Felix wasn't playing his usual morning welcome song. Instead, a melancholy tune drifted through the inn's halls, making the floorboards creak in minor keys and the windows cloud over despite the sunny day outside. Or rather, where there should have been a sunny day.

"This is definitely not where we were supposed to appear," Pip said, staring out at a familiar town square that most certainly wasn't their intended destination of the Misty Mountains. "We were headed north to help those frost giants with their summer vacation plans."

"The Square of Seven Fountains," Lady Corvina observed, consulting her ever-present ledger. "Notable for its excellent street musicians and... oh." She looked meaningfully at Felix, who was sitting by the window, his fingers moving over his lute strings with unusual heaviness.

"I used to play here," he said quietly. "Every spring festival. Before I started wandering." His music shifted to something that sounded like memories trying to become songs, and the inn's walls hummed in sympathy.

Gus entered with his morning flower arrangement, took one look at the scene outside, and sighed. "It's happening again."

"What's happening?" Pip asked, though she had a sinking feeling she knew. Her aunt's notebook had been writing itself all morning, filling pages with observations about emotional anchors and magical homesickness.

"The inn is responding to his longing," Gus explained, setting down flowers that had somehow arranged themselves into a pattern of musical notes. "It happened with the last bound musician too. Eventually, they all start missing their old lives, and the inn..." He gestured at the misplaced location.

"Tries to help," Lady Corvina finished. "Though its methods can be rather... literal."

As if to prove her point, the front door chimed, and a group of Felix's old musician friends walked in, instruments in hand.

"Felix? Is that you?" one called out. "We were just practicing for the spring festival and suddenly there was an inn where the baker's stall should be..."

Felix's fingers slipped on the strings, producing a chord that made all the inn's doors swing open and closed in agitation. "Marcus? Sarah? How are you all...?" He turned to Pip, panic rising in his eyes. "I didn't mean to... I wasn't trying to..."

"The inn knows what we need better than we do," Pip quoted from her aunt's notes, but the words felt hollow as she watched Felix struggle between joy at seeing his friends and the weight of his binding.

The visiting musicians settled in the lobby, naturally falling into their old performance formation. "Remember that harmony we could never quite get right?" Marcus asked, pulling out his fiddle. "The one about the wandering star?"

Before Felix could answer, the guest book began to glow, its pages turning rapidly as if searching for something. The golden threads that connected the signatures started humming a counter-melody to Felix's melancholy tune.

"Oh dear," Lady Corvina murmured. "I believe the inn is trying to harmonize past and present. This could get... complicated."

The inn was trying its best to accommodate both past and present, but the results were increasingly chaotic. The lobby kept shifting between its current appearance and how Felix remembered the town square looking during festivals. Windows showed different seasons simultaneously, and the weather outside cycled through years of memories in minutes.

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"Play with us," Sarah urged, her flute already joining Marcus's fiddle. "Just like old times."

Felix's fingers found the familiar melody automatically, but as he played, the inn's magic surged. Each note seemed to pull at reality, making the walls shimmer between here and there, now and then.

"The binding," Gus warned, watching cracks of golden light appear in the air. "It's trying to reconcile two different kinds of belonging."

Lady Corvina materialized next to Pip, her feathers ruffled with concern. "The guest book is overflowing with similar patterns. Musicians bound to places, places bound to memories, memories bound to music... but never all at once like this."

A letter appeared in a puff of cinnamon-scented smoke, falling onto Pip's aunt's notebook. The handwriting was familiar but hurried:

"Dearest Pip, When a wandering heart finds anchor, the point of binding matters less than the purpose of it. Remind him: music isn't meant to be kept in one square, one inn, or one moment. Love, Aunt Maple P.S. The inn knows this. Trust it."

As if responding to the letter, the guest book's pages began turning faster, each signature releasing snippets of music – songs from travelers who had found their way thanks to Felix's playing, moments of comfort his music had created, new melodies born from the blend of his wandering spirit and the inn's steady presence.

Felix's old melody wavered as he heard these echoes of his new purpose. His friends noticed the change.

"Your music's different now," Marcus said softly. "Bigger somehow. Like it's carrying more than just notes."

Sarah lowered her flute, listening to the inn's harmonies. "It's not just songs anymore, is it? It's... purpose."

"I miss playing with you," Felix admitted, his fingers finding a new progression that somehow encompassed both his old life and his new one. "Miss the square, the festivals, the simple joy of music for music's sake. But here..." He looked around at the inn, which settled slightly at his acknowledgment. "Here the music does more than entertain. It helps. It heals. It guides."

The inn's reality stabilized as Felix's music shifted, becoming something that honored his past while embracing his present. The walls returned to their proper form, but now they hummed with a deeper resonance, as if they had absorbed understanding along with memories.

"The wandering star," Felix said suddenly, looking at Marcus. "The harmony we could never get right? We were trying to capture something steady in motion." His fingers moved across the strings, playing the old song but with new understanding. "Like this inn. Like my music now."

His friends joined in, and for a moment the square of Seven Fountains and The Last Stop Inn existed in perfect harmony – not fighting for space, but sharing it. The guest book's pages settled on a new configuration, golden threads pulsing in time with the music.

"You'll visit?" Sarah asked as the song ended and the inn began to feel more like itself again. "When the inn wanders near?"

"Better yet," Pip suggested, "you'll play here sometimes? The inn seems to know when music is needed. And now it knows where to find you."

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Guest Book Entry: "The Musicians of Seven Fountains: Some anchors are meant to be shared. Some wanderings have purpose. Some songs need both square and inn to be complete."

New Verse of Felix's Inn Song: "Where past and present weave as one, And anchors drift with grace, The Last Stop Inn makes music flow Through time as well as space..."

Lady Corvina's Chronicle Entry: "Remarkable resolution of temporal-emotional displacement! First recorded instance of successful harmonization between pre-binding attachments and innate magical purpose. Note: Must expand research on musical anchoring techniques. Additional Note: Inn demonstrates unprecedented ability to maintain multiple locational resonances without spatial collapse."

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The inn settled back into its normal patterns, though now there was something new in its magic – an understanding that anchors could be both solid and flexible, that belonging could encompass both roots and wings.

"You know," Felix said later, playing a gentle evening melody that made the inn glow contentedly, "I always thought homesickness was about missing a place. But maybe it's really about finding where your music matters most."

Pip smiled, watching new words appear in her aunt's notebook: "The best anchors don't hold us still. They give us a reason to wander, and a purpose to return to."

Outside, the sun set on the Misty Mountains, where some frost giants were about to discover they needed an inn with a very particular musician.