Jeron stared in silence as Chamera unpacked for camp, astonished at the almost-impossibility of pulling out so many things from such a small bag. He had seen infinite bags of holding before but never this close, and there was just something about this blatant defiance of the natural laws of physics that never got old to watch.

Watching her work reminded him of his own preparations for the night. His routine was typically to sets snares for the next day's food, eat the rations he prepared that morning, wash up, and spend the night on a tree. In the morning, he would collect what his traps had caught, cook it, ration it for the day along with whatever nuts, berries, and edible foliage he could find, then set out. The presence of Chamera and that human threw off everything.

Jeron's body ached; that potion he had drank wasn't nearly enough to make him feel good as new. He knew he needed to clean up, but it was getting too dark to risk roaming the woods for a nearby stream, if there even was one. He needed to take off his clothes -- his shirt, at least, inspect his wounds, and treat them the way he had treated Chamera's. Not doing this would be foolish; he could not risk infection in a place like this. He would need every ounce of energy to heal and escape this forest. But to do all of this in front of Chamera, to have her watch him....

With a scowl, he rummaged in his bag as a distraction from the tasks he had to do, doubting that he even had the strength to climb a tree. Tenderly, he removed his worn journal, the item he had gone back for after Chamera had freed him. Setting it on his lap, Jeron gingerly opened it, inspecting it more closely than he had at the jail cell to make sure it hadn't been damaged. None of the pages were torn or bent. Obviously, the Zhentarim didn't think his notes important enough to even bother to tamper with. He was a very good artist, his sketches meticulous, almost life-like. Maura had insisted he make a career of his work, something he had considered before.... Now, he doubted he could ever sell anything, not that he even wanted to. Besides, he no longer had the proper tools to sketch properly.

He paused on one page, the section of the book where the spine was cracked. On it was a portrait of Maura, what he could remember of her. He had drawn it days after her death, while learning to live in this world alone. She was twelve in that picture, vibrant and smiling, frizzy hair peeking out of from underneath her headscarf, squinting against an invisible sunlight. Jeron's expression softened to melancholy, his lips twitching in an almost smile. This page, the only picture he drew of his friend, was the sole reason he had returned to that jail cell in the middle of complete chaos. Everything else in the journal he could more-or-less remember, much of it he already knew by heart, but to lose this page....

Jeron snapped the journal closed and shoved it back into his pack, not in any mood to drift away in his memories tonight, not with company about. Instead, he pulled out the item that had gotten him in trouble with the Zhentarim in the first place, the scroll he had found in Elminster's old place. He turned it around in his fingers, studying it carefully. The parchment edges were perfectly smooth, not nicked or bent, the paper white and crisp without so much as a smudge of dirt on it. The seal hadn't been tampered with; the scroll looked brand-new. Jeron found this unusual. The remains of Elminster's home was nothing but a giant heap rubble, and anything of value had been picked through. However, he had found this scroll beneath a bit of dirt and debris that looked like it had not been disturbed for some time; the brightness of the flawlessly-clean paper had drawn his attention to it. After all of that, and the rough-and-tumble it went through in his escape, how could it look so fresh and new? Why hadn't the Zhentarim broken the wax seal?

Jeron broke through the wax seal himself, not thinking that perhaps doing such a thing to such an unusual item would be dangerous. Fortunately, he was not assaulted by an explosion, or a curse, or a bit of poison, or anything else magically harmful. The scroll unrolled to his ministrations like any other.

Jeron's scowl deepened as he held the flattened parchment up to the firelight. The scroll was blank. Not a single ink mark, smudge, or spot could be seen anywhere on its surface. What was something like this doing here? Why would anyone bother to seal up blank parchment and hide it in some rubble? He knew there had to be a magical reason to this mystery, but he hadn't the slightest idea what it could be, and frankly he felt disappointed that he could not simply read the scroll.

Jeron let go of one side of the scroll to readjust his cowl. As soon as his fingers left the parchment, the scroll rolled itself up on its own, the two edges of the broken wax seal meeting up... and melding together to re-seal itself....

Jeron gasped and dropped the scroll, his eyes wide with astonishment. It looked like an ordinary scroll against the dirt, aside from its cleanliness, but it definitely was not. Scrolls did not simply roll up on their own and reseal themselves like that.

Jeron's gaze flickered upward, finding Chamera. "Did you... did you see that?"