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Joy, of course, had become pretty accustomed to midnight park strolls since awakening. But then again, Elaine had been pretty accustomed to them beforehand. Still, the sleeping bag was, indeed, a new development - one that she knew, as she, too, arrived with a camping bag rolled up and slung from her shoulder.

She was a person who prized punctuality, and so Nis wasn't kept waiting. But her smile, when she arrived, was a little exhausted looking, even as it broke up into a little laugh.

"There's a bed," she said. "You can have it. I should have said something - I'm sorry. Brain's a little -" she made a scattering gesture "- lately."

She hefted the other, smaller bag that she carried in one hand. "I did bring food. And alcohol. And gummies. Can you imagine if we couldn't ******** get to sleep?" And then: "Ready?"

And so they did: arriving with the dark of night on the Garde - an unusual time, as she normally arrived with the clinging mist of early morning; she wondered, with a pang of guilt, whether the tardiness had been noticed.

The place was no longer one of desolate silence: crickets sang; the windchimes she'd placed early on seemed almost unnecessary as they rang in the bailey below but contributed a dreamlike peace. A nightingale even contributed music from somewhere. They arrived on top of the half-ruined curtain wall, overlooking the distant thread of the river to one side - silvered with moonlight - and the bailey on the other, the keep a ghostly shape rising out of the darkness before them, and the entire scene swallowed up on every distant side by the velvety darkness of trees, save where the water ran down to a sea which could not be seen or heard.

It was not the most majestic time to arrive: no brightly glittering scraps of long-ruined mosaics and ornaments to catch the eye, and show off what the Garde once was. But there was a peacefulness to it that suited their errand, and a sort of elegance to the banners flying over the keep that were outlined by a moon whose light was scattered by thin clouds, their gold threads made silver. Around them there was a flurry of activity - bats, too distant for their skittering noise to be heard. Joy's eyes lingered on them for a brief moment: new arrivals, of course.

And they were met, of course - whatever instinctive power allowed Gouvernail to be there when she arrived was not harmed by the strange hour. He was even more spectral by darkness than he was by daylight: tall, stern-faced, soldierly: looking like everything that Joy was not. His first formal half-bow was to Nis, of course, as a guest, but he then turned and reached out his ghostly hand towards Joy, who pretended to put her own into it and lifted it to his lips. It was not a gesture of fondness. There was, actually, something almost cold in its formality, and whereas his bow had seemed to mark Nis as an equal and a respected colleague, there was something othering in that pantomimed kiss, as if to shun her from the same category. But she smiled at him in a way that was almost uncertain - very unlike both Joy and Elaine - and seemed to have something of an apology in it as she introduced them to one another even as the greeting went on.

"She's the guest I mentioned - she's come to ask you some things. But we have some - some other work to take care of, too." She turned then to Nis, looking a little adrift as she dropped her hand back to her side. "Did you want to talk to him now, or in the morning?"

For some time - from the moment Joy's voice had broken the quiet - there had been an approaching racket like a pack of dogs from somewhere in the forests below. At least Nis knew what that was.

"You will have more opportunities to pet her than you can possibly want," said Joy, as she turned to lead them down into the bailey below. Gouvernail had responded to Nis's offer with only a polite and silent nod, and did not accompany them. They went by themselves down the stairs and into the broad courtyard: still partially overgrown, the river visible through the ruined arch of the collapsed gatehouse, which was blanketed in night-blooming flowers. Up close the general decay was more visible: the mosaic tiles under their feet that ran away into moss and weeds; the peeling plaster only bearing scraps of paint in the most sheltered areas. Here and there an outbuilding still stood, clinging to one of the walls; otherwise, there were a few traces on the ground of foundations for rooms that no longer existed at all. More of a ruin, then.

Pal was barrelling towards them through the gatehouse a moment later, her explosive baying accompanied by a round of zoomies which prevented her from even being able to have a proper reunion. Joy lifted her voice over the general din while the beast got her ecstatic energy out. "What shall we do? Do you want a tour? Do you wanna go straight to drinks? Do you want drinks and a tour? We can drop the sleeping bags in the - well, it's a chapel, but it's a bedroom now," she added, "but pity the dog first - she can't fit down the stairs."

And then, as Pal traded her barking for attempting to wriggle between both of them for petting, her many mouths panting in friendly joy, she added more drily: "Don't call him sir, he'll get a big head about it."

It was just as well that Pal was providing ample excuses for averting of eyes and keeping hands busy, as it gave Joy enough time to triumph over herself in the brief internal struggle that followed Nis's answer.

"He'll keep to himself," she said at last, giving the questing beast a thumping pat to the side that sent her off on another galloping run. She rose, dusting off her hands, and led Nis to a smaller set of stairs which led down from the bailey into some chamber below.

"Careful," she said, reaching the bottom first to reach out and click on a set of battery-powered string lights. She then deposited her bags on the floor, moving around the little room to turn on more lights, and then to pull a lighter from subspace and begin lighting candles as she spoke.

They were in a room that had clearly at one point been some sort of chapel: opulently appointed and made quite clean by dint of elbow grease, not magic. Windows near the ceiling must have been on a level with the ground above, spilling a few tendrils of greenery. This must have been a base of operations for her: the altar had been somewhat blasphemously made into a bed, and rows of baskets and bins on the low shelves where candles might once have been contained the kind of supplies you might want for camping. A stack of paperback books was arranged neatly by the makeshift bed, which certainly seemed more comfortable than a sleeping bag, but was - unfortunately - quite small. Getting even a vacuum packed mattress to travel with her had been an ordeal.

"I can show you around a little," she was saying. "Some of it may not be safe in the dark even with a flashlight. It's a shame you couldn't come by daylight, but maybe there'll be time tomorrow - there's a little boat, and it is so cute, and I haven't been able to row it because it's a little too big for one person. You can have the bed," she indicated it with a movement of her elbow as she replaced a candle into the stone hands of a kneeling saint, illuminating its peaceful and pensive face. "And don't bother trying to be polite, I'll fight you about it," she added playfully.

The carved seagulls that she had bought from Nis were hung here, just slightly above Joy's own eye level on one of the few pieces of unornamented wall.

"There's something I'd like to show you in particular," she said, "but it's a bit of a trek down into the dark. But it's relevant to why I brought you here." This, as she began to procure little red plastic cups, a couple of cans of White Claw, and a bottle of mid-tier wine from the grocery bag she'd brought. This was a bit of a sorority party approach to drinks, a little incongruous given the surroundings, excepting the cheap fairy lights. "What'll you have?" And then, bluntly: "I think I had more fun at Nis than you'll have here."

Well, after all the emotional dumping, anyway. There had been a beach, after all.

Tossing Nis a can to drink as they went, she did not follow suit with the shoes. She ran around barefoot as much as possible in her civilian life - as much as a job that frequently required having nice feet allowed - and had spent enough time wandering all over the Garde to feel entirely comfortable even in the flexible, open-toed boots of her uniform. She did not, as she had on Nis, immediately power down into something more comfortable, however. It would have taken thumbscrews and effort to get it out of her, but she was somehow inexplicably afraid to confront the dark room below without the guise of the Garde to somehow shield her.

She moved towards a panel of wall. The door within it was not concealed, exactly, so much as it was simply not immediately obvious due to all the ornamentation. Pushing it open, she pulled a flashlight out of one of the baskets and beckoned Nis to follow her down the steps on the other side, down into a narrow, dark corridor.

"There's a lot underground," she explained as they descended. Narrow windows near the ceiling let in moonlight, but eventually were swallowed up - first by overgrown foliage and then by brick and stone - as they wound their way down. A great deal of murals were painted even here, in this presumably private place, but she moved past them without explanation: scenes of hunting, scenes of romance - one seeming to be a metaphor for the other, in one direction or both - that were incongruously displaced by more and more violent imagery as they pursued the cold air below. "A lot of it's empty now - was empty even in Nail's time. Just a lot of space. A couple of old cellars, some store rooms, a couple of - I don't know - holding cells, of some sort. I expected to find torture racks or something, but I've never seen any down here. Maybe they preferred to just kill people quick," she added, unruffled, as if she was observing that the old Garde had preferred hardwood to carpeted floors. “Can’t blame them for that.”

They were, indeed, passing open arches through which cold air drafted where they were not hung with tapestries - mostly rotted, here and there pristine - and eventually they turned into a narrow staircase that spiraled down. The wall to one side was more lusciously painted than the others.

"It tells a story, but you have to read it backwards, coming up from below," she explained, swinging her beam over it demonstratively.

They paused at the bottom of the stairs, and Joy pointedly did not swing the light over the cavernous room that could be felt opening at their backs. It was cold, and there was a strange phantom light near the floor, emanating from some central pillar which she did not look at.

She drew her attention instead to the mural, which unfolded in the manner of a comic strip as they wound their way back up. It depicted, amidst a great deal of ornamentation, two separate scenes that seemed to be taking place across a great distance of ocean (fantastical whales, strange fish): some knight in his mail (green and brown in Earth finery) laying down to rest on one side of the sea while a lady in scarlet was readied for bed by a maid on the other. Both bound up their eyes in golden blindfolds against the sunlight of their respective landscapes, and both reclined, she on her opulent couch and he on his narrow bed.

Joy and Nis emerged, then, back at the top of the stairs, and Joy stepped aside to let Nis see the finale of the whole, which was splashed before them in a riot of color that seemed barely faded: the two of them together, unmasked, beneath a sky of eccentric stars and smiling moons, their hands clasped in joyful reunion.

She said what Gouvernail had said, when he had seen it: “United in dreaming of one another. I thought it was a metaphor. So did he,” she said. And then, flatly: “I don’t think that anymore.”

She pointed to a couple of golden swirls at the bottom of the piece, which could have been scrollwork, but which she now knew weren’t, and from subspace she procured one of the blindfolds, letting it unfurl from her fingers: lusciously embroidered on one side with fantastical figures, but simple gold-shot silk on the other.

“I’m not sure exactly how they work. But I know one works by itself. I just don’t know if the two work together.” She paused, her eyes still roaming over the two figures. “Well,” she said at last, sounding tired. “I hope you’re ready to sleep like s**t. I don’t think the sleep you get really counts, when you’re using them.”

She was already turning to lead her back towards the chapel, which, after the flashlight-illuminated darkness below, would seem like a haven of light and fresh air even by candlelight.

"I'm an idiot," she said as they went, "so I was stuck for a while. Almadel got me pointed in the right direction. You have to wear them inside out for them to work - dream side in; I guess that makes sense - and I guess we just, you know -" she made a vague movement of her hand, the beam bouncing off the ornamented walls "- go to sleep and see what happens. I've been able to sort of - kind of control where I end up, but it's not foolproof. I don't know if I have to do it or if you can too. So I'm not going to try, to see what happens. You just - try and think real hard about where you wanna be when you fall asleep." This, with a measure of discomfort for not having more concrete instructions. "I won't think of anything, if I can help it, and we'll see what happens."

She hesitated. "It's not perfect. Sometimes I come here. Sometimes I go back home - or to a beach I've been to - but it's always a little wrong, the way it is in a dream. But the better I know it, the clearer it is. I think they sort of - paint out of the palette that's in your memories. You know? But it's never been scary. I was afraid it would be a nightmare, a few times. But I think if you just decide to wake up - poof - you do."

When they emerged back into the cheerful light of the chapel, which looked positively homey after everything below, she seemed to relax slightly, abruptly dropping her powered guise and revealing that she was already dressed for bed, her hair piled up on top of her head and wearing something slinky, in the same unselfconscious way she'd gotten undressed and put on a bikini in front of her.

"Let's have those gummies," she said, "and try to knock ourselves out quick. And you will take the bed," she added, with a return of stern playfulness. "It's just logistics, you know? I haven't slept well in a week, so I'll have an easier time passing out in a sleeping bag."

She was only given a moment to consider what was beautiful and what was correct in her surroundings.

The approaching footsteps were soft, and seemed to come almost from nowhere: Joy arriving from where there was nowhere to arrive, standing in her bare feet, her hair - which had been piled into a bun back at the Garden - now gathered loosely over her shoulder as she ran her hands through it. Incongruously, she was wearing red lipstick on her otherwise-bare face.

She looked, first, silently over the dream landscape: the stars in the roof, the strange touches, the movement of silks and water.

Only then did she at last turn to Nis where she stood, and there was an exhausted triumph in her eyes.

"If we remember this when we wake up," she said, "it works."

And she laughed a strange, tired laugh, reaching out a hand as she approached to experimentally touch her friend's shoulder, her hand solid, real. "Is this like it was? Mostly," she added, casting her eyes at the lamp.