2020-02-18 - The Science Of Selling Yourself Short

With Isabella being reluctant to notify everyone else about her present condition and Yule's A-frame cabin still in the process of actually being converted into a home, the decision to hold the meeting in August's cozy cabin near the forest is a relatively easy one.

It's the archaeologist who arrives first, bundled up in one of her lightweight winter jackets that fit closely to her frame - today is a deep red piped with black, her hair spilled loose over her shoulders and down her back; it seems to have been recently cut in layers, the bronze and gold highlights within the otherwise dark chocolate torrent retouched and gleaming even under the wintry sun. Today's cold is a bitter one, razor-edged and liable to cut through skin - the moment she steps out of her vehicle, her cheeks flush immediately upon feeling it and once again, she's thankful for it. It makes her look less pale.

She is a pale shade of her usual self - normally a vibrant, bombastic personality, in stark contrast to her usual manner, she almost seems like a ghost, her colors muted and faded out. Her potential continues to burn like a small sun, regardless of how hampered she is from its full use and it helps prevent her from looking as feeble and tired as she feels. Green eyes are puffy and swollen, and her voice is hoarse and thready when she speaks - but the way she looks at another is direct, still, and determined, imbued with its usual clarity and sharpness no matter the state of the rest of her, as if she's consistently able to detach her brain from her heart and body, keeping it running while everything else is in quarantine.

"Hey August," she says, lifting up the piping hot paper bag that she had brought. "Croissants with jam and butter." She'll probably opt for the latter. "No Yule yet?" She recognizes the Combat Botanist's vehicles, and her own, but the rest of the designated parking area is devoid of others.

Although the snowy slush is all over the ground outside the perimeter fence, inside it the ground is relatively clear. The geese all honk to announce Isabella's arrival, not that they need to because August was already outside tending the goats. He stands as they set up their alarm, sighs heavily at them. "Girls, really," adding a touch of the mind Art to the comment.

And this time, something weird happens. They all fall quiet. Even Mei Mei, who usually hisses. All four quietly return to their breakfast.

August watches them for a spell, nonplussed. He shakes his head, raises a hand to Isabella and moves to greet her at the front door. He pauses, taking in how she looks, and some of his morning energy faded. "Hey. How's some coffee sound? Brother-in-law got Ellie and I some great Vietnamese stuff." He opens the door and gestures for her to head in. It's warm inside, the woodstove burning away.

It is all of a couple of minutes later when Yule arrives, trudging through the slushy snow on his way towards where Isabella and August have gathered. He's dressed in a white dress shirt, with a long, navy blue coat that reaches down to his knees. It's left open to enjoy the crisp air, making it up towards the door just as the pair begin to head inside.

"Hey," It's Isabella who gets a longer, more pointed look, and there is meaning in his words beyond what they imply, "Got your voice mail." One dark brow ticks upwards, but nothing more is said directly towards it as his eyes shift back towards August. "Good to see you again. Think I have a few things to show and tell as well, after yours."

"Hey Yule." The pointed look is uncommented upon. To August: "Coffee sounds great." There's a flash of a smile, and one meant to be reassuring. "I'm starting to think I was born Italian in a past life, when I can't help but bring nibbles over to a friend's place no matter how many times I actually visit."

Isabella slips through the door, moving slower than her usual wont. She aches everywhere, sore from a fight where lives were on the line, but she bears these subdermal injuries with good grace. It is only her pride, however, that enables her to keep moving despite of other significant wounds that have not made any marks on her person. She sets the paper bag down on the table, and proceeds to shed her winter jacket to hang it up neatly on one of the hooks. Underneath, she wears a soft cashmere sweater, with a high collar. There's no hiding it from August or Yule, given their specialties - the ligature strains around her neck are the most painful, but still insignificant compared to everything else.

She rolls her sleeves up to her elbows, the jingle of her dandelion charms drawing her eyes down upon them for a moment, expression twisting briefly, before she reaches into her satchel and produces a notebook bulging with extra paper.

"How's everything?" she asks, looking over at them, brows furrowing faintly. "So once the alcoholic haze faded, I re-read your texts again and realized I had not been dreaming that conversation. First dryads, then gnomes? What the hell is happening in the Forest?" That to the Combat Botanist, because he had alerted her to both.

"Hey," August says, giving Yule an up-nod as he arrives. "Good to see you too." He casts Isabella a sympathetic look; for all that he has no idea what her condition is about, he figures it's not good. But, she'll tell them about that when and if she feels like it.

He ushers the two in and shuts the door, gets to shedding his work jacket, gloves, and boots in the entrance/mud room. He's in dark purple and gold UW sweats, and now a pair of hard-soled, shearling slippers.

He heads into the kitchen, gets the coffee maker going. There's a breakfast bar for sitting at, as well as a futon in front of a coffee table. "Take your pick on where to sit, I'm not partial." He gets down some mugs, pulls out the cream and sugar.

Waiting on the coffee maker, he leans a hip against the bar. "So. Yeah. Gnomes." He runs a hand over his face. "I've been doing a few experiments with plants in the Veil, to see how it effects the biology of things from here. Planted a few specimens in the park," he makes a face about that escapade, "those all died. So I decided to try grafting." Here he pauses to open a kitchen drawer and pull out a field journal and some maps.

"Nothing new with the forest. Alexander tell you about the dream we all remembered from when we were kids? Some big, huge, worms in its teeth monster that chased us when we were about ten." His body shivers as he follows on in behind, heading towards the breakfast bar to hitch up on the stool. "Now that is intriguing," Comes Yule's thoughts about the experiments August proposes, his eyes going a touch wide as he listens.

"How did the grafting go?" Comes the obvious followup, even as Yule reaches into the depths of his coat to pull out the disguise August had lent him, sliding it across for him to take whenever he wants.

His head turns, offering a faint smile curling to the corners of his mouth as he glances to Isabella, and there is a clear look that he has questions, but they will be for later. "You always bring the best things," He says with certainty, "Even if I have all of one instance to compare it to."

"Grafting?" Curiosity intensifies the sharpness in Isabella's stare when August brings it up. "Transplants for vegetation?" The sight of the field journal and the maps pulled from the drawers pushes her back up her feet. She needs to move, so she's already proceeding to the nearest table, to draw out chairs and push aside whatever items might be upon them so their host could lay out the map he's got in his fingers.

There's only the briefest of pauses when Yule mentions his shared dream with Alexander and Patrick. "He did," she says, keeping it at that, eyes drawn to her fussing, nevermind that she could feel the medical examiner's gaze on the side of her face. She sets her own notebook down and her smartphone, pausing at its lock screen. The side of a thumb absently traces the side of the image within, but it doesn't linger long when she swipes her combination and unlocks the device with a flick, and accesses her recorder. Smartphones may be the best and worst invention of the twenty-first century. She sets it on the table to take dictation.

There's an expectant look at August. "Well, then, the floor's yours, Doctor Roen," she says, her voice in a low, but teasing bent.

August blinks when Yule comments on his shared childhood Dream with Alexander, stopping in the process of bringing the maps and journal to the table. He flicks another of those assessing glances at Isabella, sets whatever he's thinking aside and gets a kind of look on his face, hesitant and curious. He starts to say something, stops. Then, "I had something like that too. I mean--I wound up a lot in Their backyard, as a kid, but this was from after Bosnia. They made me really young." He pauses, clears his throat. "I was in Portland at the time, but the other person in the Dream was here."

He doesn't continue, instead shakes himself out and moves to the table and sets out the maps. One is a Firefly Forest map with a variety of stickies and notes. The other is a sheet of transparency film, on which August has written 'Over There' in a corner and written on in erasable marker; he sets this over the Firefly Forest map. There's a site marked G#1 and a rough line leading from there to one of the game trails in the real. "So, I had to find a tree that looked and felt right. This was a Sitka spruce graft. It wasn't far from the thin spot," he taps a point near the trail, "Itzhak and I used to cross over. But." Now he takes the journal and opens it to the cord bookmark. His writing is drafting style, neat and precise printing, with various drawings of what can only be...the gnomes. They don't have cone hats, but they do have huge red eyes, shark-like mouths of teeth, and ooze something red from their mouths.

"When we crossed over, the chalk marks I'd used to note the path Over There? They were on every, single, tree." He makes a face, lets them take that in.

The concern from both men in the room is so palpable, anyone who doesn't feel it would either be dead or comatose. Isabella doesn't address the elephant in the room, however, though her gratitude for that much softens her demeanor well enough. She straightens up once coffee is made so she can pour herself a mug and add just a splash of cream on hers; it is almost always self-serve in August Roen's domain. She doesn't touch the croissants, they were for her friends, nevermind that she hasn't had anything solid and non-alcoholic in the past forty-eight hours; at least whatever ten pounds she has been dreading she gained would be consumed by her own body before the week is over - so, yay?

She listens attentively while taking measured sips of her coffee, leaning over when the transparent film is laid on top of the map. There's also a curious glance at the drawing of the gnomes, unable to help a self-deprecating smile. She can't draw for shit. "So they commandeered your marks in hopes that whoever visits next gets lost," she concludes. "And therefore won't be able to locate the site of your experiments." Her eyes find the older man's profile. "Did you manage to find it anyway?"

August knows better than to pry, so doesn't. He's a big fan of not getting into other people's business. (And anyways it usually winds up on his doorstep one way or another.)

"I'm not sure it was them," he says. "In fact...I think the trees themselves did it." A pause to let that sink in. He turns to a prior page in the journal: a drawing of a tree, with a chalk mark, and a strange arrow marked in red. "They were doing this." He taps the red mark. "But, we'll get to that." He leaves all of this on the table for their perusal, goes to get the coffee pot and pour out a mug. He doctors it up, brings it and some plates for the croissants, and a few napkins. The coffee is a dark, chocolately roast. "And no, we didn't find it. Since the chalk marks were all over, we were thinking to turn back and leave, but a tree had moved to block our path." He gives them a tired look which telegraphs, 'because of course it did'.

"Which is when," he turns the page back to the gnome drawings, "one of these hopped onto Enzo and attacked him. He ran off, and we followed." Another page turned, this is a drawing of a grove of...mushroom houses, and another gnome, this one with a huge beard. "This...elder, I guess, he said that they came from somewhere else, somewhere in...Firefly, I guess? And normally they ate the trees in their home, but those trees had started attacking them. In order to keep them from killing Enzo," a sigh, and he rubs at his eyes, "we agreed to help fix whatever it was."

The trees themselves did it.

Isabella's expression flattens so severely that for a moment, she actually looks two-dimensional. But it eases from that brief tightness into one that's more resigned than anything. "Well, that wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've heard in the last week," she drawls, taking a quiet sip of her coffee and taking another look at the diagrams being drawn on the table. "We already know whatever's going on here will always protect itself from the discovery of its deeper secrets." His tired look is reflected on her own face at the mention that one of the trees had actually decided to full on accost them.

The page flip has her leaning over to peer at the drawings, marveling at the neat, masculine hand that created them, brows stitching down further in thought. "So the gnomes eat trees, but the trees have come alive and aren't so easy prey anymore. This ought to be the part where I say that the circle of life dictates that the omnivorous gnomes at issue should figure out how to deal with it." Certainly not purely herbivorous, not with the kind of teeth that are in August's portraits. "Who's we in this instance? You and Enzo?" Her eyes lift again to fix on August. "Did you get any samples so you'd know where to start fixing the problem, or...?" There might be more to the story, she just can't help but ask questions the moment they pop in her head.

"Enzo, Niall, and I," August clarifies. "Niall's stationed in Olympic. He's got the matter Art, so he can step through. Good guy to know, I'll introduce you." He taps a spot on the transparency film that he's marked with a few question marks. "The gnomes aren't omnivores, near as we could tell. If they tried to eat any of our food, it made them sick. It sounds like they can only eat a specific type of tree, namely whatever was at their home site. So, arbivorous, and very specifically arbivorous." He shrugs about that, in a 'the Veil, how does it work?' sort of way.

"No samples--the elder said if we tried to go there as just the three of us, we'd get killed. He recommended bringing a handful of people to deal with it." He straightens, tears off a bit of a croissant onto a plate. "It sounds like it'll be an ugly situation. Maybe not just a fight though. Anyways, I figure, maybe a half-dozen of us, we can at least go in and figure out what's wrong, and fix it." He nibbles at the croissant. "I don't think it was the graft. But it might have been. We won't know until we're there. The elder said he'd provide us with a guide."

"I suppose the teeth would have to be that way in order to chew their way through obstacles in digesting that sort of thing," Isabella murmurs, propping a hand on her hip. "And I'd love to meet...Niall?" Lifting her eyes up, she flashes August a small smile. "Always willing to meet a friend or associate of yours."

There's a small frown, and she nods. "I didn't want to say anything about that," she says. "Since it would be a not-altogether unexpected development, but I didn't want to leap into conclusions that maybe something did happen with the experiment. Anyway, if you need bodies, I can assist. Not that I haven't been in and out of the Veil the last few months." She flexes her fingers a little bit against the flaring curve of her side - her nerves there have been tingly, though she has dismissed it as part of the strangeness that had blanketed them and people like them since the disappearance of Billy the Ghoul's gravesite. "But getting accustomed to it is good if I'm going to keep doing this." And then maybe she'll be able to quit taking Prozac altogether, or relying on...

She pushes thoughts of Alexander aside and lifts her head to squint at the map. "Was there anything else with the experiment?" she wonders. "You mentioned you had to talk to Yule and me about what we might've discovered on our end."

August nods at Isabella about bringing her with. He studies her a moment, then says, "I figure I'll ask around, see who's interested and available." He glances at Yule to extend the possible invitation, if he feels he's up for it, though there's something careful and deliberate in his wording which suggests he's not naming names for a reason.

"Right. So, the park samples died. But the glasses," he gestures back where Yule set them on the counter, "got me thinking about the soup. We," he gestures between all three of them, "can heal people, plants, animals, and objects. So I was wondering if the soup could as well. I went ahead and did an experiment with one of my packets, involving some plants." He moves back to that same kitchen drawer, pulls out a fairly standard lab notebook and flips it open. It's a bit different than the field journal; there are photographs of several groups of plants arrayed in small, plastic pots in a tray. "I treated these with some soup from a packet, at a variety of temperatures." He taps a set of obviously dead specimens. "These I left the soup hot. No surprise there," he taps more dead plants, "since plain hot water damages roots anyways. But," he trails a finger down the rest, which don't look very healthy. "On the others? No effect. So, could be the soup only heals people. Which might mean that the effect imbued into it, is highly specific and focused." Ha pauses there to see what they make of that.

"Right," Isabella replies, her murmur low and thoughtful - she had already thought of the soup, but passed along a packet to Yule for his experimentations several weeks ago, lowering herself in a small stoop so she can scrutinize the photographs carefully. His conclusions seem sound there, and there's a faint lift of her brows at that. It's a simple experiment, but useful in the sense that they've got some confirmation about what they've already suspected. "It would parse with what we already know about the Veil," she tells August. "Even the questions we have to ask the denizens that live and work there have to be specific, so if anything, this just follows the pattern. And it also could be that objects have limits to their capacity to hold an ability."

She chews on her bottom lip, and glances over at Yule. "I've been thinking a lot about the nullification experiment," she begins. "Though Yule's more qualified to explain the method and what we did. But basically we attempted to imbue some metallic objects with Minerva's nullification ability while I shifted things around to find an optimal arrangement so it could carry it. The results were that the objects exploded within five minutes of the imbuement and rendered our bodies powerless, on top with the additional consequence of drawing Their attention to us. The fact that they breached the room suggests that the room wasn't actually nullified when it happened, but that the effect was localized, which can mean any of either these things."

She lifts up a finger. "One, that because the three of us were in the vicinity of the object, we were affected, or two, because the three of us touched the object in some way, either physically or psychically, that we were affected." There is a distinct difference between the two. "I also have no idea whether the nullification effect on our powers would have kept happening if the object remained intact. Either way, there was a weakening after-effect not unlike what we experienced over the summer with the Veil-flu, which means that the experiment could have also damaged our talents to the extent that it needed a week from the incident to recover full use, which I don't think happens when a high-level reader nulls a room. Lots of practical application, there, if we can hang a cross on someone like us and render him powerless, but the consequences of failure are quite high. So the ultimate conclusion? It is possible to imbue a nullification effect on an object, it's just that we haven't found the correct formula and method just yet."

Yule has been lost in a reverie,but it's a deep matter of listening rather than his thoughts elsewhere. After he had found his coffee, everything is soaked in, before the first word that rolls from the tip of his tongue? "Treants." He offers up about the trees, before casting them both a rueful, brief smile, "I played Dungeons and Dragons back in High School. Living trees? Definitely sound like treants. I'd be happy to help as well, if you need a brain to go along with." It's the pictures that have the man riveted, his head dipping up and down slowly, as if it helps to confirm exactly what he had thought.

"I've looked at both the soup and glasses. And I've learned a few things. First? You don't have to use all three aspects to imbue something. The glasses? Nothing physical about them. Second, so far what I've seen only has one specific use put into them. The soup is to heal human illness. The glasses are to better disguise you. Small sample size, of course." There is a third point, but before he gets to it, those brown eyes lift, shifting from one to the other to let it sink in, because he feels this one? Is the most important. "Lastly, items? Require you to start with something already made, rather than starting from scratch. And I think context is important. For example, the disguise? They didn't create it from scratch in making the glasses. It used to be a plain, normal toy. But a toy meant to give the idea of being able to disguise yourself. The soup? Was, initially, plain, normal soup. And what are you always told to have when you don't feel good? Soup."

"Which brings us to the nullification experiment. Given how they seem to know thoughts as much as writings, I believe the only way to, long term, keep information safe in any format is to create a room where They can't reach it. To dampen glimmer so they cannot get to it. Something very similar happened back in the Addington House back during a Christmas party. Minerva has also had success doing something similar to ward rooms for up to a day. So, we went to alter items I had made specifically for the task... replicas of the symbols Minerva draws. I asked Isabella to alter the physical makeup of the items to make them more like a battery to store power so it would last longer. And Minerva to then do... her warding on them." Up a hand lifts, a single finger extending as he glances to Isabella, "While I'm certain many things could have gone better, I think the item could have been better chose. An actual crucifix, perhaps, for warding away evil. Or even an air filter machine. Or perhaps a white noise machine as they are intended to create a sense of peace within a room. Lots of possibilities, and honestly, I can't settle on which one is the best... but I think starting with a relevant item to our intentions is the first mistake we need to crrect."

August listens to Isabella, then Yule, mulling over what they say as he works through his croissant and sips from his coffee. "Treants," he says on a nod, "is what it sounds like. And why not--already had drayds and sylvans." He looks down at his left hand, where a small, thin, white scar creases his palm, and makes a face.

He takes a second to put his thoughts in order. Then, "A couple of things that come to mind there. One is power level. You were thinking of it like a battery, and then, it exploded--that makes me think of, you know, Lithium Ion batteries, that sort of thing. That it was unstable. Too much packed into too little psychokinetic space. Or, that it was too volatile for what was containing it. That ability to null rooms, it seems that's an ability only the strongest people with the mind Art can do. So it's," he gestures vaguely with his coffee mug, "really potent, is what I'm getting at. The soup, on the other hand," he taps the plants for emphasis, "a lesser Spiritualist can heal most of what the soup could do. So it could be, the stronger the thing you want it to do, the harder it is to imbue it, or the more delicate a procedure it is." A tip of his head at Isabella, referencing her comment about the right process.

He bites his lip at the mention of Them. "There's always the risk of them noticing, but I suspect that's just the use of the power itself. Not sure what we can do about that, or if we can do anything about it. The benefit of imbuement, though, is you can give it to someone else, and using that doesn't seem to draw their attention. So, the people doing the imbuing are taking on the burden, on behalf of someone else."

He looks at Yule again, scratches his beard. "So, not just specific in what ability you're imbuing, but what you imbue as well. Beyond, though, what the Artist thinks of. Those were Minerva's symbols, but a person without the Art, they wouldn't think of those that way. So, like you said--an air purifier, or a religious icon might work better." A slight frown. "But, you were sensing the Art...on the item? How were you doing that?"

What Yule proposes to the group is fascinating and it shows on the young woman's features. For just a few moments, her earlier exhaustion is simply gone, her attention rapt and focused. It's only when both gentlemen are done speaking that she finally deigns to.

"That conclusion's sound," Isabella replies. "I'm thinking the skill level of the people doing the imbuement also. Certain talents are only accessible depending on the subject's strength in that particular talent like you said - using this instance as an example Minerva's one of the most powerful readers I know, and she's one of the only ones I know who can null a room. So the corresponding aspect required to complete the imbuement of that talent into an object might also require a person or persons of a similar level, but specializes in different aspects, to complete it." She reaches out for her notebook and scribbles a few notes on the pages. "So that's another thing to consider, I think. If we're listing the considerations here, they would be: one, the capacity of the object to carry such a powerful charge; two, the skill level required to apply the charge in the first place, if we continue to use the battery analogy; three, which aspects to use; and four, whether the object being imbued reflects the purpose of the charge, itself - like a cross to ward off evil."

She does her best to summarize their findings and present conclusions succinctly, and there's a glance at Yule for his confirmation and August's last query.

Yule listens to those assumptions and reiteration of the points, the expansions made, and the ME seems in agreement with them all, his head inclining towards Isabella at the glance cast his way. "That is my current theory, yes. And I would agree with that analogy," He offers up to August, his head wobbling back and fourth for a moment as he plays that out. "I suppose there are a lot of things that could have gone wrong, in the end. I think that when the two aspects that Isabella and Minerva performed interacted with each other? It created an effect that set into the whole room, or maybe just those of us in it. As if the item couldn't absorb all of it, or when it physically exploded, so too did the nullification affect us like radiation, lingering for a week or so before it all decayed away."

"Which then presents the question, what next. Minerva and I talked about that. We thought about the item. Getting a better, more representative item first makes sense. And then, that we try something less... powerful. A desire to just nullify the room for a week, for example, rather than have it permanently affecting the room. Start smaller, work our way up. Then," Yes. The man has ideas, if nothing else, so many experiments he wants to toy with, "There are a few pieces of lab equipment I'd like to try imbuing to make this work... easier in the future for more experimentation. And I want to watch Alexander do what he does, observe it with Spirit, to understand where we draw our power from, how it flows... almost like trying to map out the currents of electricity. As far as how I broke down the items?" This is harder to summarize, his brow furrowing, before he murmurs, "I can see, usually, the relative strength of others powers with Spirit. I applied the same... thought process to the item, but with all three elements. Touching each to observe and see how it interacted with the item. By far, for me? Mental is the most difficult to unravel."

August listens to Isabella's summary and nods. He gives Yule a wry, sidelong smile. "Mmmm, yeah, definitely agree about the 'starting smaller' bit." Is he thinking of his own potential disaster in the forest? Maybe. (Yes.) "So then it's something to keep in mind--if this stuff backfires, it's not just Them we're possibly stuck with. It's whatever our power does when it's on the fritz." Which, as the three of them discovered is a whole damned lot. And yet, "I was thinking of trying something more like the soup, see if I couldn't replicate it for plants." He opens his arms in a gesture. "Plenty of those to test with. And if it requires something suited to the purpose, I can think of a hundred things there, even just a batch of Hoagland's. Nothing potent, just, 'make a plant healthier' or maybe 'make it root rot resistant'. Simple stuff."

But now the interesting part. He tilts his head, listening to what Yule's described. "I never thought of it like that. That we could use that same ability to...see if something is on something. I've used it to watch people work, but not on things." His eyes rove around the room with possibility, back to Isabella and Yule. "So how did you actually place the Art into the item? Or is that pretty much the same way we ever use it on something--like if it's broken, and you're fixing it? That sort of...placement?" It's an odd thing, readjusting how he thinks about these abilities, but if he can sort out a way to heal people without needing to heal them, well, he'll take it.

He glances at Isabella. "You tried to do that yet?"

Eyes shift sideways when Yule mentions observing Alexander, lips parting before she halts, and then decides not to say what's on her mind. Yule knows about the man's present condition, she's not about to revisit it. She seems to find something very interesting in her coffee cup though, because for a span of a few heartbeats, she says nothing.

"Well, we ought to perfect the methodology first before we imbue expensive lab equipment with anything," is what Isabella says, smiling faintly at Yule. "And starting small seems like a good stepping stone for that considering...well, the two big recent failures." She gestures to herself and Yule, and then to August. "Maybe the backlash won't be so bad, also, if we try the little things first and besides, we haven't exactly figured out which aspects to use and that's going to depend on each item also, probably." Regarding the actual process of imbuement, though, she leaves to the medical examiner. After all, she's only really participated in this kind of experiment once.

August's last question to her draws her up in a start. "Healing, yes. Aspect detection, yes. I've made plants grow before when younger, but not...since I got back here. Mending? No. I've never tried that in my life." She shifts her weight uncomfortably on her feet. "I've been trying to focus on one thing at a time, with the Talent. Seeing what things I can reclaim after...my injury, first, before exploring the others."