<div align="center"><strong>Phaerbryn</strong></div><br/>Phaerbryn listens to everyone in awe for a few minutes. She can understand clearly what everyone is saying. The device in her ear is translating everything to English, though it seems it may be taking half a second in doing so. Regardless, she is now capable of hearing everyone speak of this godforsaken small town being transported to the middle of bum-fuck fantasy, with her stuck in the middle of it. Now they were speaking of spells and elves. Her head was swimming. She had always been a practical girl. She was prized in the CIA for her rationale and logic. Even as a child she hadn’t believed in Santa Claus or fairy tales. It might have been because of the trauma she’d experienced as a child, but she didn’t remember believing in such before the event either. Now these people around her are trying to convince her that she’s on a completely different planet? At the hand of magic?<br/><br/>She wanted to deny it all. She closed her eyes, hoping that she would wake up or one of her CIA team mates would pop out and laugh at her. She wanted desperately for this to be some elaborate hoax. But, opening her eyes again, she realized it wasn’t. This was real and it was serious. Her survivor instinct instantly kicked in and this calmed her. Whatever it was, whatever came her way, she could deal with it. This was what she lived by and it hadn’t failed her yet.<br/><br/>Kyle spoke logic. This was her language. Phaerbryn holstered the gun and approached the counter.<br/><br/>“Vanilla. Make it two scoops. This might take awhile,” she told the man behind the counter who had just now made it back with the cup of water the weird girl had requested. The other employees were busy scooping the melted ice cream from the big bins, trying to keep their minds off the situation going on in their store. The manager got Phaerbryn two scoops of vanilla in a cup and handed it to her, wordlessly. It was possible he was in shock. Phaerbryn had other things to worry about. She reached in her back pocket, the one opposite her IDs, and brought out a wad of cash to pay the man. He just threw his hands up, understanding it was pointless to get paid at the moment. Regardless, Phaerbryn threw a few dollars on the counter, picked up her ice cream, and walked over to take a seat at one of the close by tables.<br/><br/><div align="center"><strong>Viviana</strong></div><br/>Such a dismissal from the braided haired man bristled Viviana’s ego slightly. She had only been concerned for the man. Turning away from him, she listened to Kyle’s speech, nodding her agreement to his rational comments about the situation, the curled tendrils about her face bobbing.<br/><br/>Once the man suggested getting “ice cream,” the harsh looking woman clad in leather, walked to the counter. Viviana now assumed the colored goo in the bins was called “ice cream.” And it seemed this was, indeed, a food source. She took note that the man behind the counter had finally gotten her the water she’d requested, though her interest in helping the other man was fading quickly. She retrieved the glass of water, walked back to the man, and placed it on the booth table next to him. She turned her back on him before walking over to look in the bins at each of the ice creams.<br/><br/>“Is there a flavor you recommend?” She asked the man behind the counter, as she licked her lips. Her eyes were wide with all the different choices. The man looked over at her with a blank expression on his face, while the rest of the employees seemed to be avoiding eye contact with her. Furrowing her brow she said, “Fine then. I’ll take that one,” she pointed to a brightly colored pink bin of goo with red seedy bits dispersed throughout. The man behind the counter simply took a scooper and scooped out a single ball into a cup and handed it to her.  Viviana took the cup with a raised brow, sat it on the counter, and opened the purple velvet pouch that hung from her hip. She removed a couple silver coins with her father’s head imprinted on them, thinking this delicious goo<em>must</em>be a delicacy and therefore not too cheap. She placed the coins on the counter and walked to the table where the leather clad woman sat. The woman was fairly intimidating to Viviana, so she chose to sat opposite of her.<br/><br/>"Greetings," Viviana said tentatively. "My name is Viviana Valerian. What is your name?"<br/><br/><div align="center"><strong>Janet</strong></div><br/>“I… Well… I don’t know really. It is just strange for a,” Janet subconsciously looks down to his feet, then back up to the man’s face again, “man to be walking around at night. Alone. In the dark,” she finished the sentence, relaxing a bit. Maybe her nerves were just getting the best of her.<br/><br/>“I’m not sure what you mean by Arcane Forests, though. Our farm has been here for roughly a hundred years. Great-Grandpa Harding told me his pa built this very house with his own bare hands back in 1905,” Janet’s voice sung with reverence. “And the Harding family have kept it up ever since. My sister and I were raised on this farm… Oh! Stephanie,” she exclaimed as she remembered he’d asked about her.<br/><br/>Just then, the lights came back on and she breathed an audible sigh of relief, until she took in the man standing in front of her. He was even more handsome than she’d first thought! His bare chest displayed rock hard abs that glistened with a fresh sheen of sweat. Janet had never really been too interested in men. Her studies and new obligation to her sister and farm kept her so busy that she didn’t really have time for much else. She cleared her throat.<br/><br/>“Stephanie is at the prom this evening. I really should go and make sure she’s alright. I’m not sure how far this outage stretched.”<br/>