Glimmer

When viewed from the outside, Starlight's workshop represented the temporary death of uncertainty.

It wasn't something Twilight had really been able to say about the other buildings in Truedawn. To look at the construction quality for the typical residence raised the question of whether anypony would actually want to live there: this was shortly followed by a rather strident 'Why?' And if a structure had been intended to house a business...

The little mare didn't have any real background in retail. But she'd seen how Rarity and Applejack tended to arrange their displays (and after the mark switch, the farmer had become a little more sensitive to how she coordinated her colors). She'd also been in Barnyard Bargains more than a few times, and that was the sort of design elegance which never truly got noticed because it was the casual invisibility of an arrangement which simply worked. Items were placed within ready reach of a careful jaw, the aisles of merchandise followed the sort of natural progression which had Spices in close proximity to Cookery because as long as you were thinking about experimenting with the second, then here's the first for your neighbor's soon-to-be entertainment. Endcaps rotated their featured items with the seasons, sales were clearly marked, and you never really thought about any of it because that was how the store was supposed to work. In an environment where operating on the edges of perfection could easily turn into the default, ponies would notice what was off long before they picked up on what was right.

Which meant that in Truedawn, she never really stopped noticing... everything, and it was starting to make her head hurt.

Twilight had never really worked in retail: any principles she understood had mostly been absorbed by osmosis. But she was still fairly certain that display windows needed to have a little more glass available for -- well, displaying. And the glass could have been more smooth, because you didn't want those views to be distorted. Also, whatever the shield might (or might not) do with sunlight didn't seem to prevent Sun-bleaching, and some of the central pieces had clearly been there a little too long.

Of course, there was one type of building which Twilight told herself that she not only understood, but probably had a few suggestions to make concerning better interior planning. And for some reason, the marked custodians in any towns they visited would have an odd insistence on letting things go forward with their own systems --

-- she'd found Truedawn's library.

It hadn't been intentional. She'd spotted the fast-darkening lumen level, looked up in time to see the storm coming in, and then kept looking for just as long as she dared, watching the rainfall interact with the shield. (Tikr, who had no way to know what she was truly examining, had felt her inspection was weather-related and made a few comments about the local rainy season accordingly.) And when she'd looked down, tried to reorient on where they've been heading...

Right there. A small building, crude and half-finished and with a woodworking quality so poor that she almost looked around to see if she could spot a trio of barely-adolescent fillies who'd just failed to get a mark for that too. But even if it did so with lettering which looked as if the characters had been chewed out of the nailed-up plank, the sign above the door still read Library.

She'd needed to see.

...okay, she'd understood that she really couldn't take a full look around. Not a comprehensive one, certainly. They'd been heading towards the workshop, and perhaps Tikr would have asked a few questions if Twilight had completely changed her mind.

(It was possible that he would have asked questions. When it came to inquiries made about Twilight, they would have just about been the first ones.)

But she'd told him that she wanted to take a quick peek. He'd nodded, and of course he'd smiled because that was all he ever seemed to do. And she'd taken her quick peek -- which, in the absence of the authority which would have allowed her to start fixing things, had been nearly all she could stand.

There were a few shelves, which had mostly been unevenly nailed to the wall. No bookcases. A proper bookcase, even when well-balanced and smoothed so as to present no danger to its contents, was essentially a subdivided open-faced rectangle. Simple. Twilight found herself darkly wondering why she'd believed anypony in Truedawn was capable of managing that.

No librarian's desk was in evidence. No central station, and certainly nopony who had decided to try out being in charge. There was a card catalog of sorts or rather, you had a long box with cards in it. Blank ones. Which made it very easy to tell how the checkout system worked, because anypony who claimed a book would write down something along the lines of Home Plumbing Repairs currently with Nysi and pin it just below the now-vacant spot on the shelf. This immediately told Twilight three things: nopony had any idea as to how libraries were run, ponies were apparently much better about following shelving order than they were in Ponyville, and it gave her a quick low-bulk guide on Truedawn resident names. (Two of the three immediately combined to give her a headache.) It was take-and-go on the honor system, and the most annoying part was that it seemed to be working.

No newspapers, not even a locally-printed one-sheet -- and printing was available, because the library offered up an old, poorly-maintained small press. No periodicals. And when it came to the books...

There was very little diversity of contents. She saw one small shelf of well-nosed thaumic fiction, some of which had little bits of colored tape coming off the pages. One section was labeled as Donations, and that was a tiny scattershot group which could have been pulled from the bookcase of nearly any pony home -- if that reader had an interest in international fiction: most of the tomes had been translated. And there was also a shelf which had proudly been designated as Our Writings and while she was almost desperate for a community history -- even the tree had some donated journals and documents written by Ponyville's founders -- a quick glance at the spines of those poorly-bound books told her they were fiction. She didn't want to investigate them too closely, because it seemed likely that the sentences would possess the same degree of craftwork as the shelves.

But they stood out for being fiction. Just about everything else in the... 'library' was a how-to guide. Written advice on creation and construction. (Given how the results had turned out, she could safely presume there was nothing around for improving reading comprehension.) How to make this or, when it came to the few foal's overviews of adult career paths which had somehow wandered into the place, how to be this.

And that was it.

Perhaps she'd missed something: it had been a short survey. With the headache coming in fast, it couldn't have been much of anything else. But for what she could see... it was barely a library at all. Most personal collections would have outshone it, and one of those belonged to Rainbow.

She wanted to fix it. Reorganize. Plant herself at the desk, which had an initial requirement of finding both a decent desk and a bench which wouldn't be trying to kill her. And still... it did what a library was supposed to do. It let her learn something.

I recognize that title.

Twilight had to process new releases into the tree's catalogs once per week. It meant dealing with a lot of titles.

And that stupid edge slice of artwork. Somepony thought that if you lined up all of the books next to each other in publication order, you could get a full picture. It doesn't work as well when you've just got the one.

Books which came from everywhere.

But maybe minotaurs don't think it looks as dumb.

That book came out seven moons ago. And that one over there... I'd have to check the printing, but...

A lot of the texts looked like remaindered copies, while others had already been indicated as donations. But there were a few fairly recent publications. Editions which had been printed in various parts of the world, stored away from the public contributions.

It was another sign that somepony in Truedawn was leaving regularly. Using the teleportation rods for return to the northern hemisphere, and bringing purchases back.

Something to think about.

Something which wasn't a plan for fixing the library.

...buildings in Truedawn weren't locked. All she had to do was get up deep under Moon, go right in...

Not that she'd brought her stealth suit. (Rarity still hadn't recut it for wings.)
Not that it had ever worked.
(Twilight preferred to blame the suit.)

She'd forced herself to spend no more than two minutes in the library -- 'library'? -- because if it had been any longer, it would have turned into ten hours. They'd kept going from there, moving towards the base of the cliff. And in time...

Just about every structure in the community was poorly-made, uneven, splintery, existed with dubious intent of purpose and when you were told what that purpose had been, disbelief tried to get several words in. But even when viewed from the outside, Starlight's sanctum put a very short-term stop to that. Because if you knew anything about magical research, then the proper sentence to say upon looking at the building was 'That's a workshop, all right'.

The structure was also the first thing in Truedawn which Twilight didn't want to fix.

(How hard could it be just to smooth things out? Somepony was going to get hurt...)

She just had an odd urge to decorate.

It was absolutely a workshop. It had clearly been forbidden from even thinking about being anything else.

Starlight's workshop had been placed against the base of the cliff. It was defended at the back by rock, on all other sides by Truedawn's collective desire to give the occupant some privacy, and everything in between had been taken care of by some very solid walls.

It had been built next to the start of the narrow ascent path which switchbacked its way up the cliff. Starlight had the option to just trot up to the cave any time she liked -- if she took some care, and she would need to let herself out of the shield well before reaching her destination. Still... convenience and efficiency. The dozen full water barrels had even been set down near the point of first access, while allowing plenty of room to move onto the trail. Applejack had probably supervised the placement.

With the building itself... if compared to something in an Equestrian settled zone, it was perhaps the most normal structure in Truedawn. And simultaneously, it turned into the strangest.

It was about half the size of Applejack's residence -- the vertical half, because the workshop existed on a single above-ground level. However, there was visual evidence of a basement: walls seemed to cut a little too deep into the soil, and Twilight spotted a pair of low air vents: currently closed.

The heavy walls -- mostly dark stone, with some strategic placement of what Twilight understood to be black ironwood: the Princesses used it for conference tables -- had been smoothed. Every corner was precise. There were very few windows, and Twilight instinctively understood that the ones which were present had been placed for two reasons: some experiments needed natural sunlight, and others benefited from having a single weaker spot in the design because the pressure from an explosion would exit that way first.

There was a slowly-rotating flanged circular vent atop one of the more reinforced sections. Heat and fume dispersal. Twilight automatically assumed that was where the chemistry lab was, and possibly the forge.

A hidden horn tested the air, and found an outright miasma of lingering thaums: old castings, possibly with more recent spells lurking behind them. The majority of them were wrapped up in each other. She couldn't truly hope to sort out exactly which working was doing what without considerably more time added to Truedawn's scarcest commodity: privacy.

There could be a shield generator in there.
A teleportation rod.
...there could be anything in there and the only way I'd get to find out...

Some of the spells would be defenses. It was a workshop. Defenses were mandatory, and typically designed to prevent anypony else from trotting in at a bad moment. When a workshop was truly active, any interrupted moment had the potential to become very bad.

Thick walls. Reinforced construction. The interior would be subdivided, with buffer sections making sure no single mistake had the chance to go very far --

"You're definitely interested," Tikr noted. "Are you looking for anything in particular?"

"Foundation stone," Twilight immediately said. "A marked one."

He didn't frown. (She wasn't sure if he could.) But he did blink a little and, upon hearing the word 'marked', added a twitch.

"That's a new one on me," the stallion said. "But I'm always willing to learn!" With a slight chuckle, "Aren't we all, right? Or we wouldn't be here. So what's a foundation stone?"

I've been looking at your buildings. You might have had the same response on 'hinge'. And there's a word you didn't say...

"More of a Mazein thing than Equestrian," Twilight admitted. "It's the first above-ground stone placed in a visible spot, and it'll always be at a corner. Minotaurs like to engrave them with the date when construction began, and the names of the builders." It would have indicated how long the workshop had been there. But there was no such detail, and she decided it was inconsiderate.

"Interesting," Tikr decided with, as expected, a smile. "Maybe we can put one into the next thing we all build."

It also would have been a personal touch.

Twilight knew a magic researcher's workshop when she saw one. The tree's basement was largely improvised, and she was always trying to make improvements. But when it came to the recommended model... the Gifted School had its share, all of which existed in some degree of isolation from the main campus. (When standard classes within the school itself gave the place a tendency to detonate every few moons, those portions which dealt with advanced personal studies needed a little extra separation.) A few ponies had let her go into their sanctums, mostly with some reluctance. And she'd seen one of Star Swirl's lost facilities, in a dream which had skirted the edges of memory.

She didn't want to remember that dream. Something in her desired to push it away forever. But right now, she needed the comparison.

This was absolutely a workshop. And if Starlight was truly the community's physician, then it might have had aspects of a medical facility within -- but not without. A research workshop had to be heavy-duty construction, and such possessed deliberate elements of forbiddance: do not enter here without advance notice and permission, because a pony who arrives in one piece isn't guaranteed to leave without picking up some involuntary plurals. For a doctor's office, or a hospital... the tendency was to try for reassurance. Encouraging ponies to relax. The blatant attempts never worked. Open, sunlit, airy waiting areas stopped mattering at the moment you remembered just what you were waiting for.

There might have been a sickbay within, or even a surgery. But from the outside, the building registered at a workshop rating of one hundred percent.

And that was the problem.

The structure's mere existence confirmed the occupant as a dedicated student of magic, and a skilled one. But in style...

It's like somepony followed instructions exactly. If the diagram said 'ninety-degree bend', then that's what they did. Ninety precisely-measured degrees.

The door frame is regimented. Reinforcements are just about military, and expected to follow all marching orders. If there's a single error, you stop and fix it. Maybe you tear that section down and start over, because the repaired section wouldn't have started as perfect and that's not acceptable.

No mistakes in the construction. Errors would die in its vicinity, possibly from embarrassment.

But there's no personal touches. The colors are those of the wood and stone. He...

Star Swirl. Not her.

...wanted everypony to know it was his workshop. There were little signs. I didn't see his mark anywhere near the door, but -- maybe that's more of a modern thing. He just had curves, here and there. The hues stood out. They weren't artistic, but they were colorful. Intending to be noticed.

It was big and brash and visually loud because he wanted everypony to know it was his.

Every researcher puts their personal stamp on a building. Placement of the blast windows. Exact locations for the emergency equipment. Paint. Shading. Favorite perfume sprinkled around to hide some of the chemical smells.

This was made by somepony who followed instructions exactly. No errors, honest or otherwise. But there's also nothing here which suggests 'Starlight works here'. Or that anypony works here.

It's as if... there was a picture in a book. And now there's a building next to a cliff, which looks just like that picture.

"What do you think of it?" Tikr asked.

Clinical artistry?

"Very solid," Twilight said, and had to raise her volume to get past the approaching noise of squeaking cart wheels.

"It is, isn't it?" Tikr delightedly latched onto what just had to be a compliment. "I'll tell her you said that! -- oh, and here comes company..."

He glanced backwards. Twilight followed his gaze --

-- more water on the way. Two carts, six very big barrels, several ponies --

"We'll help you!" Tikr called out to the approaching haul teams, immediately volunteering and, to save time, also volunteering her. "They've got to be tired after bringing that here, right? A helping hoof in times of need, pressing back with equal force against the one who needs that help!"

He smiled at Twilight. The expression was strong, constant, and came with tangible pressure. Something which was starting to gather reinforcements, because the approaching ponies were also looking at her...

"You will help, won't you?" Tikr asked her, and did so just a little too late for the deed to actually mean anything. "In Truedawn, we work as a team."

She was being watched now. Observed by the herd.

Twilight looked at the barrels.

I couldn't levitate them all the way to the cave. Because the shield is in the way. Also because when somepony's standing in one place and projecting their corona straight up, there's only so high they can lift anything. Get past a certain point and the field starts to lose cohesion.

But I could unload both carts in one go. Put the barrels right next to the trailhead in just about a single move, and do so without getting near a double corona.

...I am currently a pegasus.
With an injured wing.
A very small pegasus.
And that's a lot of water weight.
If I try to unload them physically...
...oh dear.

It was water weight. You could shove at it. And then it would shove right back...

"Something wrong?" Tikr politely asked.

She got right to the point. "I can't fly right now. And even if I could... I'm not that strong, and I -- I can't get a pressure carry going. Not with the weight of a full barrel, and not with the shape of the barrel. I... don't know what I can do."

"Push," the stallion promptly answered. "With your head. While the rest of the team is doing the same. Any contribution makes the whole easier." And with a friendly tone added to what felt like a practiced speech, "If any given pony can only manage one percent of a task, then the job isn't impossible. It just means you need a hundred ponies. It all adds up, doesn't it?"

The carts came to a stop. Ponies could have unhitched themselves, moved around to the back and begun to work on untying the fasteners which were strapped across each barrel. But they didn't. They watched her. As a team.

My horn is currently hidden from sight.
Illusions don't do anything to fool the physical environment.
If I push too hard with my head, on the expected angle, then everypony is going to be wondering why the barrel has a horn-sized leak.

"Any help is still help," Tikr decided. "And we could really use the assist. It's a lot of water..."

The group continued to watch. Wait.

Working with the herd...

"Do you need a little extra energy first?" the stallion checked. "I've got some candy."

Too many sugars, and Twilight dearly needed something more solid -- but it was the only thing available. There was just the minor issue of trusting Truedawn food.

"...I..." she said, and felt the observations. A dozen amateur scientists waiting on the results of the social experiment.

It was like being underwater. Pressure from all sides, while individuality suffocated and threatened to drown.

But they were all trying to prevent questions from being raised. Attempting to fit in.

"...you roll those down an incline, right?" Twilight asked. "Maybe if I stood in front of one and braced the barrel against my back legs, so it doesn't roll too fast. You don't want them picking up speed and crashing. And my hind legs are stronger than the fore anyway."

He smiled.

"You've done this before!"

With cider barrels.
But that was with my horn.
This...

"I can try," Twilight said, because they were expecting her to try.

And then they were working.

They were all working. Together. Somepony got a barrel unstrapped, another hooked the ramp into place, and then two more began to push the first barrel while her team kept it from rolling too quickly...

It was a dance, one where she'd never learned the full steps. And yet she moved exactly on time, simply from watching the others moving. This part of the herd acted in one way, and then the next segment stepped in. Working as a team.

There was a comfort in it.

The work was going smoothly. They all watched each other. Corrected for any mistakes. She had trouble getting her back legs up at one point, because it wasn't a natural position for her and the fore were still taking most of the weight on the downslope: a Truedawn resident instantly stepped in and helped her shore the barrel up.

Fit in. Act as everypony else acts. Be part of the herd. She could be herself later.

...if she wanted to be.

Company and reinforcement and always something to do...

It's almost funny.
When I didn't think friendship was important, it was easy to just be myself.
Then I made the opposite decision.
And I got to be everypony else.

Somepony started up a shanty. She hummed along.

The earth pony wished she could have told herself that she was heading for home, but it would have been a lie.

There were ways in which Applejack could have qualified the claim, of course. In the best case, every hoofstep taken in Truedawn (including the ones she was currently directing towards her assigned quarters) was theoretically bringing them that much closer to figuring out what was going on and in that sense, yes, she could hope to treat them as moving her towards Ponyville. Except that they still didn't know what the community was up to, and it was far too easy to feel as she was moving across a quagmire of quicksand. Every attempt to push herself towards safety might just pull her in that much deeper.

Then again, the way you got out of quicksand (at least if you didn't happen to be an earth pony who could simply relocate the bottom of the pit to be directly below your hooves) was to let the body -- relax. Try to float, almost drift towards safety and once you reached the border, you could get yourself back to firm ground. It was a sensible approach. But for a mare who was fully used to directing her own actions, it also meant she was basically letting the local part of the world take over on her behalf and within the distortions of Truedawn, that could start to feel like a really bad idea. Especially when reaching the nearest 'safe' section of the planet required significant travel through a foreign wild zone and, just as much to the point, required getting on the other side of the shield.

Quicksand...

...maybe it was more of a tar pit. You could brush away quicksand, once it dried. Something about the community felt oddly... sticky.

Oh, she hadn't minded putting in some honest labor, and there was a certain fundamental joy to doing it with company -- although in full truth, it would have been a lot more pleasant if that company had been somewhat more competent. There were ponies who liked to go around saying 'Work smarter, not harder' as if it was the solution to anything life could kick at you. Applejack's response was fundamental: 'Why not go an' do both?' And Truedawn worked dumb.

It wasn't just the lack of the Cornucopia Effect in the farming areas. Applejack could accept that whatever was happening in the community could potentially have some effects on magic: the Effect just might not be available. But when it came to solving other work issues, Truedawn attacked problems with raw numbers -- and the integers available were provided by the census count. They didn't work smarter. It was cumulative force from a herd which was looking for something to do. So many of the little shortcuts just weren't there. The one time she'd seen somepony who'd seemed to be on the verge of implementing a rather overdue idea --

-- maybe it had just been bad timing, having hip muscles pain him at that exact moment. But once the spasm had passed, he'd lost all interest in setting up what would have been both necessary and overdue refinements on the postharvest sorting line. She'd had to do it.

...at least she'd gotten a look at some more of the crops. The moisture condensers were still giving her trouble and a number of the edibles were completely foreign: she'd seen illustrations of physalis in books (and you had to appreciate a fruit which came with its own wrapper), but today had marked her first encounter with black sapote: a name which had made no sense until a unicorn had cut open the green skin. The interior had the color and consistency of dark chocolate pudding: based on the scent, it potentially even shared a little of the taste. She was still considering whether it was worth trying to bring some seeds home.

There had been no unusual diseases spotted among the agriculture. Nothing had appeared to be completely unnatural. Then again, some changes were subtle.

She'd put in what she considered to be a fair amount of labor, including with the barrels (and she had to remember to tell Twilight about the association between the cave and the need for that water). Her presence had made things go more quickly: working smarter, along with just being the strongest pony there. And she'd tried to keep her ears rotating, hearing what ponies were talking about, but -- it had mostly just been old jokes. Community gossip didn't mean as much when she wasn't sure just who was who within the community. Pinkie was probably approaching a full list of names and could automatically connect them all to faces, but Applejack didn't have that gift.

Names...

Introduced mahself around, much as Ah could. 'Hi, I'm Roseceae!' Wasn't too worry 'bout anypony recognizing mah House. Barely anypony in the world who seems to know the House exists.

Ah got a lot of names back. But hardly anypony would use mine. Just that one mare towards the end. An' she cut it down t' 'Rosa'. Said it sort of suited me.

An' then she looked -- embarrassed, Ah think. Kind of worried. An' she added 'Right now, anyway'.

Like Ah'm gonna change mah name at any minute.

Memorizing names in bulk wasn't her strength. She was somewhat better with learning paths. Trot down one trail, figure out how to find and follow it again after. It was how she was making her way back to their granted street.

Something which she was doing alone. Two ponies had tried to keep her company, but she was faster on the trot than they were and anyway, they weren't any better at tracking than they were at anything else.

Get back. Check on things. Then head out again.

There was a lot to check on.

She'd seen a few of the others making the rounds. Fluttershy had gone by at one point: head down, with the small visible portion of the caretaker's features coming across as harried. Applejack figured that 'Shy had just hit her limit on strangers for the day, and was probably taking a nap. She would peek into that house and make sure everything was okay -- but there were other things to worry about first.

The security of their possessions was on that list. Friendly faces were nice to have around. When you were surrounded by ponies you didn't know, good locks were a lot more reassuring.

But for the most part --

-- an' there's the street. Thought Ah had it right.

-- she was worried about Spike.

It wasn't just the possibility of somepony going into that house and finding him. That was a near-constant concern, but -- he was bright, a certain lack of size provided a plethora of hiding places, and Luna's necklace would only aid in his concealment efforts. Most of Applejack's dragon-based anxiety was based in slightly-displaced experience.

Namely, she had a younger sibling, she knew how kids reacted to prolonged periods of extended boredom, and they'd all left a fairly youthful boy alone in a house where there was very little to do.

...all right, it was Spike. The group had been carrying books which had (obviously outdated) information on the region: there was a fair chance that Twilight's sibling might have tried to read for a while. And the little dragon had something of a domestic bent, which substituted for all of the housekeeping instincts his sister didn't have. Applejack was sure that he would have avoided any cooking which required an active chimney, but it was possible that he'd occupied his time through declaring war on dust. And in doing so, might have scored the best possible victory: four whole days before it had to be done again.

It also seemed likely that if nopony checked in on him for most of a day, their Protector would decide that they'd all been gone too long. Which clearly meant there were something he needed to go Protect them from.

As backup contingencies and potential saves went, it wasn't the worst thing to have stored in a saddlebag. But they all worried about him, and if the desperation solution were to be implemented without true cause...

She stopped at the door, raised her right forehoof to knock -- then remembered that it was technically her house and besides, nopony in Truedawn seemed to knock. A knock would probably just send Spike scurrying for the nearest concealment, just from the novelty.

Applejack went inside.

The earth pony carefully nudged the door shut behind her with a hind hoof, rotated her ears and listened. Nothing.

Staying away from windows, making as little sound as possible.
Ain't hearin' nopony else in here, though.
Which don't mean there ain't somepony bein' silent an' still.
Real... Quiet.

Speaking directly to Spike, with a hidden observer in the area, would give the game away. But she had to take the chance.

"Spike?" Applejack softly called out. "Can you hear me?"

The young voice sent relief flooding through her body.

"I'm in the bedroom," Spike carefully projected. "I... was hoping somepony would come back soon."

"I know," the farmer sighed. "We stuck you without much of anything to do and a bunch of academic stuff to read. I think I passed a library at one point. Maybe if I pick you out something?" With a faint smile, "Although most places want proof of residency before they'll lend --"

Soft. Controlled. And, lurking underneath, just barely detectable and that only because she'd known him for so long, something... frantic.

"-- come up the ramp."

"...Spike?"

"I need to show you something." A brief pause. "There's nopony with me, Applejack. No ambush. This isn't a lure --"

"-- well, somepony's been to the cinema a little too much --" emerged with a lightness she wasn't truly feeling.

"-- just come up." And now his tones were on the border of plea. "It's important."

"...okay..."

She carefully made her way up the ramp, planting her hooves for maximum bracing. Listening ahead, just in case he'd been told to say all of it. Nothing.

An' there's that stupid poster.
Who Are You Today?
What does that even mean?

"Are you okay?" she cautiously projected.

There was a long pause.

"No."

"Did something happen --"

"-- just come in," the little dragon requested, because he was at the age where you couldn't tell him he was begging. "Please..."

Applejack entered.

It took her an extra second to spot him. He'd positioned himself between the beds, which gave him the option to dive under either one. And after that... well, if a stranger had come in, then he probably would have activated the necklace. The box shell, maybe. Boxes turned up under beds all the time. And because the disguise was somewhat larger than he, it would have also concealed --

"Spike...?"

The little dragon, sitting on the floor, silently picked up one of the papers which were scattered in front of his walking claws. Held it up and spread his arms to let her see -- most of it. It was a big piece, and his armspan just wasn't that wide.

But she could see enough and, after a mere two breaths, dearly wanted to stop.

She was roughly familiar with how blueprints were laid out. She'd studied a few, because barns didn't just put themselves together. And the crude design being displayed could have been for a shoddy barn. An oversized shed, perhaps, or the sort of house where 'roof' was the most major requirement and there were no guarantees of getting that right.

The lines of the design started as uneven. Some of them twisted in on each other. There were places where the drawing began to smooth out, started to look a little more standard -- and then twisted, bent, warped in multiple directions. It was as if the artist had possessed a sore spot in their jaw, and only noticed when the movements of mouthwriting sent the bitten end of the quill directly into bleeding gums. The rerouting of pain, leading directly into mazes of agony as the pencil marks chased themselves around the rectangle, distorting in ways which no solid building could reflect. It started as amateurish, quickly degraded into a kindergarten student's first waxy concept of a house, then found a dozen ways to get worse before suddenly surging into a single stretch of straight strokes -- which made the process start all over again.

But that was what she saw second.
The designer had signed his work.
Over and over. Virtually everywhere. Around lines, in the places where lines weren't, across errors as if initialing them to show ownership. And the mouthwriting was thick here and almost splattered there, with some letters twisted to the point where they only became recognizable because she could compare them to other specimens.
In bulk.

Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez Gez

Virtually everywhere. On nearly everything.

The exception was along the right edge.

Steady. Perfectly legible. Large and proud. A scrawl of pure defiance.

Linchpin