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Pendour was trying her hardest to like the rain. When she'd decided to come out, powered, and see what was going on in the city despite the drops dripping down her windows, she'd been thinking back to summers, when she'd run outside in those afternoon thunderstorms with her mouth open to the sky and her bare feet ankle-deep in puddles. She'd felt joy deep in her bones.

There were some things to love about this rain, too. It still made a very satisfying pitter-patter on the ground, and it left the sidewalks with even more of a sheen than normal, probably because of the ice. However, she'd very badly miscalculated the temperature, and at the moment her bones were mostly just cold as cold.

She was about to just call it a night and turn back when she felt something in the distance. Something warm. Well, it wasn't something true-warm, but it was something Order-warm, and Order-bright, too, and that was good enough for her, and she thought from just how it felt that it might even be another knight.

She liked that. She did like meeting people, and so she kept on, until it felt even closer and warmer, and when she was close enough, she gently called out a "Hello?"

Pendour's vision had a nasty tendency to play tricks on her, and the rain wasn't helping at all with letting her see things clearly. She spent a good five seconds squinting into the distance as she kept walking. She thought she saw someone, but it was hard to tell. Then she heard the voice call back out to her, and she let out a breath.

Part of her wanted to run to him. Part of her was hoping for some kind of friendly face in all this miserable weather that badly, but she didn't want to risk slipping on any ice or tripping on her long skirt if it somehow ended up tangled in her heels. She kept up her careful pace, and before too long that figure started to look more and more like a human.

The blue stood out to her, even from a distance, but now she was starting to make out some of the details, and the corners of her lips started to turn up into a smile. She reached up to pull a few strands of rain-soaked hair out of her face, just to double check that she was seeing things right, but when she looked again, the scale patterns on his clothes and the trident symbols on his boots were still there. He was a page, and not just that.

"Neptune," she murmured, soft as soft, and then she said it louder as her smile grew bigger and bigger. "Neptune!" She grabbed the symbols hanging from the loose strand of pearls at her waist, and she tilted them towards him so he could see. "You're like me. Hello," she said, voice going almost reverent again. She'd seen a few Neptune knights in passing, but she'd never really had a chance to talk to them. It was surreal.

Pendour wasn't so distracted that she didn't notice him staring. It seemed that he was looking more at her dress than the eye, which was fine. She understood. She liked getting glimpses of it in sore windows when she got the chance. She just wasn't quite sure how o react, so she just stood there for a few seconds, blinking and turning her bad eye away out of instinct. She might have been looking him a little in turn. His hair was a nice color, she decided.

When he introduced himself, seemed to focus again and she gave a little nod. "Oh, I'm Pendour," she said. "Um, a squire? It's nice as nice to meet you." She gave a little bow in turn, trying to follow his lead but it didn't feel like quite enough, so she stepped forwards, reaching out a hand for a shake.

The points of her high heels hit one of the thin patches of ice that the freezing rain had left all across the city. She slipped first, just a little, and reached her arms out to steady herself, but then she heard a crack.

It was loud as loud, like a lake breaking open instead of sidewalk ice. She looked up a Sumner for a second, brows knit, eyes wide as wide, and then the ice went out completely.

She fell down and down, vanishing beneath the pavement.

Someone listening closely enough could hear a splash among the sounds of ice and rain, but it was soft as soft. It was the sound of a champion diver, or of a mermaid vanishing under the waves.

It was cold. It was dark. It was wet and wet and wet. Pendour's muscles froze.

She did not feel like a mermaid. Pendour did not feel much like anything at all. For a moment, she didn't even recognize the fact that she was underwater. Her skin prickled with a strange, icy burn. She couldn't see. She couldn't see.

She couldn't see anything.

If there had been air, she would have whimpered, or maybe she would have screamed. That was about the moment when she started to realize what had happened, and at that point she didn't really wonder about how. Floating there, slowly sinking, she thought a little about why. She thought about Irving and the bones at the bottom of her wonder and some quote she'd read once about how drowning was the best death.She didn't think the person who had written that had ever been in water this cold.

She kicked at her shoes until the pearl straps slipped off, and then she started to kick at the water instead. It wasn't an easy thing. Her gown, for all of the Neptune magic in it was heavy, but the panic shifted from freeze to flee and she started moving upward in an awkward and flailing and half-frozen-desperate kind of way. She started to see light, and a bit of the panic subsided. She reached up, feeling for some kind of edge, for something, anything.

She found a hand.

The first breath of air was delicious.

The relief became less and less after that. Between the magical strength of Sumner and herself, it was easy enough to climb out of the hole, but it became clear as clear very quickly that cold air when you were very wet wasn't much better than cold water. It wasn't much better at all. Pendour's feet were so numb and prickly that even once she was standing, she couldn't tell if she was on solid ground or not, only that each step felt like she was stepping on a bed of sharpened icicles.

She didn't let go of Sumner's hand, and she stepped close to him, not thinking at all about how they had just met but only that he was the warmest thing around. "Not hurt," she managed. "I'm c-cold." She squeezed her eyes shut and shimmered for a moment, and then her soaked gown and bare feet were replaced by a fuzzy sweater and boots. That was better. Still not perfect, but better.

She looked back at the place that she'd just fallen through, but she couldn't make out any hole now. "That was- Hmm." She had a vague idea, but mostly that just didn't make sense at all.

Sadie's brows knit a little more when she found herself being draped in a coat. "Oh, no," she said, her voice a whisper, even softer than usual. She looked at the man who had just been a Page. "I don't want you to be cold, either." Her heart wasn't so into protesting it, though, because to be honest her hair was still wet down her back, and she pulled the coat a little bit tighter around herself.

"Inside sounds better. We can wait out this awful rain." Sadie turned her little half-frown to the sky, feeling frustrated that her attempts to love the weather had led to all this. "Your place is okay."

Then she looked back down to the pavement. It had a bit of a glimmer to it, but she was having a hard time telling water from ice, let alone shadows from bottomless pits. "Do you think you can lead the way? I don't know if there's more, but this is just the kind of thing that I, um," she paused while her cheeks went a bit hot and she let out a small but frustrated huff, "Have a lot of trouble seeing."

Unlike any mysteriously deep puddles, Sadie could see the apartment complex as well as anything.

"Oh, that's not too far," she said, pulling the coat even tighter around herself with no apologies this time. Her new layers were helping a little bit, but she was still more than ready to get inside and get away from all this. "It's closer than my place for sure."

She looked back over to him, a soft smile finding its way through all the worry on her face. "Thank you," she said.

Then she followed him towards the warmth.