[log - offscreen events/character hiatuses]

[enticements]

'MEMORY' (character hiatus - Lyra/Jade)

Jade found herself (appropriately dressed) in a huge caldera in the mountains that contained a frozen lake. There was no way to access the area under the lake, but she found a cave in the slope. The Snow Queen asked her to 'solve the puzzle' of this cave and explained that there would be something important to find at the end -- but she couldn't remember what.

The inner layout of the cave looked roughly like this, though more organic -- the nine 'squares' were iced-over chambers lit with the glow of an aurora, while the tunnels surrounding them were pitch-black. Something pale and indistinct (a ghost...?) was the only visible thing in those chambers; Jade couldn't get a handle on what it looked like/what it was.

It explained the rules of and played a game of Memory with her, essentially! It led her to a random chamber in which a tableau of objects was frozen in the ice and whisper 'find this' to her. The other eight chambers would turn into variations of the tableau, some with obvious differences, some with only subtle differences, one with no differences; her goal was to memorize the tableau as best as she could, navigate the tunnels to the other chambers, and find the one that was an exact match within a time limit (she called 'memory!' upon finding the one she thought was right and the ghost answered 'correct' or 'incorrect.') Notable tableaux included:

+ The Snow Queen (a noticeably less human, more elemental-looking version) descending on a trio of volcanoes.
+ A grove of orange trees laden with ripe fruit – the Snow Queen was almost invisible in this tableau, but was touching a single fruit with one fingertip, blackening it with frost.
+ A room carpeted with autumn leaves, some kicked up in the air as though by a wind and frozen there; the Snow Queen appeared to be dancing in the middle of them. this would have been the most difficult ‘memory’ tableau as . . . patterns of A BILLION LEAVES are hard to memorize . . . it’s very probable that Jade received her required win streak in a period where that tableau didn’t appear for a while.
+ A strange, desert at night, carpeted with scrub and populated by snakes and small lizards, with a shining city in the distance; the Snow Queen was again near-invisible here, but appeared to be headed for the city.

In general the theme of the tableaux showed the past form of the Snow Queen and the way winter was present in every season and area of the world, even if only a little.

It was not easy to 'win' a game of Memory, but she got better as she memorized tunnel layouts and learned what sorts of differences to look for, etc. When she won three games in a row, the ghost disappeared and left Jade a crystal compass with the arrow frozen at ‘North.’ The Snow Queen remained unable to identify exactly what it was or what it was for, but asked her to share it with anyone interested in helping her and/or Gerda -- hopefully more could be found later. The Snow Queen also looked a little stronger and healthier, because Jade’s willingness to play the game bolstered her strength somewhat.

Jade did not feel like she spent an overly long time in the cave, but when she returned to Aather the appropriate amount of IC time for her hiatus had passed; she was pretty cold and scraped up from walking in rocky tunnels in the dark, but largely unharmed

'???' (Persona drop - Jack Frost)

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