When Tate got home from work, she flopped down on her bed like it had done something to personally offend her. This had the effect of making a loud, squealing noise with the springs, as well as shoving her face in a thick parchment letter. It had arrived a good time ago, around the time she'd actually acquired her signet, but she'd never read it. Apparently someone (something) had decided that she needed to have a good look at who the dipshit who wrote on parchment had to say. She dug her thumbnail under the seal, cracking it upwards. The paper caught on her fingertip--the papercut ensuing was rather big, and bleedy, but she decided it could wait and pressed it against the thigh of her jeans. Unfolding the parchment, she ran her gaze over the rushed cursive, felt the indentations in the paper for a moment and then leaned slowly back against the headboard of her bed.

She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but it wasn't this:

Avalon Page.

When you are ready to ascend to a higher plane, you need only to return home.

It seemed like a lot of work to deliver this paper for all of--she paused, collecting herself for a moment so she could count--eighteen words. Tate flipped the paper over, rubbed her fingers over the bumps again, and then back to the front. She didn't know who'd sent it. There was no signature, just a seal. She checked it against her own signet ring, and frowned. They were exactly the same, which meant it was another Avalon Page, right? It could have been Nimue, but she didn't think that a message would keep that long. Parchment from ages ago had to be specially treated, didn't it?

She considered getting the paper carbon-dated, and decided that that course of action was both prohibitively expensive and also stupid. There weren't many places that featured Avalon's sigil, or even Earth's sigil. When would it have come from, anyway? Probably whenever there'd last been an Avalon. Which meant the sender had to be Nimue, but Nimue could've said this to her--unless Nimue hadn't known she'd stay behind as a ghost. Impression. Thing. Which told her a little more about the situation at hand, she supposed. Nimue hadn't known what was going to happen to her, no matter the all-knowing veneer she had pretended to have. As if Tate would ever not be unready to know anything! She could absorb any knowledge she wanted, she thought sourly, and she rubbed the back of her neck.

It didn't even seem to take her much time to decide to shift into Avalon Page; she held her apple in front of her, and sighed. Let's see what all this is about. "I pledge my life and loyalty to Earth, and to Avalon. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine."

There was an unsettling yank behind her navel, and then Avalon was gone.
Continued here
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