Orion and Big Dipper and the Andromeda Galaxy. And many, many other things. The scarce, selected few patterns out of the numerous ways to construct graphs from vertices that are the shining objects in the night sky, and their received interpretations, somehow decided from a pool of possibilities just as, or arguably more, numerous than the field of graphs itself.

The constellations stared downward from the sky, just as they did back at home. And Leila stared back - just like she did, back in the buildings, in the rooftop library where she could gaze outwards through the great panels of glass, downwards to see the city and upwards, the sky. Only now the glass was the windows of the palace, and the acrylic texture replaced by the elegantly carved patterns of frost; and Leila was no longer at home, and there were Sirens and Chaotic Stars and magic and dragons and Bunnies in soldier uniforms and there was a seemingly unlimited supply of sweets as well as life-threatening cenarios.

Her mind made up the dragon part. They haven’t really seen or heard of dragons around so far. Dragons weren't that bad of an idea either, were they?

The point, though, was probably that Leila didn’t really see the reason behind not liking this place that its inhabitants call [i]Nowhere[/i].

[b]"It's a shame Nowhere is so frightening, yes? If it weren't for things like the chaotic star and being separated from home, I think I could actually, maybe, like it here." [/b] 

Stars. Graphs. Concepts. Isomorphisms. Ideas populated Leila’s mind as she made no effort to track where the conversation went from that point on, or even if it continued. She neglected the hurrying messenger. She did not pay attention to what the Queen said. She did not notice the commotion caused by the arrival of a new group of companions in travel - as she took her time thinking about constellations and stories and imagination.

[b]”...NOW!”[/b]

Until, at least, something happened that was loud enough to forcefully break her chains of thoughts.

Leila snapped out of her trance-like gaze and turned around to find chaos. The beautifully decorated wooden table that originally spanned the centre of the room was no more, the space it occupied replaced by pieces and shards of wood, with a pile of bread crumbs and cream and candy frost cascading down everywhere on the crumbled sheet of tablecloth, recognizable as the remains of the delicately crafted pastries. Those remains also existed elsewhere than on the destroyed table and the floor: namely, on the faces of two of her fellow humans.

She almost considered giggling.

Speaking of humans. There were new humans. The person who just recently smashed the table to pieces, in fact, was one of them. White hair, not overly tall, impressive physical strength. Facial expression implying a sense of glee inflicted by causing mischief. Among them were several other new faces - a girl with red hair in a windcoat. Another with curls in shades of bubblegum that contained more food colouring than would be considered healthy. A gentleman with glasses that bore a certain similarity in appearance to someone whose name escaped Leila’s mind at the moment.

Leila then returned her attention to the Queen and the messenger, and the box the Queen held Amulets. She remembered hearing something about them, spoken by the Queen or some other Nobody. Observations suggested that they are supposed to take a choice from one of those gem, and then...and then what?

The connections between cause and result has always been rather blurry in Nowhere.

Leila looked around. Hakuren was apparently having a lot of fun violating the second law of thermodynamics.

How absolutely intriguing.

What exactly were they supposed to do? Leila thought as she looked at the remaining few pieces of egg-shaped jewelry, still resting in the soft padding inside the intricately decorated box. How was the choice to be made? She felt a hint of that feeling of panic that arises every time a decision must be made under an insufficient supply of data. She could always just guess, or assume, or whatever else you call a decision procedure with a large portion of probabilistic component. There were as many possibilities here as with the constellations and the shepherds of the old ages, gazing into the sky. How does she decide what to do - or is the decision even hers to make - does the wizard chose the wand or the wand the wizard? The mechanisms were no more lucid. This bothered her a bit as she believed in reason. She probably shouldn't mind that as much, on second thought, since belief itself was something that was scarce in the content of reason to begin with.

Leila stretched her arm out and wrapped her fingers around the green amulet.

The emerald ovoid sat silently in her palm.. Decorations, in the colour of gold and taking the shape of vines and leaves, spanned the surface of the amulet in elegant, curved paths, much like how some real plants do the surface they reside on. Beneath the crystal surface, only barely visible, was the different diffraction index of a distinct material which, judging from the dull bumping sounds emitted by the item when it is moved, was some kind of liquid that nearly filled the inside of the gem.

Leila didn’t feel anything particularly spectacular - not like she expected to, anyways. The amulet was beautiful, though, she thought, as she carefully rolled it around in her hands. Her thoughts were just about to wander off again when another interruption emerged:

[b]”I.....really......DON'T WANT TO GO!”[/b]

One of the humans cried. Leila jumped a bit in fright and the amulet rolled out of her grip was flung forward into the air. Assuming a downwards gravitational field around that on earth (which conformed to observations so far), and roughly gauging the initial velocity of the toss it was not hard to determine quickly precisely where and how the amulet would land: a number of steps forward from where she was standing, with an impact she was sure that was sufficient to smash it into pieces if it were made of ordinary material, and too fast it was impossible for anyone to-

[i]flop.[/i]

Leila froze, not completely realizing what just happened, with the amulet safely clutched in her left hand against her chest,, and herself in the pose that was the ending off a perfect standard forward roll.

[b]”...Eh?”[/b]