Some new guests...

"Shh, easy. Take it easy, dear. You're all right." For now. Now Yvonne realized she'd been arguing with a spirit in front of the cook, which was foolish (not that she'd had much choice). She offered a tiny grin, somewhat embarrassed to be watched, but didn't say anything to Rosie that might alarm Andraste.

"Why don't you eat up, sweetheart? Before it gets cold..."

Andraste laid back and ate quietly for her mother. She was calm, and the spirit was gone. For now she was safe.... thankfully.

((sorry it's short))

Rosie had stood by and watched silently. She was very quiet a she was trying to determine what she should do. The best thing she could think of was keep quiet. She had heard the two spirits bicker, and she wished the child would go to sleep. It was as if Yvonne, as she called herself, didn't know what the spirit was that she was dealing with. Rosie could clearly tell what it was from the energies and because she had been traveling for so very long. She didn't want to interrupt anything, and she especially didn't want to alert the child to such a happening.

The woman shifted silently listening to the voice, seeing the child's body react to the soul, the girl's eyes roll back as the soul had changed her memories. The poor child was so lost, she watched silently as the girl's very being tried to bond to Yvonne so that she would be safe, she remembered that feeling, she remembered the problems that she had experienced when higher spirits began to mess with her. She waited silently until this particular higher spirit had left. The look on Yvonne's face suggested that she really didn't want to talk about it. Rosie didn't blame her either, who would if there was a child right there who obviously didn't know what was going on. The little one seemed scared enough, Rosie was just happy to see that her young mind could be distracted by food, but something told her that the girl's mental age was going to have backtracked a little bit due to the spirit she had been dealing with.

Rosie decided to use spirit speech to talk to Yvonne, knowing that the child, obviously, couldn't understand spirits unless they were using a human language, Rosie was going to talk in pure spirit, "Can we talk later... there's something that you should probably know, that is unless you're comfortable talking like this...."

This time Yvonne's glance at Rosie was anything but swift. "Perhaps later, once I can get her to sleep? I have an errand to run in the woods, I left my belongings when I found her... but after that would work. If that is not displeasing to you?" Yv smiled down at Andraste. "You ate that fast. Are you still hungry, sweetheart? If not, it's past your bedtime, I think." Switching back and forth from the wicked spirit to dealing lightheartedly with the girl who called her 'mommy' was wearing on Yvonne, who was still struck to the core by the actions of another spirit. It made her unhappy to be vættir, and it was the first time such an unhappy thought had ever occurred to her. "I'm sure we can find a bedroom for you here somewhere."

"Can I sleep with you tonight mommy?" the child asked, there was fear in her voice. As she waited for another answer, her hand wrapped around a biscuit so that she could keep eating. She was really tired though.

"Fair enough, she seems really tired though, She'll drop any minute I'm sure." Rosie commented, making sure that the rest were within reach of the child. There was almost no stew left, and Rosie helped the child to eat the last of it so that her food didn't go to waist, "I hardly know her but I can honestly say that I'm worried about her... something just doesn't feel right..." she said softly looking down at the girl, but wearing a smile as not to alarm her.

Yv sighed, smiling at the girl she'd already adopted and only been on the island a matter of hours. She didn't want to say 'you can say that again' because it might make it true. "I'm sorry if I startled you," she told Rosie, dropping the act and simply not being specific enough that Andraste would find anything amiss. She hoped. "I don't get angry easily, and I tend to get a bit harder to handle when I do. Forgive me." Yv hadn't used the force of her will on anything in years, and she could feel the echo of it in the room still. While it pleased her that her will still held steady when she needed it, the echo irked her, and the fact she'd caused it even more so.

And she would have to do it again, she realized. Once or many times, she would have to decide. But she didn't want to hurt Andraste by leaving now... you couldn't tell a seven-year-old that leaving was in their best interest. And the child would have no one to protect her if Yv left... it would take some thought.

The child fell asleep in Yvonne's lap, half a biscuit fell to the floor as the child now curled into the woman. She had fallen asleep without her answer.

Her small hand wrapped itself in the woman's dress, and had you been at the wrong angle, it would've looked like the child had been nursing. She seemed so small compared to her age, and time itself was still trying to calm down around her. Stonehenge's spirit was back were it belonged for now, sort of, it was simply lurking far enough away that Yv wouldn't do that again, it wanted to watch the child, it wanted to taste her again... It knew this wasn't an option tonight though...

"She really seems to need you," Rosie whispered feeling how attached the child was to Yvonne, she also got the feeling that the child wasn't fully aware of what was really going on, not to mention that there was no way that the child could actually be Yvonne's child. She watched intently, as the child laid there looking as if she were going to start nursing, but it wasn't the child's action that was getting her to watch so intently, it was the fact that her aura was trying to match hers, trying to blend in. "Yvonne, you should watch out... your little mage will try to become like you, her aura is already attempting to latch onto yours... It looks like she's trying to hide..." she was whispering as not to awake the child. She didn't want the girl to feel bad again, now that the child finally looked like she was at peace, "I would also be careful of the spirit after this one, if you've ever heard of Stonehenge... it is the spirit that is trying to eat her... I'm just sorry that there is nothing I can do to help, I'm not exactly able to use magic... at all..." she said.

Looking down at Andraste, Yvonne sighed. "I have heard of it, and it saddens me that that's the case. I'm hardly older than it, I can only command it for a short time... and only because I have the right of it." She looked up to unobtrusively study Rosie. The woman obviously was more than she appeared.

"My options are slim, but sometime in the next five years or so, I will have to go confront it if I want her safe when I sleep again." Who knows if Rosie would entirely understand the meaning of the word for the nymph, but the common meaning was close enough for now. "I'll have to consider carefully if I intend to cheat it of its prize."

"What... do you think you will do when you go to sleep?" Rosie asks, "what if she becomes more like you and tries to bind with you when you sleep?" Rosie stated before she could stop her curiosity. She feels like she had been acting really childish lately... her time was coming soon, and that was bothering her....

Andraste was still sleeping (cause i'm not changing characters for a one line post)

"I'm hardly human, Miss Rose. That five year timeframe was a minimum time I'll have before I start getting sleepy. It could easily be ten years. And then..." Yv sighed. "I think she'll have trouble bonding with a tree."

She considered the girl in her arms and smiled sadly. "I've got five years to tell her I'll disappear for a century after that. It's that century I'm worried about. I can hardly protect her when I'm so far gone, and I don't have the power to protect her in a fashion that would last."

"By the time five years rolls around, her aura may have already copied yours... she's becoming like you." Rosie informed. That's what it was looking like, "Her aura could change the structure of who she is DNA wise.... her aura is trying to make her just like you, as if you really were her mother." Rosie didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, she really didn't want to trouble the woman at all, and she really didn't want to load more on Yvonne.

Yvonne looked at Rosie. The woman clearly knew what she was talking about, even if it were none of Yv's business why. "I almost wonder if that wouldn't solve the problem," she muttered mostly to herself, then glanced up again. "I've no idea how to prevent that. I can't avoid her now, especially with her memories of a time without me erased."

Another challenge to add to the growing list. "I can try talking to her spirit, explaining things, but right now I rather doubt that would solve anything. It's probably too confused by everything that's happened to truly accept anything I say." She raised one eyebrow at Rosie. "Unless you have any suggestions?"

"Let it go... I think that once she becomes half like you she won't feel the same.... perhaps that Stonehenge won't want to take her anymore... I mean you could try to talk to her spirit, but I'm sure its probably silently screaming right now, she seems so confused, and I can't really blame her on that one. She was thrown through Stonehenge after all... and she does remember things before she met you, however, the thing is... that you are her mother in her mind... her body will try to match that soon, she'll probably be half mage half.... nymph." she said slowly, "It might fix things, but she'll probably be quite clingy to you both before and after she settles down..." she says softly, "She's going to truly need you, to teach you both about herself... and yourself..." Rosie says slowly.

"Change her enough?" The nymph repeated. "Half-nymph... I'm not entirely sure that would be possible if she weren't already magically inclined." She sighed. "I can always try and talk to her spirit just to ground it in the moment. Maybe a lullaby would be more appreciated just now, though." Clinginess would have to be dealt with in time. She only had a decade to offer the girl, in all fairness.

Rosie received a considering look. "You know an awful lot, it would seem." She tried not to sound accusing, but there was something about the woman that didn't feel right with her, and it made her somewhat uneasy. Especially when she knew so much.

Rosie watched quietly watching, she had already mentioned that the girl was a mage, she guessed that the woman missed that fact with all of the problems that are around the child. She didn't want to be rude, and didn't want to let the woman to get upset at her, and really didn't want to show that the child probably had the most chance to become a nymph like her mother than most. Especially an already manipulated soul who had been pulled through the space time continuum. She opened her mouth deciding that she probably should tell the woman about this but didn't really know how to put it.

The child held onto her tightly, but she was still asleep, her head moved away from the light source as she was quickly trapped in a nightmare that she wouldn't admit if someone were to awake her. In her mind, she was trapped in a battle between Stonehenge and herself, but that was thanks to the lick that the soul had given her, the hopes that she would finally just go to Stonehenge to die, after being scared nightly.

Yvonne raised an eyebrow at Rosie's hesitation, but her attention was quickly drawn to the girl in her lap. "Thank you for your help, Miss Rose. I may have a question or two to discuss with you if you'd be amenable... but later. Right now I think I need to get her to bed and practice some of the magic I'm so rusty with." She gave the cook a troubled smile. "If I can connect with her spirit I may make her transformation inevitable, I don't know. But I think she'll be far worse off if I don't."

She eased her arms around Andraste again and then slipped off the counter, taking the shock with her knees so the girl wouldn't be disturbed. "You wouldn't by chance be able to direct me there, would you?" Yv realized that this was the first she'd been in the castle thus far, and she had no idea where she was going. And she needed to go get her things before something happened out there in the woods. Not that she was worried about much happening to a potted tree, she still needed to make sure that the last of her grove remained healthy. She wasn't entirely sure what would happen to her if her grove died entirely, but she wasn't particularly interested in finding out.

"I honestly don't know miss Yvonne, I think that would be a question for Mistress Everly, I honestly don' even know where my room is yet... I have yet to talk to the mistress myself." she admits. She looked at Yvonne, sorry that she couldn't be more help.

((sorry its short, i just didn't know what to say...))

Yvonne smiled at Rosie. "Thank you for all your help. I'm sure I'll see you soon, but I'll go see if I can find the Headmistress."

((And she wanders off, blah de blah... to continue another day.))