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Pendour's confidence had come a long way since back after the incident when she'd barely been able to leave the apartment for months, even to buy groceries. Now she was reaching out to people on her own, sometimes, and answering messages, and trying to make friends, and connections.

She still got the spikes of nerves in her chest every time she met someone new, though. Walking through an industrial district alone with her thoughts, especially with the dark, eerily empty way it tended to be at night, did not do much to help the situation.

By the time she picked up on the other aura in the distance, she was finger-combing her hair and adjusting it so that it sat over her bad eye. It wasn't a solution, not really, but it helped enough that Pendour was able to move forwards, and even smile when the figure of a woman in green came into view.

"Hi, um, I'm Pendour?" she said. "I'm haven't seen any Earth knights in a long time. Your dress is so beautiful."

"Oh," said Pendour with the softest little laugh, "You don't have to be all worried about meeting me. I know I look scary-"

She could soften the impact of the facial scars with her practiced tricks of positioning, but there wasn't much to be done about the star-shaped burns that pockmarked her forearms, or the deeper scar that wrapped around her shoulder.

"But I try to be nice, really."

She wasn't even a warrior. She was out here trying to resolve conflicts and to pull people away from Chaos, but she decided to keep her silence on that for this moment, just in case Hy- Brasil was one of the extreme ones who wanted to see the destruction of the Negaverse at all costs.

"You wanted something from my Wonder? That's simple enough. Do you want to go up and look for it right now?"

Mixed in with the scars were the Transcendence marks that meant Pendour could go up to her Wonder quite freely. Today was one of those days, and she reached out a hand to the other Knight with a soft, inviting smile on her face. "That's probably easier than you trying to describe it to me."

"It's okay to ask for help," Pendour said, and while her voice often came out soft, now that she could could tell that the other woman's nerves went deeper than just being startled by her scars, she put more intention into sounding gentle. She looked at her, full on, and her smile was gentle, too. "I don't think I would have gotten this far on my own."

In the war, maybe. There were a lot of people who didn't understand why she felt as strongly as she did about conflict resolution, so she had to do a lot of that work on her own, but in life she found herself leaning on other people quite often.

Without more hesitation, she interlaced her fingers with Hy-Brasil's, and she whispered her oath, and she let the two of them be whisked away to Pendour.

They found themselves in a glass dome under the sea. The light fell in ripples across the ground, and across them. The floor beneath them was made of mosaic tiles, in the places where it hadn't been chipped away. The main cove and its waterfalls was off a little ways in front of them, but they could hear the flowing water from here. To their left was the staircase that led to the second story, in all its grand marble statue, but Pendour's gaze flicked off to the right, where the small garden plots were. That seemed like the place where they could find things for a tincture.

She could feel the tightness in Hy-Brasil's palm, and Pendour pressed her lips together for a moment before saying, "This place is, um, a vacation spot, maybe, but it's also meant to be a place of mental healing. As its Knight, I have magic that can help calm nerves. If that might help you, right now, we could always try it."

If Hy-Brasil just wanted to find what she needed and leave, Pendour wouldn't be offended, but she did want this place to feel like as much like a sanctuary as it could, and she wanted to offer peace to everyone she could.

The other knight was already saying that her Wonder was beautiful, and Pendour's smile twitched up into something a little more proud. She'd worked hard on this place over the last few years, getting the plants growing and the cove restored to its former glory.

Then she blinked twice, looking embarrassed. "Oh, um, welcome," she said. "I forgot to tell you that."

She was welcome here. Everyone was, regardless of what her ancestor had to say about it when he came out from wherever he tended to hide.

Hy-Brasil hesitated for a moment, but Pendour was already grabbing her ocarina from subspace as she waited for an answer, rubbing her thumb over the cool ceramic again and again in a soothing motion. Her artifact wasn't a weapon, and she wanted Hy-Brasil to see that. Her magic wasn't anything to feat.

When she nodded, Pendour raised the instrument to her lips and began to play. The sound was rich and earthy. Even without magic, it might have been calming to listen to, but Pendour made sure to channel what she could to offer the Earth Knight a moment of peace.

Pendour's magic had never worked on her. She had no idea what it felt like, exactly. When she used it, she had to find her own peace in watching the lines and anxieties in people's faces erase themselves, or seeing their shoulders relax away from their ears, or hearing what they had to say to her when it was all over.

Hy-Brasil's was one of the more extreme ones. It was almost like some subtle energy shifted in the air as she felt better, and Pendour was quick to smile at her as she took the ocarina away from her lips and tied it onto her pearl belt.

"Maybe there's a way to bottle it," she said, and the other Knight said it like a joke, but Pendour's lips pressed together in thought. "I know there's magical artifacts around, enchanted things. Maybe there's a way to put a calming enchantment on something, but in the meantime, you'll just have to come see me whenever it gets to be too much, okay?"

Pendour might have only known this woman for a few minutes, but that was long enough that she didn't want her to have to struggle with anything she didn't have to.

"Speaking of bottling, what was it you needed for your tincture? I've got a whole garden going, although it's mostly things I brought from Earth, and then there's some kelp and coral starting to grow in the cove."

"Yes, bottling magic would be a whole project in itself," said Pendour, although the wistful look that had come across her face suggested that she wasn't really discouraged by that fact. "It'd take years, maybe."

It would be worthy work, though. Restoring this place enough that it could offer a moment of tranquility to passerbys had been like that. If she could bring it to the next level, somehow?

Yes, that was an idea that was going to be bouncing around in her head, even once she made her way back home.

In the meantime, though, she'd see what she could do about Hy-Brasil's tincture. "Lavender's easy. It was one of the first things I planted, so it's been soaking up the magic of this place for a long time, now, and it likes to take over, so it could use a trim." Her sentence trailed off into a moment of humming, and then she turned down the path to the right and waved for the other knight to follow her.

"That means you'll get to see the gardens. Which, that's lovely. I haven't gotten to take anyone back here in a while. Mostly everyone just wants to go look at the water, since I got that running."

The gardens, though, she'd worked equally as hard to fix up, and it showed. The plots were inlaid in the ground, between the paths, in a somewhat formal pattern, and in response Pendour had tried to go for that more French aesthetic. She hadn't gotten any bushes, but there were trees that she'd brought up, painstakingly, one by one. There were roses and there were coral bells and there were some vines growing on trellises across the walkways that had been her latest project in this area.

There were supposed to be statues and fountains around, too, but those were still in various states of crumbled.

"Here," said Pendour, with a smile.The lavender was in a plot with some chamomile and some other herbs, and it was looking a little bushy.

While Hy-Brasil went over to pick lavender, Pendour lingered by one of the trellises. The roses had grown even since the last time she'd been up here, about a week ago, and they were blooming like they were wild things. Pendour ran her thumb over a soft petal and crooned a whisper to the flowers about how beautiful they were.

She gave a shy nod when the other knight complimented things. "Thank you," she said. "The conditions here make it easier than it might have been somewhere else. The beds came all installed with drip irrigation that didn't take long to get working, and the temperature's really consistent in here."

She turned away from just the roses to smile at all the rest of it. "Of course I still had to bring up all the plants, and do a little problem solving here and there, but they've all been good about growing."

The Wonder might have gotten its share of visitors, but it wasn't often that she had actual gardeners up here that she could talk to these things about. It was nice. She was glad she had met this woman, beyond just being able to help her.

It looked like Hy-Brasil was holding a bunch of lavender now, which Pendour nodded at. "Did you get what you need?"