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Earendil nodded and picked up the cinnamon bun that he had been eying, and put it on top of the counter, motioning for Lin and Miyuki to do the same.

"How much?" he asked the boy behind the counter again.

As he was paying for everything, the door of the shop opened again and a (by now) very familiar woman stepped inside and took a long, slow breath through her nose, taking in the aroma. It looked like Iorlas, though she was acting strangely again. She didn't seem to see Earendil, Lin and their family, but instead she picked a cream puff from one of the nearby shelves and took a bite of it without hesitating.

The boy behind the counter spotted Iorlas eating the puff, and instantly a look of great annoyance crossed his face.

"Hey," he called to her. "You need to pay for that before you eat it!"

A baby grabbing was one thing, but a grown woman? That was too much for him to handle - especially when it was two customers in a row.

The woman looked down at Miyuki and arched one eyebrow, then looked over her shoulder at the shopkeeper. For a moment she looked thoughtful, but then she rolled her eyes and put the half-eaten puff back on the shelf - after taking one more bite of it. "If that's how it is," she said with a shrug, licking some cream off her fingers. She grinned down at Miyuki. "Guess I'm done here, then."

She headed for the door, and Earendil blinked, completely shocked. If he hadn't seen it for himself, he would never have believed that this was the same woman they had been traveling with ...

"I have to agree, this isn't like you," Earendil spoke up, though with his hands full with Andarien and his coin pouch, he couldn't do anything beyond that.

The woman laughed. "Ah, yes, I'd forgotten. Catch me when I'm nice again, maybe I'll explain." She flipped her skirt out of Miyuki's hands and vanished out the door.

"HEY!" the boy behind the counter shouted, his face reddening with anger. He ran around the end of the counter to chase after her.

Earendil looked at Lin, completely incredulous. How could that possibly have been the woman they had been traveling with for the past week? Whom they had come to know in their time in Tavari?

Earendil nodded, his jaw clenched as he tried to somehow rationalize what was going on. It just didn't seem right, none of it - it didn't make any sense!

"She's changed her personality completely," he said quietly. "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes ..."

Very quickly, the shopkeeper was back, his eyes blazing with fury.

"Do you know that woman?" he demanded, looking at the four who had remained.

"We thought we did," Earendil muttered under his breath.

The boy looked from Earendil to Lin and back. "I'm afraid I don't understand," he said shortly. "You thought you did, you're not sure, you do but you don't?"

Earendil sighed. "For all appearances, she seems to be one of our travel partners," he explained, "but none of us have ever seen her like this before - it's as if this was a completely different person. Trust me," he added, his own tone a bit angry now, "we will look into this and find out what's going on. We thought we could trust this person, but I think we're going to have to find out what's going on first."

He looked at the half-eaten puff, which was still on the shelf. "Let us pay for that, at least. How much?"

The boy blew out his cheeks. "Two bronze."

"Thank you," the boy said, taking the coins from Lin. "And I appreciate if you would request to your ... friend ... that she not return to our shop," he added, somewhat coldly.

"I understand," Earendil nodded, picking up Andarien again. "We'll be sure to do that."

He nodded for Lin to take Miyuki, then headed towards the door.

Earendil sighed heavily, anger, confusion and frustration all mixed in his expression.

"Well," he said wearily, "I suppose we have two choices ... we could continue as we were, or we could look for Iorlas and ask her what in the world is going on. The manuscript shopkeeper in Tavari said that she'd done something similar there as well, and we couldn't believe it because she seemed like such a sweet person ... and all along our trip here, I thought the same, that she's a wonderful person ... but after what we just witnessed ..."

If that was the real Iorlas, he couldn't let her keep traveling with them, that was just bad news waiting to happen - and he didn't want influences like that around Miyuki and Andarien.