After running so many laps around the inner courtyard that Aoife lost count, the Enchanter had declared lessons over for the day. It seemed very strange to her that they had concluded without actually performing any magic at all, but when she asked about it, he simply shrugged. She wasn't sure how to feel about her first day of training— her mind was blank, her legs ached, and her chest felt awful from breathing hard. A house healer wasn't a position that came with a large amount of physical activity, but now Aoife wondered if she should have been jogging to town and back rather than walking when she went for supplies.

According to the Enchanter, the rest of her day was hers to do with as she pleased until dinner. Dinner seemed to be a formal engagement to him, and while she could feel free to take something from the larder for lunch, she needed to be on time and dressed properly for dinner. It took three wrong turns, but she did finally make it to the kitchen. Sometimes Aoife wondered if the house was moving around just to tease her... and then decided not to dwell on that thought for too long due to the highly magical nature of the castle. It could very well have been moving around, for all she knew.

Two rolls and a hunk of hard cheese in hand, Aoife nibbled on her lunch as she padded down the hallway, footsteps muffled by the large rug running down the center of the floor. She had a vague notion that she should be hungrier than she was after running around the courtyard, but food hadn't seemed very appetizing in years, even with Lizzie's frequent and valiant attempts to "fatten her up."

The hallways were dark and all looked the same expect for the tapestries, the patches of light coming from the high first-floor windows the only thing to see by. She should have brought a candle or a lamp while exploring, but she'd simply wandered off without thinking, wondering what on earth she was meant to do until dinner.

She could have taken a nap, though she fell asleep almost immediately after dinner the previous evening, and slept until nearly ten o'clock that morning. No, perhaps a nap wasn't the best idea... Her mind felt dull and empty, and combined with the physical exhaustion she felt as if a strange fog was pressing down on her. For a brief moment she thought longingly of the box of embroidery thread in her room, but quickly realized that in her daze she'd made her way to a part of the castle that she'd never been to before.

In other words, she was completely, horribly, utterly lost.

Resigning herself to simply wandering around until she found somewhere she recognized, Aoife tried to take note of the tapestries on the walls. The bloody battle scene was upstairs, but these showed something more serene. They seemed to be pictures of nature overall, depicting unicorns, dragons, and beautiful scenery. On some of them, people with long, pointed ears went about their lives— Fae, woven into immortality on the fabric as they played lyres, rode horses, read books. A white-haired boy and girl played with another child with fair skin and dark hair. On another, the crowning of a queen. Yet another showed... Wait.
Aoife stepped closer to the tapestry, squinting in the shadows to try to make out the design. It was old and faded, but it appeared to be the silhouette of a house... this house. The manor.

The wild roses covering the walls were tamed back into bushes and tasteful climbing vines, rather than the wild overtaking of nature over mortal construction that was visible now. There were horses outside, and carriages, even pictures of people bustling around the building. People with pointed ears.

Fae.

Was this a Fae estate once? Who had lived here before the Grand Enchanter? Was that why the King gifted him this land in the first place? Aoife stood squinting at the shadowy tapestry until her eyes hurt, but couldn't puzzle out any more answers.

She finally tore herself away from the tapestry and continued walking down the hallway, taking a turn that she thought would lead her back towards the outer walls of the castle. With luck, she might be able to find her way to a stairwell, though there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the placement of those, either. This place was a maze of stone passageways and locked doors, and everywhere looked the same to her.

Along the next hallway, though, there was a sight change.

One of the doors was standing open, natural light filtering through into the hallway. Curiosity took over— after all, this was absolutely not the Enchanter's bedroom, and thus she was allowed in here— and Aoife hesitantly peeked inside the doorway. In hindsight, she wasn't sure what she expected to find, but she hoped it might be something more interesting than what was actually inside.

Books lined every spare inch of the walls, and a few tall shelves took up part of the first floor. On the wall to the right of the double doors was a large fireplace, and directly across from the entrance were enormous windows with the curtains drawn back. Sunlight poured into the room, so bright that Aoife had to squint. In front of the windows was a large writing desk, two short sofas, and a haphazardly placed chair.

It was dusty, but not overly so. Someone or something had been in here at least within the last month or so to tidy things up, but they didn't seem to be interested in keeping it in a state any more orderly than "organized chaos." There was a spiral staircase in each of the four corners, leading upwards to three stories of books. While the stairs seemed mostly free of dust, cobwebs hung from the railings around the upper floors, draped like curtains from the ladders at the sides of the room and hanging like moss from the large, glass chandelier that hung from the ceiling.

Aoife carefully picked her way across the floor towards the windows, sneezing as leftover dust tickled her nose. The windows were dusted over, making it difficult to see outside, so she simply tugged on the latch and pushed outwards until they opened with a ghastly creaking. Sunshine poured in and fresh air entered her lungs, so overwhelming that it took her a moment to take in the sight in front of her: the woods.

The library was on the back side of the castle, then, just like her room. However, even armed with this newfound knowledge, she wasn't completely sure how to make her way around to the front. Going back out the library doors would plop her into a back hallway, and the twists and turns in this labyrinth of a bottom floor might simply confuse her again. She looked from the window to the door, and then back to the window.

Window it was.

At least from the outside she'd be able to get back around to the main entrance, and from there she could find her room again. However, she was a little too short to swing out the window by herself, so she dragged over the chair from the writing desk to use as a boost, swinging one leg over at a time before sliding out and dropping to the ground outside. For a fleeting moment she regretted not being able to latch the window, but instead she simply pushed it closed as far as she could. After getting back inside, she could tell the Enchanter or find her way back there on her own and close it.

There was once a hero who navigated a maze with a ball of twine, wasn't there? Aoife wondered if she should apply the same trick to herself until she learned the layout of the house. She could tie one end to her doorknob and unroll it as she went, perhaps. Then again, that twine was magic, and she didn't even have any non-magical string at her disposal, so maybe it would be better to simply ask for a map.

Dry, brittle grass crunching underfoot, Aoife slowly began to walk the circumference of the castle back around to the main doors. If there was one good thing that came from the land around the stone structure looking dead and decayed, it was that she didn't have to worry about accidentally killing anything. All she had to do was be very careful not to touch the climbing roses.

"Aoife?"

The voice came from above her, and Aoife found herself backing away from the castle and looking up, towards the high watchtower window.

"Hi, yes!" she called, waving.

"What the hell are you doing out there?!"

"I got lost!" Aoife protested, hands on her hips. "I couldn't get back, so I climbed out the library window."

Silence. Aoife kept walking.

"You climbed out the window?!"

She didn't stop walking, but she did look up towards the blob of red and white in the tower window as she answered. "Well, what choice did I have? I couldn't just keep wandering until someone found me."

The reply was simple and clear: "Meet me at the door."

Something slammed above her, and she could only assume that it was the sound of the window shutters closing at the top of the tower. Aoife continued on, making her way around the castle at a leisurely pace and enjoying the feel of the sunshine on her skin. It was quiet out here except for her footsteps, and something about it felt calm. Still. Maybe a little eerie, due to the lack of movement from any animals in the forest, but peaceful all the same.

The forest stretched nearly up to the edge of the stone at the side of the castle that was closest to the trees, roots reaching out of the nearby plants as if to take over the structure itself. Aoife had to pick her way around rocks, duck under branches, and stick close to the walls in order to get around the castle and back to the front. The grass grew wild, nearly up to her waist, like nature reaching back to forcibly take was once in its grasp, or perhaps the estate was simply so close to the Fae border that the very land cried out in agony to be reclaimed by the magic from the forest it once knew.

The Enchanter was waiting at the main entrance, looking exasperated. "I give you credit for creativity, even if you have no sense of direction at all. If you want to go outside so badly, gather these. I have to make a side trip to re-latch the library window now, so it would help save time if you picked them for me. Just be sure to be back by sundown and stay within sight of the castle. I trust you know what they look like?"

He handed her a piece of paper with script in an elegant scrawl. Aoife squinted at it, attempting to make out the loops and swirls. "What's... that one?" she asked, pointing at the third item.

"Wolfsbane?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Is my writing really that illegible?"

"It's a little..." she trailed off, making a swooping motion with her hand. The Enchanter simply rolled his eyes.

"Back by sundown. I'll leave the door open for you, but latch it when you come in."

Slam.

Aoife blinked at the wooden door in front of her face, stumbling backwards a little with the piece of paper still in her hand. She squinted again at the loops on the page, looking more like a flourish than any shapes she recognized. Growing up in an isolated village near the Fae border meant that she'd had no formal schooling, as the children were expected to learn more necessary survival skills, such as hunting and farming, rather than reading and writing. As she grew and traveled, she learned that certain combinations of symbols meant certain things, and learned to recognize words for their familiar shape rather than the letters that made up sounds.

She could see larkspur, nightshade, the aforementioned and nearly illegible wolfsbane, two types of berries, and chimney grass. Luckily they were mostly common enough in the woods near the estate, so she knew what they looked like. Wolfsbane was a little harder to find near the estate, but it had been common in the area where her oldest sister now lived, and frequently used in potions there. She could recognize the plant without trouble now that she knew what the scrawl was.

The forest was mostly, as Aoife suspected, dead. It smelled damp and earthy, but most definitely not alive, with an underlying current of another sharp scent she couldn't quite identify. The trees were gray and cold, the brown grass crunching underfoot, and the wind whistling through trees in which no birds sang. There were small spots of rebellion, though, the closer she looked. Apparently these tiny rebellious areas were where the Enchanter secured most of his ingredients when he didn't want to make a trip into town. Little patches of green grass sprung up here and there, and among them Aoife managed to find sprigs of chimney grass. They dried in her hand, but the dried grass could be used as powder in many brews. She simply hoped he hadn't needed extract of chimney grass. Or wolfsbane. Or anything on the list.

The berries grew on bushes not too far out from the castle, and the larkspur and wolfsbane were easy to find. However, she struggled with the nightshade. Aoife walked in sweeping circles, growing gradually farther away from the castle with each pass and scanning the forest for the nightshade. The leaves would be most useful in potion-brewing, but it shouldn't be this hard to find. Not in this area. Nightshade was plentiful around the Rimsilla estate, and theoretically it should be here, too.

She was so caught up in making her circles, mind on the leaves and the Enchanter and the sound of her own footsteps on the hard ground, that she didn't realize how far she'd traveled into the woods.

"Ah-ha!" There. A small bush growing at the root of a tall tree that looked like it had been struck by lightning at some point, the side of it gouged bare of bark. Then again, as she looked closer, it looked more like the tree had been struck by a cannon from the side as opposed to lightning from above. Aoife gingerly pressed her hand to the wound in the already dead husk of a tree, a fuzzy feeling taking root in her mind, but quickly shook herself free and picked the leaves from the bush. She tucked them in the bag and turned back towards the castle...

Only to realize that she could no longer see the castle.

"Alright, think," she muttered, panic threatening to rise in her chest as she turned in circles, trying to work out her way back. "The forest is to the north, and it's afternoon, so the sun is in the west, which means... that way."

All she had to do was walk south and she'd eventually make it back to the castle. Eventually. Aoife began walking forward, heart pounding loudly in the eerie silence of the woods, when she became suddenly aware that the woods were no longer eerily silent.

Something was growling.

Run.