By next morning, all of them had rested enough to get back on their feet. The previous day had passed by slowly, mostly in rest and recovery.

Mhyl was the first one awake, having done nothing the day before but eat and rest. She was also the one least aware about what had been going on since she had gotten injured. The other three were still fast asleep, and she suspected Zyuixqs and Chyurae were also still sleeping. This did limit the number of people she could effectively communicate with, but she still had options. Also, she had been studying hard to learn her Izhaethyx.

The first person she found was Ihzyhur, someone she's had very little experience working with. Beyond what was implied by being Thanrie's brother, such as him being a prince, she knew very little about him. "Oh, good morning Mhyl." Ihzyhur greeted her in the morning with words she could faintly recognize. She tried to repeat them. "Oh, good morning Ihzyhur." Mhyl may not have known that the entire statement might not have been required. "Ah, you're Izhaethyx is getting much better, bravo!" Ihzyhur then said some things she hardly understood. Izhaethyx and something that sounded like good stuff. Was it a compliment, or him saying he thought she could do better?

As he noticed Mhyl was confused at his much more complicated statement, he made another effort. "Good job!" Ihzyhur was much clearer in this case, just something good and positive with effort, so clearly Mhyl was being complimented. She returned him a light smile, still not exactly sure what words would be best to give him thanks. As this was making him feel rather awkward, he took her to go see Aelyiq and the wardens.

"Ah, Mhyl, glad to see you back on your feet. You're feeling much better now?" Having Aelyiq speak to her in Elaethyx still made things much easier. "Yes I am, thank you. How is everything else doing? From what I can gather, I was out for some time, and I don't really know how everything went while I've been recovering." "Ah, yes. I guess your friends are still sleeping, and most of the people around here wouldn't offer you much in the way of details you would find easy to understand." Mhyl's trouble getting information was easily apparent to Aelyiq, who had been rather busy doing translations for the Wardens. There really were so few elves around here.

"Xyithy and Ehryinae were left to finish the rest of the task without much informed support, but they at least had stocks of things considered valuable and documents describing what was considered important. They had spent the days since ensuring that everything needed had made it back safely. The one they have organizing everything for the plans you girls had made.. that guy has been keeping busy trying to sort though everything in the meanwhile." Aelyiq was talking about the smith. A lot had been underway it seemed like.

"From what I heard, the two groups were actually still out there, though this time to store stuff we decided we didn't want. Seems without guidance, there was a lot of room for error. Rhyde had decided that stuff we can't use shouldn't just stay here, because we wouldn't have space. We could try hiding it, but that could have less informed people fall upon the stuff and cause potential dangers, especially since Rhyde himself couldn't figure out what the stuff did. So instead, he had them take the stuff back to the one place we know it could keep doing it's thing in. That way too, if we find need for it, we know where to find it." Aelyiq made it sound like everyone's had it hard since the four of them couldn't actually do their job. Mhyl was starting to feel depressed about how much trouble it had caused, having herself being taken out like that.

That reminded her of the terrifying incident. Crossing over the bubbling water, only to be thrown into it. It had only risen to make her fear of water even more pronounced. She had been worrying she would honestly drown, and that time she almost did. She didn't remember anything that happened after that, but it seems she had been saved at least.

Thanrie suddenly showed up. "Oh, I had a feeling I would find you here." Thanrie then switched from English to Izhaethyx. "Sorry, I've came here looking for Mhyl. Can I talk with her?" Thanrie got a nod for her question from Aelyiq, while Mhyl stepped out of the room with Thanrie. "Everything is okay I hope?" "Actually, that's my question of you. You at least sound well enough, but you still seem to be in a daze. At least you're doing much better than the other two." Mhyl blinked at Thanrie's statement, her expression became one of concern. She wasn't aware that something was wrong with the others.

"No, not like that. I mean, you just had a life-threatening accident. Remember the last time someone had a life-threatening accident? Qheria is back at it again, still blaming herself. Lwyn.. I'm not even sure what happened with her. She's not even wanting to talk about it. After you were injured and I met up with your group, she looked stressed but otherwise normal.. for the situation. But when I got back with Qheria, she had fainted. The place you guys were in was even a lot cooler, she shouldn't have fainted from the heat. Nor.. did it seem related to anything like that. Something in her .. it seemed like she had just broken something in her mind. She's not been herself since." Thanrie herself had been worried the entire time, and had tried to lend a hand, but for how much she seemed good at standing out in even the worst of times.. nothing.

The whole thing had been rough for Thanrie, feeling way out of her element. Trying to lead, because their leader couldn't. Trying to tend for the health of their healer. Trying to bring back the positive esteem of the source of their team morale. Mhyl herself was starting to notice just how worn down Thanrie had become over the past days, she couldn't keep this up. "So, how are you doing anyway? Hopefully feeling better.. How did it feel for you to be so near to death, too?" Thanrie was visibly relating it to her own experiences.

"Was it that bad for me? I don't know, drowning was terrifying, but breathing is something you either fix quickly or you don't." "Oh, so you weren't aware. Most of your injuries weren't just because you breathed water. Chyurae himself was really injured too, and it seems the guy is a really good swimmer. He was burned, scalding water. You inhaled scalding water." Mhyl was starting to clue into what Thanrie was implying. She couldn't remember the water being hot, only terrifying. She did lose consciousness very quickly though, probably because of the heat. Scalding her lungs with high temperatures, that would have been.. really bad. The water bubbling, it was boiling! Wait, with high temperatures cooking her from the inside, she should have died long before anyone could have saved her.

Thanrie watched the logic spin upon her expression, as she gauged her time to continue. "Thankfully, your burns were much less serious than even Chyurae's. Something had kept you safe from some of the heat and burns, even though you were still heavily injured. I guess you could say we were just lucky to be blessed by a miracle." Thanrie's inclusion of the term 'miracle' had a quick impact from her. The same term they had used for Thanrie's own recovery. So it had happened again, this time to herself. But what could...

"Lwyn. She had been found fainted beside you when we arrived, much like how Lwyn always said you weren't conscious when you tended me. If we're still thinking about gift-giving miracles, she's the best candidate this time. However, what has me worried is how unlucky we've been getting too. Qheria is blaiming herself for this, but I honestly think it's stupid. During my accident, the odds of things happening were very low, but it was something that could have been at least avoided. This time, the odds were not just very low, predicting it would have probably been asking too much of Yuxzn." Thanrie went quiet at this point, still very worried about Qheria.

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Mhyl understood Thanrie's concerns, Qheria really kept taking these kinds of things way too hard. Lwyn though, being in about the same state, that wasn't expected at all. Usually, Lwyn was blossoming with positivity. She also thought back to when she was treating Thanrie, and was then suspect of using the gift unknowingly. She had felt tired, drained, but still driven. So that wasn't the culprit either. Something else had affected Lwyn, something they had to figure out so she could be helped.

Mhyl lead the way back. She was fairly certain that if the other two were awake, given this news, neither of them would make it known. Sure enough, they arrived to find two walking zombies. Qheria was stressing over paperwork, documentation of the stuff that was being returned at that moment. Lwyn was only getting herself ready for the day, going through routines without any measure of excitement. Since Mhyl was up, Lwyn had to keep going with other stuff now, regardless of how she felt.

Mhyl hardly ever got upset. However, when she was upset..

Mhyl stormed into the room in a fury. "Okay, both of you, stop that. Qheria, you are blowing this whole thing way out of proportion, wholesale. When something goes wrong in the world, it isn't always your fault. Unless you plan to start also taking credit for every little good thing that keeps happening, you're being rather one-sided here. I got hurt, yes. I even hear I could have died. I also know there was zero you could have done about it. The fact you had shown up and made sure I made it safely, THAT was you doing the responsible leader thing. There is no way you could have predicted what happened, and there wasn't anything you could have done to avoid it. The fact you are taking personal offense to what is effectively my own free will is seriously insulting." Mhyl's statement put Qheria into a bit of a shock. Qheria didn't expect to be scolded, to be blamed, for blaming and scolding herself.

"And you. Why are you not even sharing what is going on? This had better not be another 'I'm just a half-elf' thing, or any other kind of self-blame, because I'm not in the mood for it. You're our important friend, what happens to you is important to all of us, you matter deeply to us. So if something is going bad, and if you are having problems, share with us. Stop just only helping us, let us help you too. Friendship isn't a one-way transaction. Please, please, do me the favour of letting me help you too, Lwyn. Please!" Mhyl's statements were putting her into tears, but she wasn't even done with this. Lwyn herself had frozen, completely torn between fear of being a burden and a pressing need to help as requested.

To Thanrie's completely surprise, Mhyl turned on her too. "Thanrie, even you. You're not even innocent here either. That's the second time I've heard you shriek in fear, and yet you've not once even cared to put your heart out and share your feelings on the matter. The Thanrie we know is fearless, but maybe only because that's all that you care to share with us. We've seen there are still things that trouble you. You and I had talked about my fear of the water off by the river, and yet you still feel that no one can help you with your own fears. Stop that too, please." Mhyl sat down on her bed at this point, fairly worn out by her outburst and shouting.

"I know, there are things I should stop too. I keep worrying that there is so little I can do, and worry about every little thing so much because I feel that I can't do anything. I worry about my inability to talk with most people, inability to fight like any of you can, how hard it feels like it is to just keep up with everyone. I worry that I just slow everyone down, and wonder if things would just be better if I wasn't even here in the way at all. And yet, the first time I'm suddenly out of commission, everyone falls to pieces. Qheria can't even keep her head on straight, Lwyn can't even keep up her usual smiles and cheer, and Thanrie breaks down completely. All of us need to stop it." Mhyl, having even been vocally critical of her own self-deprecation, was done.

Thanrie, still surprised that Mhyl was so worried about such a thing, was the first to find her voice. "Yeah, I guess I never did bring it up. I came to terms with it, but still felt ashamed of it. Scary things, the things that crawl in the shadows, that stuff is terrifying. I.. probably scare easier than everyone here, considering how everyone else reacted. But this wasn't how things were back on earth, the me from there loved horror movies.. was never terrified of it. Being so scared of it here.. it never made sense to me." Thanrie opened up to her fears, finally talking about them.

Mhyl gave Thanrie a hug. "Keep in mind, none of us are the people we remember from that world, no matter how much we've let it flood all of our personalities. Technically, we aren't even completely the people from this world either, that impact on our personalities is still something that matters too. Neglecting either side of ourselves is only going to make things harder."

Lwyn started to mumble at this point, before finding her voice on the second try. "I.. I'm sorry but I still find it hard to accept either side of myself. Half of myself is a stranger, the other half is.. a freak. Having no memories of my self from earth, it makes it really hard to feel like I matter at all, because all I can feel is that being a half-elf is garbage. I know, that's exactly what you didn't want to hear, but you did say we were supposed to share this stuff. When Thanrie showed up earlier, I was still trying to help Mhyl, but I felt useless, because I'm not good at the kinds of things Mhyl does. I'm nothing as good as Mhyl, she's amazing. If it was me who had sunk into the water, and you who had to care for me, you would have done much better, because you are a much better person. Those ideas flooded me at the time." Lwyn went silent for a moment, recalling the scenario in detail.

"When Thanrie left, Ehryinae had said she was going to tend to the gate. But that left me with everyone suffering, and her embers fighting to keep going. Ehryinae told me that I was in charge. Me? How in the world could I be in charge, I didn't even know what I was doing. I was struggling to keep up to everything, struggling to hold on, it was too much. I remember the blood rushing to my head, and then... waking up. Qheria, I have no idea how you do it. Being a leader like you are is absolutely amazing. I'm just rushing to keep fitting in peoples shadows while I try to hold on to their coattails. I... I know I'm pretty hopeless really, and maybe it's not only because I'm a half-elf. I'm sorry." Lwyn herself got a hug from Mhyl when she was finished.

"I don't get where all of you get so much confidence in my leadership. I just keep screwing up. Splitting the team was a horrible decision, as it made things very imbalanced. Mhyl had to suffer the consequence of my poor decision, and from that everyone else started to suffer too. Just because I started to do what was proper after things started to fall apart doesn't justify my own mistakes." "Qheria, maybe you missed the part about suffocating steam, but keeping the team together was not a better decision. If all of us had been stuck in that steam-bath situation, things would have probably only gotten more out of control. The steam in the air would have made it harder to keep everything steady, we probably would have lost even more people to the water. I don't know, I didn't get to see it happen. I'm still way certain that things would have been worse if you had made any other decision." Qheria was still being stubbornly doubtful of Thanrie's opinion, which was making Thanrie also upset.

"Okay, look. Lwyn, until you reached the water, were you having any real exceptional problem keeping them back? According to Ehryinae, they had everything under control." Thanrie didn't even give Lwyn time to answer. "Their little team did perfectly fine for most of that trip, just as our own did. They just had one specific situation where things went bad. In that one situation, the chances of predicting it.. were stupidly low. Our ability to counter it at all, stupidly low. Just because we keep getting blessed with good luck doesn't mean we should start feeling uptight about finding the other side of luck step on us. If we get stepped on out of the blue like that, it's not our fault. Unless someone here is actually knowingly carrying a cursed charm, no one is to blame for our bad luck. The only thing that matters is how we work with it." Thanrie was finally getting some steam going for her own input. Mhyl was feeling proud of her.

"If we then say what matters with bad luck is how we react to it, we had a great start. Save Mhyl, bring her home. Great! That's how to deal with bad luck. Then having it drag people through the gutter as they dwell on things beyond their control, not so great. So if we're F~~~ing done stabbing ourselves in the feet repeatedly while blaming ourselves because it F~~~ing hurts to stab ourselves in the feet, maybe it's time we actually F~~~ing moved on and did something F~~~ing useful finally, right?" And that would be Thanrie back to normal. Mhyl nodded satisfactorily, a job well done.

Qheria finally accepted this, and herself got a hug from Mhyl. Having recovered everyone from their mental anguish, Mhyl convinced everyone that their next goal was breakfast.