The girl remained flopped over her guardian's collar—cheeks squished up against the battlements of heavily-layered, padded leather—long enough to hear the boy comment.

“What?” she said. She looked at the giant, then down at the boy again.

“Of course it is,” she said, “do you think we’re some kind of multi-language roving library, giving out books to any street-urchin we can hit with one?"

"So," Winn began skeptically, then repeated, "what it is you're saying, actually saying now, is that this book has words in it."

He looked at her through the tops of his doubtful eyes — except for the droopy-lidded one that didn't want to open that far, though it served only to actually enhance the palpable disbelief and cynicism in his gaze.

"Words, plural, I mean," he added. "That is to say, more than one word."

"Ugh," she said, with pronounced exasperation, "they're runes, okay? Just because they're not all swoopy and round like your letters doesn't mean there's not a difference."

She leaned towards the dangling flag rope, but didn't yet deign to climb down.

"What does it look like, anyway. Any pictures? Maybe you could understand those," she added, as a spiteful afterthought, "barely."

The rope dangled in the breeze, each flag painted with a different hash of half-loops and lines which looked similar to the symbols on the front of the book, but each of the symbols, in the case of the flags and the book cover, were legibly different from each other.

Winn inhaled slowly, let his head dangle backward from his shoulders, and sighed toward the heavens — or, in this case, the towering giant with the girl on it.

"There are no pictures and I can read most runes thankyouverymuch," he garbled quietly. "This is one character over and over."

Sure enough, right in front of his eyes, visible to anyone else at his level, was page after page after page of the exact same unintelligible symbol.

Winn closed the book, grasped it in his dominant hand with spine forward, and took his best shot at tossing it underhandedly up to the giant's shoulders to return it to the imp. (Chances were it'd flap open and end up somewhere more near his arm, but that was his best attempt.)

The girl and flailed her arms ineffectively to reach the book, leaning over far more than could be construed safe in the circumstances. The book caught the air, opening with a flrr-rap and losing height rapidly some distance from her reach.

"Eep!" she yelped.

The giant tipped her gently back into the boundaries of the immense collar. The book—which had landed further down, its spine hooked awkwardly over the cuff of the giant's left sleeve—was similarly retrieved from peril and brought to the imp's height. She plucked it from his open palm and held the book up, flipping through its pages critically.

"What's this supposed to be?" she asked in angry disbelief. She turned the book over and looked at the cover.

She blanched. She tore the book open again, flipping frantically through the pages.

"Oh no," she whispered.

"Noooo," she moaned, "what is this?"

"I didn't write this, did I?" she asked the giant, pleading. "This can't be my journal!"

"Your life would have been terribly monotonous, were that the case, wouldn't it?" mused Rhiannon philosophically, as she stepped up next to Winn, glancing up to the book in question.

"You said you could read most runes," she observed idly, turning with the boy with a thoughtful cant of her head. "I take it, though that you didn't recognize that one?"

Winn glanced vaguely in Rhiannon's direction as he recalled the character's appearance.

"No," he said simply, corner of his mouth pulled down, head shaking a couple times, "it doesn't even look familiar to me."

"This," her voice cracked, "t-this can't be right. Th... It can't..."

She sank down out of sight behind the giant's collar. Her hand, still grasping the book, dangled over the edge limply for a few seconds, before the book slipped out of her fingers, and bounced down to the ground. The book bounced down to the ground.

The giant looked down. He dropped to one knee, and peered at the book on the ground. He very gently reached out and plucked it from the ground between two massive claws. He looked at it between his finger and thumb, he squinted awkwardly.

He sat down, and stooped down to face the witch and the boy, and brought a hand up to his collar.

The imp climbed out and sat on his hand. Her movement seemed different, though. Her head nodded sleepily, her limbs moved slowly and deliberately—with none of the posturing, or the proud way she held herself previously. He brought the book up to her, and she took it from between his finger and thumb. She opened the book, silently, and held it up to the bigger boy's eyes. He blinked. She flipped the pages, aimlessly, fluttering page after useless page of the repeated symbol past his face. He closed his eyes, then opened them, meeting the imp's sleepy gaze.

He focused on the witch and the boy below, and lifted her down to their level. Sitting cross-legged, she stared at them. For a moment, she made eye contact with Winn, but quickly appeared to lose concentration. Her eyes started at somewhere just behind his head, and gradually her head drooped, and she looked at the ground.

"He wants to know," she said, dozily, "if you can help," she paused, "he wants to know if you're sure you don't recognize it. Very very sure. He says... That you might know because you're a..." she turned to the girl, "a witch."

"I didn't get to see it," replied Rhiannon apologetically, as she lifted her head to address the giant directly. Gently extending her open hand, she held it aloft.

"May I?"

The hand carrying the imp bobbed a little lower, and she handed Rhiannon the book mutely.

The witch blinked abruptly at the marking on the front of the book. Without really needing to, she flipped it open to the first page, and thumbed through several more without really looking at them. She didn't need to. Her brows knit together tightly.

"It isn't a rune," she stated very matter of factly, before leveling a strangely intense gaze at the fabricator. "It's two."

Without waiting for a reaction, she pushed the tome back into Winn's hands before plucking her parasol off the crook of her arm.

She set the tip into the dirt, and drew two short, distantly spaced, squiggly lines, and then a single, long and straight line connecting them. Pausing, she glanced meaningfully at Winn, and then nodded to the Sau.

"Path," was all she said.

Her next drawing, to the right of the previous, was a hemisphere with one straight line projecting from its top, and two shorter curly tendrils extending on either side of it. "Confusion."

The enchantress looked up briefly, but continued drawing. "Put the two together, and not only have you befuddled the literate, but you have obfuscated the way."

Winn leered and watched with fascination. His brows went up at once — sudden enlightenment.

"I see it now," he exclaimed breathlessly. "That first one is used in defixios all the time... so..."

He put on a concentration face, drew a breath, and held it.

"... This still doesn't explain why it's in her book."

"He says," the imp said, "that perhaps I put a spell on a the book to protect it from sneakthieves and prying eyes, but," her eyes flickered, "I don't know any spells, so," she shrugged listlessly.

"He says," she added, "maybe I do know spells and I just don't remember if I do. Maybe if I try one it will come back to me—"

"he says," she finished, nodding her head back at the giant. She was beginning to look slightly more attentive—her gaze—while still fixed on a point behind the two of their heads—was a little sharper and seemed to be more intently studying whatever it was she was looking at.

"Nya he'ehI'm alright now,," she added. The giant put her down, she slipped off the palm of his hand and stood in front of the two of them—she appeared to be returning back to her normal state, denoted by a look of faint annoyance.

Rhiannon frowned thoughtfully, at Winn's mystery, but hadn't the chance to comment on it before the odd imp interjected with her Sunmate's theories in her inconsistent, disjointed manner.

With an utterly smooth face of blank composure, the witch blinked once; a concise, deliberate action, before looking up to the mountainous male, and asking very clearly, "What was that?" as she inclined her head toward his smaller female companion.

"He's not going to tell you," she said, with some satisfaction, although it was obvious her heart was not quite in it yet.

...

She frowned, as if she had just tasted something unpleasant.

"Although he says to tell you he'll probably tell you some other time."

"He wants to know if you think this was caused a spell. Which would be nice," she added.