Welcome to Gaia! ::

She tied it around her wrist. The magic was, as she had promised, extremely subtle: it smelled nice, as if it had just been spritzed with some pleasantly natural perfume, and when the bow was made a gently encouraging feeling would suffuse Hugbell for a few seconds. Nothing remarkable: only a sensation that she ought to try her best today, and impress - someone, possibly even herself.

"As far as I've been able to tell," she said, "they don't stop working over time - you can do this every day, if you want - but I'm curious to know if they'll stop working eventually - or maybe even get stronger, although that seems unlikely. The Wonder makes them, I think, and I'm not sure how or with what power. Please keep it," she added, "and let me know if it ever changes. I'm sorry it can't do anything as impressive as your bear's."

At this small compliment to the bear a little glowing wisp of light emerged from somewhere among her cloaking layers, anxiously bobbing around nearby, as if jealous of Joy's attention. She attempted to shoo it gently away again, but it hovered near her neck, and despite having no face or body language, seemed distinctively to be eyeing Barnaby with a threatening aura of possessiveness.

If it were possible for something with no face to look offended, the wisp did, vanishing right back to wherever it had come from.

Joy was watching Barnaby in some distraction, apparently lingering on something Hugbell had said.

"Do you think," she said, "there's ever like - a point of actual restoration? I look around at what other people have done on their worlds and Wonders and I think maybe all you can do is chip away at something that's always gonna be out of reach a little."

It was a broad question, and worth asking to just about anyone with the experience to give a good answer, and if she had her private reasons for wondering it, she kept them to herself.

She sighed. "It's hard to team up," she said. "I know people keep trying. But we're so scattershot - and we don't have - like - a unification of purpose like the other side does. They're concentrated on a collective goal, you know? And we're all out here trying to do something different with this power, and our attention is divided. Sometimes I feel bad that so much of mine is going into my Wonder."

She paused, considering the current inhabitant of that Wonder and the ways in which he had squandered his life, and even his time in that place.

"But I guess," she said, "that I'm just not willing to sacrifice the part of the job that makes me - well, not even happy - satisfied? I'm not willing to let that go just to spend every waking hour of the day fighting a war I didn't ask to be a part of. And I think a lot of us are like that. Maybe nursing our worlds back to health is the best good we can do. You know?"

She had wrinkled her nose at the idea of Chaos being a necessary component of existence, and chose instead to address something else that Hugbell had said.

"I have already started to think of my Wonder as a bomb shelter," she said, sticking out her tongue in an exhausted sort of way. "I don't like to think of it as an ark. It's too - I don't know. I have nephews and nieces, you know? It's not a rosy thought. But I guess if it's going to be some sort of Ark, it does make sense that I make sure it's as healthy and comfortable as possible."

This apocalyptic thought - their communities scattered like ashes on an uncertain wind - was too grim to dwell on. She gave herself a little shake.

"But maybe it's like cleaning the house and then the guests cancel anyway. You might not have really needed it, but now your freezer smells better. You know?"

She wrinkled her nose again, thoughtful this time.

"My Wonder smells fine. Which it shouldn't, since it's been sitting by a humid riverbed and half a moat for a thousand years. Even the underground parts are dry as a bone. Sometimes I wish I could see a map of the drainage system, but I guess it doesn't matter so much now. Maybe," she added drily, "a Mauvian had a hand in that."

She paused. "I should probably go soon," she said, with a little sigh. "But I confess I just get relieved when I run into one of us who's not - like - absolutely insane. Thanks for helping me out back there, and inviting me in for a while."