately set out to hurt her. If they say she shouldn't go wandering around, she'll play along for the moment; but she's still rapidly taking stock of her surroundings. It looks like any other forest she'd find on Earth, except these two in front of her are—she'd call them capes, at home, with the non-default physiology of the silver one, and how even the ordinary-looking one is nonstandardly clothed and was tracking the object on her waist like a weapon. But wherever this place is is likely not to have capes as a concept like Earth Bet has, and one of them is chosen, and for all she knows the baseline woman's gear is standard fare here. She shouldn't attempt to make too many inferences.

She didn't manage to ask which one of them it was the chosen, but it's not particularly time-critical.

She will stay quiet.

This isn't how she expected her first world to go. She was anchored how Cauldron did catch and release; she thought she'd be dropped out of sight, given time to get her bearings, not thrust in the deep end with strangers right away. Rebecca likes to work knowing everything possible to know about who she's talking to. But she can adapt.

She will attempt to open her emotions to the ordinary-looking woman, in the interests of cooperation. This time she feels more of a mental feeling of traction.

Rebecca feels—stressed and anxious, though it's sharply boxed up and so old and dull she barely notices it anymore; wary, slightly towards the two women but mostly at the ambient situation; an edge of exhilaration, but no hostility or violence, just cautious interest.

They might get a slight sense that she just got narrowly got out of a... dangerous situation? Her heart rate is up, metaphorically, but she's cooling down.

The woman on the ground relaxes noticeably when Rebecca's emotions become visible to her, and the campfire dies back down most of the way to its baseline; she signs for her companion to continue, and goes back to lighting candles, one at a time.

The silver one can multitask, though, and after a moment some more things become legible to Rebecca: Her name is Daisy, and her companion's is Dusk, or Sunset if that seems more like a name to her. They aren't going to harm her unless she starts it and Daisy isn't worried about her starting it, either. The ceremony is in remembrance of some things that Dusk regrets; they're going to be singing a few funeral songs next but she's confident Dusk won't mind if Rebecca wants to contribute any regrets of her own - neither Dusk nor Daisy have a way to understand her language right now but Daisy's memory is good enough that she'll be able to translate what she says now later, if she learns the language, in case that informs how Rebecca wants to participate.

Regrets.

Rebecca doesn't nurse regrets. She's made mistakes, certainly, large and small, but the way she relates to them is—

When something happens which shouldn't have, or if things went well but there were ways in hindsight it could have not, they run a fault analysis. If the analysis generates action items or growth areas, she executes on them or tracks that the relevant responsible people execute on them. If there are specific people who were wronged, and it's cheap and strategically viable or advantageous to make reparations, she has them made. If there was nothing she could have done, if they took a calculated risk and the dice just fell the wrong way, she closes the case and puts it in the archives.

The mental action of—sorrow, wishing she'd done something else, feeling bad about it—is not one she's configured herself to take.

But she understands regret, as a way people can be. She's talked many a young hero through their regrets in her Protectorate office. Failure is the only constant of the superhero life, and people have better and worse ways of dealing with it. Part of her work, in both capacities, is helping them cope.

When you don't understand all the details, the best thing to do is just be there.

She lowers herself to the ground and finds a rock to sit on, hunching slightly in deference and softening her body language. She doesn't offer any words of her own, but she attempts to project in her emotions—compassion, acknowledgment, affirmation, not quite intimate but not quite impersonal, more with the distance of a gentle look across the hallway.

Dusk is a bit conflicted about Rebecca's acceptance and affirmation, but ultimately settles on being appreciative.

They continue lighting candles, leaving the big one in the middle for last.

    "And all the rest," Daisy says when they come to it, "forgotten in name but no less important for it."

"And all the rest," Dusk agrees, and lights it, and presses a little closer.

They sit in silence for a few moments, Dusk watching the candles and Daisy petting her hair; it's not the kind of silence that needs filling, but Rebecca wouldn't be interrupting anything by speaking.

And all the rest, forgotten in name but no less important for it.

She used to make a point of memorizing the names of the civilian dead in every Endbringer attack. A way to make sure—they couldn't destroy the Endbringers, they would fail and fail and fail again, but they would never forget. Over the years, it turned into just the capes who gave their lives to the defense, and eventually it became just those under Protectorate command whose families she would pen personal letters for. Then she started having her secretaries write the letters for her to sign.

She stays quiet until one of Dusk and Daisy speaks up.

She does gradually inch her emotional bearing away from distant affirmation, towards curiosity.

After a minute, Dusk begins to sing, with Daisy joining in after the first few notes. The song is dignified but respectful, an equal acknowledging an equal; a Sith's elegy for a defeated foe.

She doesn't understand the words, but she listens respectfully, attendant but not gawking.

The next song is a little slower, and a little sadder; it seems to be the type of song that's about how the world continues without the lost. It has a chorus that Rebecca could join in on.

She's not sure if she's supposed to sing along. It's clearly a song designed for multiple participants, but Daisy said she was welcome to share regrets, and didn't imply if she should join in the songs, or if it would be impolite not to—she wouldn't expect so, but she wouldn't expect someone to invite a stranger to share in a clearly deeply personal ceremony either—

She glances at Daisy, trying to convey the question in her body language.

It quickly becomes legible that she's broadly welcome to join in with the rest of the ceremony, since Dusk has accepted her presence.

Well, when in Rome.

She starts by subvocalizing along to the melody, trying to pin down the pronunciation of the words, and then slowly starts singing along. Her enunciation is very deliberate, simultaneously not exactly perfect and slightly overfitting to Daisy and Dusk's voices. She keeps her volume quieter than the other two.

She's rewarded with a brief small smile from Dusk.

At the end of the song, she pauses for a beat, not entirely emotionally prepared for the one she was intending to sing next; she fills the gap with a poem, instead.

"The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God."

[source]

She's crying, by the end, though it isn't really touching her voice yet. She continues on into the final song, this one a proper dirge for the dead, and with that Daisy does have to carry the tune at times as she's overcome with quiet sobbing.

Rebecca has to stop to pick up the new tune, but does her best to contribute where she can.

She's seen regret. This is—grief. A funeral. Rebecca has been to enough of those affairs, large and small, that she thought she was inured to it. But sitting by the firelight, listening to two women sing to a bank of candles, it's different from the caskets and speeches she's used to. She doesn't know who it is Dusk mourns, but that depth of feeling must mean something.

She feels oddly empty. And like an intruder, as the sobs come. She doesn't react except to pick up the slack of singing whenever she can. People tend not to prefer attention drawn to it by strangers.