#bergen_county

"Take my hands, Sy. For me."

Sylvi tries to listen to the conversation, but Symon is rasping and Dagmar is being quiet.

"Symon, I love you. I'm not about to lose you to this magic bullshit. Please. Stay with me."

"Caaaare bear...." Symon hisses, his whispered voice carrying eerily though the storeroom, just enough to be heard. "I'm coming for you."

Mega-points on the creepy scale. Lovecraft gives a yowl that adds an undertone, echoing his words to make them more audible. oh they work together well. Even the Trolls may feel the hair stand on the backs of their necks.

Dagmar is no boggan, but she can tell, his eyes pass over her, but he's not hearing her. He's in his mind, deep. It's nothing she has done wrong, but he does not seem to be fully conscious of the situational reality.

He turns, and starts towards the other room.
---
Cairrean redoubles her struggles to try to break free from the vines. "If you won't let me go, then help me. It's not MY fault that some gobshite shattered the time gradient and doused him in an entire season's worth of magic in one day!" She has turned from swearing to begging. "He wants to kill me and how will your seelie lodge feel about that? I can remove the cantrips!"

Dagmar strikes like a peregrine, grabbing Symon in a grapple.

A hiss, and he squirms! "I'm doing this for us! Let me fix this!"
(and, pause for Sylvi's turn)

"Shhh, shh, I know. Stay with me."

"Shit shit shit...." Sylvi looks to see if there's a way to get inside the vines with Cairrean, but that's not possible.

"Dammit...." And now she does do the cantrip she intended to from the start, but she needs to be inside it with Cairrean, so she can't use the vines, and she has no other natural items for the bunk except...

She sighs, uses her Bowie knife to chop off her ponytail, and starts moving around the vine enclosure, scattering her hair behind her in a large circle that encompasses her, the vines, and Cairrean.

As the Fairie Ring conceals them both, Sylvi takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Okay," she explains to Cairrean. "Nobody else can see us now, not until sunrise. Gives you some breathing room, but you're staying here. I can't protect you if you leave."

She thumbs her phone on and, still watching Cairrean, uses voice commands to send Dagmar a text.

TXT: I've got her. Nobody can see or reach us right now.

(Who is currently grappling and may not see it at the moment!)

Sylvi hears a THUD and rustling!

Of course, Dagmar has her hands full...

Lovecraft yowls in distress!

"Lovecraft get Kerri, please. He needs help."

Symon tries to squirm free. Suddenly the thin and bony figure she tackled is like holding onto a damp fish, wriggling in her grasp, or perhaps a handful of worms. However, she perseveres and hangs onto him

Lovecraft darts in to attack Dagmar's arm, and suddenly Symon stops squirming, and hisses at her. "No! Don't hurt her!"

The cat draws back, ears flat, unhappy about being scolded.

Holding on to a sluagh is like wrestling with a greased octopus but Dagmar perseveres

"Lovecraft, I don't want to hurt him. He's not himself. We need help. Please!" Her voice shatters on the last, pleading

Symon has stopped squirming as he had to call off Lovecraft, and now he blinks at Dagmar. "You're upset. Please don't be upset. We're fixing things. We're so close. I'm going to make it better."

"Hurting her won't make it better, Sy. That's the spell. You're smart, you'll understand this when you are better."

Cairrean has calmed down just a touch now that she realizes she's not in imminent danger any more. But, is still clearly unhappy about being confined with that troll B****

"When you're yourself, okay? My Symon."

Sylvi says to Cairrean, "You might as well take a seat and get comfortable. You do not want to try to go out there right now."

The vines won't let her go anywhere, but they might have enough give so she can sit.

"A day of safety stuck in some bramble won't do the trick. He's freakin loco, don't you get it? coo-coo-bananas, Insane in membrane."

"I don't know how long it will last. I said, I can unweave the cantrip, or at least I should be able to, if I wasn't bundled up like a grocer's special. Otherwise I'm out of here. You can't watch me forever, and you have no right to imprison me." Cairrean continues, an irate hint to her tone, though one might charitably attribute that to the very recent threat to her life.

"So take it or leave it, because I don't want to stick around for him to have another go."

...
Symon is looking at Dagmar, really trying, but his gaze is still just... off, a touch unfocused.

Sylvi snarls, "I'm trying to keep you SAFE, you idiot. He can't get past the ring. That gives us time to plan HOW to help him without you getting your neck wrung. Another minute, and you'd have been past tense, so I suggest you cooperate. Otherwise...if you take your chances out there now, you might find that we all come hunting for you."

"That's good, Sy. Look at me. C'mon."

Sylvi considers Cairrean carefully. "You say you can unweave it. What would the end result be?"

"It would help if I had the treasure back. But with a focus of some sort, I can draw out the glamour and like, spindle it up. Like a sweater returned to yarn." Cairrean slowly says, considering.

Symon presses a hand to Dagmar's cheek affectionately. His hand is warm, the glamour radiant, rather than his normal clammy self, but the effect almost feels feverish rather than pleasant.

Sylvi bites her lip, trying to think of what might make a decent focus. "You haven't told me what the result would be. What would happen to Symon with the unweaving?"

She releases enough grip to cup one hand over his. "That's right. Stay with me."

Cairrean offers, "Or you can just toss him somewhere banal for a week or two, jail would work nicely, and it will fade on it's own. Probably won't have too many side effects."

She thinks, "He should go back to his base state before the start of the initial spell. SHOULD. I've never dealt with this before, Who breaks a treasure, anyways?" A HUFF, offended. "This is, pardon my FRENCH, some BULLSHIT. Can I have a hand free, this dang vine is pinching!"

"Or I could just decide to let him in here after all and do what he wants to you. Answer the question."

((Please adjust for sequence))

"Oh, poor thing, are you uncomfortable? Deal with it." She considers.

Symon leans into Dagmar. "It's all... fuzzy. Except for you. You're solid." His whisper soft, his gaze still unfocused. "Always solid. Never changes. The rest is... " He shakes his head a touch, scowling. "I'm tangled in gauze, layers and layers, and sometimes I can see through a gap, but it's... unclear."

Cairrean fidgets in discomfort. "Or just find someone to overlap Winter on him. Of course, you run the risk of breaking his brain or sending him into Bedlam, layering cantrip on top of cantrip. But it might work."

A hint of sarcasm.

Sylvi glares at her. "If you had the slightest consideration for his well-being, you wouldn't have agreed to make a profit off of his pain."

"Okay," she says after a moment, "if I get you out of here, will you be able to unweave right now? Like, within the next ten minutes?"

Cairrean's lips purse, as she seems to be considering... but then thinks better of whatever she was going to do.

"Listen, lady, he came to me. I didn't want the job, I mean, have you smelled him before I got him to figure out basic hygeine?" Her nose wrinkling. "I raised the price to discourage him but Symon insisted. You can ask him yourself. Or have Featherbrain Knight ask him and see if he lies.

You are so spoiled. With your perfect lodge and your perfect lives. Never stop to think that some folk have to make due with the powers where da'an grants them."

"I know, Sy. I'm sorry. We'll fix it, okay?"

She touches her forehead to his, being solid for him, even if her heart is racing and her gut is in knots.

"He came to you, yes. Desperate. And you exploited his desperation. And yeah, I know I'm the poster child for privilege, but right now I don't fucking care."

"Okay. I'm going to bring you back in there. You're going to unweave the cantrip. You're going to bring him back to the way he was before he agreed to this mess. And if you don't...I can promise you that both Dagmar and I, and likely several other people who are Symon's loyal friends, will make your life very unpleasant."