Back at the castle.

A boat trip, some rivers, some lakes, some mountains. It’s been, how long? It was impossible to tell. The colours of the sky, as she had seen back when they were outside, only fluctuated at seemingly random intervals. Sometimes it was always sunset. Sometimes it was always dawn. Sometimes rainbows can be seen looking into into the direction of the sun.

The first thing Leila did after the lot arrived at the living quarters the castle assigned them, was to sleep. The beds were comfortable and smelt of vanilla and candy frost topping; and Leila slept for a very, very long time. At least, of course, it [i]felt[/i] like a very long time - that there was no exact way to accurately tell time when one was asleep was a well-established fact, and that time didn’t work properly in Nowhere was a less verified, yet nevertheless widely recognized notion. So she rested. She also dreamt. But mainly she rested.

Sometimes she would wake up for moments. She’d look around for signs, out of a window to try to get a clue for what time is it, only to realize that it was pointless to go so. She’d sit up in bed and think about things - time, and other stuff. Candies and pastries and particle physics. Once in a while there’ll float across her mind a thought or two about the past:

[b]”The longer you stay, the more you forget.”[/b]

When was her birthday? What day was it? How many steps was it from her bedroom to the gate, from the gates to the Library? What did her parents look like? What was the last book she read? She would try to recall things, and find that she couldn’t. Not like that bothered her, though.

One a while she’d stand up, walk around, go turn the lights on or off, or to fetch a book from the shelf to perhaps read a few pages from before deciding that it made no sense at all. She’d be reminded that there were about a dozen parts of her body that would ache if she moved them in specific ways. A couple of more severe injuries were wrapped up in bandages. Curious, she didn’t remember anyone treating her injuries after they returned to the castle. Neither did she remember taking a bath, or changing. Yet on the exposed skin, the bruises were going away slowly, however, and the few cuts had become only subtle pink lines, so she decided most of it was getting better over time. But time is confusing, and her ankle still hurts when she puts her weight on it, so she would find herself curling back up into the bedsheets and the whole thing starts over again.

*	*	*	*

Tea.

On that one day The queen invited the Lost Souls to another of her tea parties and Leila showed up rather early.

[b]"Don't be shy, my lovelies. Eat, eat, after that little adventure you must all be famished."[/b]

Strangely, Leila wasn’t that hungry. She didn’t eat much in the last three days, yet she wasn’t hungry. She actually missed tea, though. The fragrance dissipating in the air, the gentle twirling of fragments of dried leaves on the bottom of a cup (fluid dynamics!)...and above all, she kind of missed caffeine. 

Two-Thirds - the Nobody that accompanied them for much of their trip, who was now serving the Queen tea produced from ingredients taken from an intricate set of metal containers - it seems, was the provider of most of the beverage that was supplied at the feast. There were also numerous kettles and pots and other containers lining the platforms that rested one layer above the plethora of sweets and pastries. Leila inspected the inscribed text on the ceramic but couldn’t make out much, so for most of the time at the party she spent tasting small amounts of various kinds of the hot, fragrant liquid that sometimes also glowed in unreasonably vivid colours. Most of the flavours made as little sense as the text on the kettles - most unlike anything she ever tasted, some were remotely familiar. There was also this one particular pot that was exactly like the morning tea the old man used to prepare.

The old man.

What was his name again?

[b]"That mission was really interesting, huh?"[/b]

Between her third and fourth cup of that slightly nostalgic brand of tea, Leila turned her attention to the voice coming from the other side of the table. She looked over to see the the human boy in a tux and bowtie and his hair apparently meticulously fashioned by someone other than himself.

Harper. Good. She remembered this name.

She didn’t know much of him, though. She wasn’t sure if that Harper was the person to first greet her when she arrived in Nowhere was a correct memory. If it was, then she must have ignored him the first time round - way to make a good first impression. She also saw Jasper sitting not far away, gazing at a decorative vase for a no particular reason.

Ongoing conversation. Leila pulled her attention back at the boy. 

[b] "I mean, how are you doing? How's Haku? How do you like, erm, Nowhere so far?"[/b]

Haku?

She hadn’t seen Haku around. Huh.

She wasn’t really aware of it yet: she did not like the recent tendency of not being able to answer questions. Unpredictable physics. Nonsense language. Missing information. What of Nowhere was for her to think? Any theory here here would certainly be met with numerous exceptions, contradictions, and paradoxes. A theory that predicts the existence of such constant exceptions would be itself an exception. Any opinion about Nowhere, in a similar fashion, will also always be met with numerous reasons that result the eventual conclusion that the opinion is not justified.

In Nowhere, everything does not compute. Leila did not like that. Oh wait, that was an opinion about Nowhere.

Half a second it took for Leila’s brain to go through all that and to come forth with an eventual response, which was in turn uttered to the boy in a tux waiting for an answer..

[b]”...I don’t know.”[/b]