It felt nice to have some kind of purpose, some kind of clear goal to her wanderings in the rain. Lately, Temperance managed to find herself in this version of Ashdown when she needed time to think, or when she didn't want time to think and was presented with the opportunity anyway. It was awful, to be alone with no one but the rain and her own thoughts. That was all she did: think. About herself, and how she'd failed, and how she didn't know how to become better, more, greater than the sum of her individual parts and middling skills. It was ridiculous; a spiraling kind of self-loathing that sucked her deeper every day. Pointless. Not enough, the wet, rustling leaves said; not enough sang the rain; never enough whispered the wind in her blonde hair. She drew back her foot to kick at a slick rock, the surface of it glistening invitingly in the rain, but, at the last moment, she remembered her unshod state and sighed. The rock remained undisturbed. It was a wonder her feet weren't already cut open and bleeding. They were filthy, though. The muddy ground squished up between her toes and over, staining her skin a dingy brown. Temperance wondered how the ecosystem managed to thrive under such wetness. Magic, she guessed. It always came down to magic. Maybe, she thought fancifully, if she just stayed here long enough, she'd soak up some of it. Osmosis.

She didn't feel a pressing pull to help the tiny squirrels (beyond the fact that they were as adorable as anything she had ever seen), but she'd promised. Cute things deserved to be protected, helped. Perhaps on another day, Temperance might have wondered at her disconnect, but not today. Exhaustion and failure weighed heavily on her, causing her shoulders to droop unless she actively squared them up, causing her vision to shimmer at the edges, her mind to wander down paths she normally kept it from. But despite this, she had promised. So, even as her feet grew tired, even when she had to dig a splinter out of her heel, Temperance still walked. The small, sharp pain in her heel cut through her personal fog quite nicely, and she turned slightly, angling for the shore line. There was no time for aimless wanderings.

Where the water turns red... the only things she had been able to think of were a high-handed metaphor for a girl getting her first menses (highly unlikely - and why would magical woodland animals care about that?), and the coastline. There was a red tide in the Atlantic, it hadn't touched Ashdown that she remembered, but it killed the sea-life in other places and made the blue waves a kind of dingy red. The bloom of toxic red dinoflagellates. It striated water, blue and red, like blood diffusing from underneath, floating up to coast on the surface as a stained reminder of past violence. Her hands clenched briefly, and her fingers rubbed at each other like humming birds' wings. Temperance could feel the movement loosen pills of dirt from her skin. They sloughed off in small bits; she scrubbed her hands across her shorts futilely. It made her feel no cleaner. Focus, she told herself, and took a deep, mist-tinged breath, letting the cool air sharpen the things around her. Temperance could not remember how long she had walked, the gritty sand sliding beneath her feet, even when wet-packed it was treacherous and full of sharp stones.

Then she noticed it: the faint sound of cicadas rubbing bits together - was it their wings or appendages that made the noise? It didn't matter. Temperance shoved wet hair out of her face and looked out across the bay. Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky in morning, sailors take warning - wasn't that the old saying? But everything here on this shore looked and felt grey. Maybe it was only her who was grey and her vision just tinged all else. Clouds dimpled lazily across the sky, knowing their place here. Waves crested and quieted down to just lap delicately at the shore as they should. It made her uneasy, as though the waves would leap up, wash her away, drag her down. A hand stole up to her throat as she stared out unblinking, eyes wide and slightly panicked. Finally, she blinked. She... she didn't have time for this. With a stumbling step, she moved onward. Temperance's breath caught in a hiss as her toes collided with a bit of broken bottle as she moved. Missed the edge, luckily - no red footsteps would mark her path and sand was hard to get out of a wound She moved towards the sound, but it was difficult to tell exactly where it was loudest. Temperance had never been good at games requiring multi-directional sound. Jogging along the shore, she twisted her head back and forth. The noise increased exponentially; the sound of cicadas filled her ears, ringing inside her head, pushing out all thought. It wasn't all bad, she tried to think above the din, but the thought faltered, half-finished, and was lost as she skirted the curve of a large rock.

She kept moving and the sound grew fainter. Like some annoying game of hot and cold, she moved back and forth, trying to pinpoint the noise. It seemed loudest near the rock, as though the stone contained a thousand fossilized cicadas just now waking, itching to feel the freedom of flight again. If the entire stone was the emblem thing, Temperance was never ever going to be able to lug it back. A shield, a shield... or something close to that shape. Huffing, she heaved herself up onto the rock, intending to stretch her long, gangling body over it to get a better view. Something bit into her palm. Temperance jerked back awkwardly, half-sliding off of the rock, expecting some sort of alternate Ashdown bug. But there was nothing, just the rock being... rather grey. Peering closer, her long fingers touched it experimentally. There was something there. In a depression of the rock, a perfect depression, lay an odd medallion of some sort. Temperance frowned, digging at it. That could be the kind of symbol Per had shown her. It was hard to think past the sound of cicadas, but her hand worked and, finally, she pried it free. It lay in her palm, about the size of a quarter. It was round but had too raised bars on the back and some sort of shield on the front. If this wasn't it, she didn't know what could possibly be it. They needed this, the little squirrels. It finally clicked a little more solidly.

"With it we can protect ourselves, keep everyone safe."

This emblem could save them from the unknown things they feared. For a moment, Temperance hesitated, wondering why the emblem was placed here of all places. If it protected, what was its purpose out here? As usual, she was operating with probably about only thirty-seven percent of all the information. She had to blindly trust, to go with what seemed right. If she took this, they could protect themselves... Temperance remembered Dee and the holes in its story. She had a feeling the mannequins would never really like her. With a short, humorless laugh, she picked up the ring, Holding it tight in one fist since she had no pockets. It did not bit her palm again. Regardless of the what-ifs, she could only decide with the knowledge she had. Taking a deep breath, she scrambled off of the rock, barking her shin painfully in the process. Suddenly, she was filled with the need to hurry. Per had said there was a limited time and she'd spent so long wandering, finding the thing... Temperance's feet hit the sand and she was off. She did not look again at the water, but she felt it watching her as she left.