Room 206, Wednesday Morning
It was early, and Naminé pulled the covers closer, wriggling more to find the warm body ...
How odd, he didn't usually wander so far, it was a narrow bed. She rolled over, and then opened her eyes.
She was alone.
Had he woken early and gone in search of food? He very well might have, but it would be rude to not leave a note after last night's misadventure.
Sighing a little, Naminé reached for her sketchbook and drew a very simple outline of a boy with a mask.
"Bob! Bob bob bob!"
"Bob?"
"BOB."
"Malcolm?"
...
"I don't know why I even bother with the lot of you, honestly," Valentine sighed, burying his face in his hand. "I mean, honestly, if you're going to attempt to communicate with me, the least you could do is say more than your names and the slightest touch of the English language now and again when you feel like it."
He took his hand away from his face to glower at the monkeybirds.
Which were Naminé, now, sitting there and drawing him back to his room.
Naminé looked up with a sigh of relief. "Again?" she asked. "Do you know how long you were gone?"
"Not terribly long, I don't think." Valentine tapped his finger to his chin, considering. "I woke up surrounded by monkeybirds. So, I must have gone sometime during the course of the night."
It wasn't nearly as jarring when there weren't things trying to eat him. He was rather calm about the whole ordeal, this time around.
She was less unnerved herself, given that retrieving him seemed to be as simple as calling him back with a sketch. Something about that tickled, in her mind, but she brushed it aside as easily as she moved the sketchpad out of her lap.
"Are they all right? The monkeybirds, I mean."
"They seemed to be. Very 'Bob'ish. Except possibly for Malcolm."
"Malcolm?"
Valentine was going to stand there now, glowering at the monkeybird.
"You know, you aren't welcome in my bedroom," he informed it.
Malcolm looked around the ruins of the old cathedral, rather confused indeed.
Naminé closed her eyes and resisted the urge to beat her forehead against the wall.
When the urge passed, she lifted her sketchbook. A mask ... a nose ... a mouth ... a long ragged overcoat ...
"And while we're at it, perhaps you ought to look into finding a remedy for that whole-" Valentine's mouth continued to plow onward even as his brain registered that he was once again in room 206. "--Detachable beak thing."
"This is getting a little ridiculous," she announced. "The monkeybirds again?"
"What else could possibly have a detachable beak?" Valentine shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, rather at a loss. "I could swear that cathedral had been ravaged far more by the shadows, before, though."
"It was destroyed by the shadows, as well, wasn't it?" Naminé said. "So if it should be back at all, it might as well be ... in a pristine state."
Returned? Rolled back to a previous incarnation? Naminé chewed on her lip for a few moments.
"It looks very nearly the same as it did before, when Helena and-"
He stopped speaking, right about there.
There wasn't much sense telling Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, and Malcolm about how their usual hideout looked the last time any of them had seen it, really.
Another sketch. Nice that she hadn't set the sketchpad aside, this time.
Very convenient, that.
"This is getting downright bloody idiotic," Valentine decided.
"I think I know what's going on," Naminé said.
Returned. Restored. Re ... created?
If all of her drawings were destroyed in a fire ...
"Well," Valentine began, crossing his arms in front of his chest and frowning, "that's really quite wonderful, because I haven't the foggiest--"
He shut up again. Quickly. The sleeping gryphon that he was standing in front of was decidedly less pleasant to converse with than the Bob-posse had been.
Naminé lifted her crayon again -- and then set it down. No use trying to have a rational conversation with him like this, ping-ponging back and forth and repeating herself and filling a page with tiny scribbles.
"Sorry," she said, to the Valentine who most certainly couldn't hear her. "I'll explain everything later."
For now, she needed to head straight to the source. She held one hand in front of her, focusing her energy on the only information she had: a name. Perhaps it would be enough.
Helena.
(OOC: Plot continues! Preplayed with the wunderbar importantman. NFI, but broadcast is okay, and OOC is love.)