[EP] each has been sent as a guide

[st_oriedqueen]

Even for a witch, keeping track of inventory in a inn that magically resupplied itself on no definable schema, planning for non-magical and magical shortages and disasters, was only about 10% magic and 90% paperwork. For a witch putting the inhabitants of that inn before herself as penance for past evils and in place of her actual victims, it was 100% soul-searing. Especially because of her self-imposed restrictions on telling people what she'd been doing (they had to notice, because if she spoke through actions she wasn't being boastful or attention-seeking), it was also 100% isolating, lonely, and tedious.

Still, Regina persevered, today working on the health and healing aspects of her pencil-and-paper draft of a crisis management plan. The problem, of course, was that while she'd heard rumors of magical healing, no one had exactly jumped up and proclaimed their expertise in that area, and the few people with practical experience had more field medicine and triage. The only real light in that plague-threatened darkness was Henry's medicinal herb garden.

As morning passed into afternoon, Regina stood, stretched, reversing the bow in her back and then stowed her glasses in the drawer of the desk in the officer she'd appropriated in the otherwise unoccupied back office suite behind the front desk. In need of a break, she passed through the front desk area, told the Innkeeper (who scanned magically as human but never had anything useful to say) she still had the towels he'd given her before (which she did, in the beach bag she'd acquired from the shops), and headed out to explore the best locations on the grounds for fruit orchards and what, if any, structures she could appropriate or manipulate to greenhouse them so the magic wouldn't be as obvious.

High sun found her in the Madonna Meadows across the street from the registration and cafe building where she sat on the clean towels the Innkeeper had given her and made planning sketches. It had the advantage of plenty of room, even if it didn't have the 23 acres the hotel brochures claimed (some of the acreage had been lost to scrub desert by whatever planar shift magic had brought the Inn here. As she surveyed it she decided it would do for bulk growth, but in the event of another plane shift might be lost.

After 2:30, and lunch of a chicken Caesar salad, an apple, and cranberry-soda with a wedge of lime, she packed up her bag again and struck out again. This time she went to the "Secret Garden," and began investigating surrounding structures. When she found a useful tool-and-tractor shed, she rolled up the sleeves on her blazer and blouse, then began clearing the apparently unused materials from the shed. She did most of it using her physical strength (penance), but in the case of heavy objects or the tractor without the keys, she permitted herself magic instead.

[ooc: Find Regina anywhere she is in the post. She's not being showy with her magic, but if you're gifted, you'd probably notice. In the last location, she's uncharacteristically sweat-shiny and her hair's a bit of a mess, because she's not using magic to maintain her untouched glamor. I promise no fireballs unless previously agreed upon.]

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[st_rigaetsica]

Determining if someone was a witch could require a spell, if the person had used magic to hide their nature. Joanna didn't much bother with spells to hide her magic any more, although she had in lifetimes past. But the use of magic was much easier for Joanna to sense, and when she felt an energy shift in the air, she stood from the bed she was planting, whispered a bit of Latin, and followed her metaphorical nose as it led her to a storage shed on part of the grounds she had explored weeks ago, but not worked her way back around to in her daily gardening.

In a simple peasant top and jeans dusty from time kneeling among plants, her hair in a loose bun, Joanna looked better dressed for clearing out the shed than the woman who'd taken the task for herself, but that was only a passing thought as Joanna took in the source of the magic she'd followed. Joanna had seen her in passing around the inn, but only that, and she knew nothing about the woman but a name, Regina, and that she seemed the efficient sort. "Would you like some help? I would've gotten here eventually, if someone else hadn't, but I'll admit it wasn't my priority."

[st_oriedqueen]

Even if the woman had cloaked her magic, Regina would have been all but certain she possessed it. There were always signs, if you knew how to look. And if the woman dressed like a peasant, she carried herself as anything but.

She straightened from her task to consider the offer, and because there was no point in either of them hiding what they were, she answered, "That depends on the cost." Because powerful witches did things for reasons and with agendas. And after her mother, Rumple, and Zelena, Regina had had more than enough of both.

[st_rigaetsica]

"Conversation? Perhaps a drink or coffee after we're done?" It was true that all magic had a cost, but so did living, and Joanna did not foresee the clean-up using the sort of spells nature demand balance. But she could appreciate the other witch being wary. They didn't know each other, after all. "Like cleaning out the shed, we'll need to get to know each other eventually. No reason we can't do both at once.

"Joanna Beauchamp." If Joanna's first impression was wrong, and Regina was from Asgard, the name would mean something, but it was offered as simple introduction with no expectation of being recognized.

[st_oriedqueen]

The name meant nothing to Regina, but the offer...the last time a near stranger had asked her out for a drink, it had led to a fairy losing her wings, a man losing his first chance at True Love, and a witch losing her second, and later a child losing his mother. Swan didn't count. She always had an ulterior motive, even if it was just "friendship."

The name meant nothing to her, but why should it? "Regina Mills. Stunning conversationalist." She gestured to the shed. "Suit yourself. Plenty of cleaning to do."

[st_rigaetsica]

Not only another witch, but one who seemed as closed-off as Joanna, although to be fair, Joanna didn't have much to base that impression on so far.

"And here I thought stunning was a way to get out of conversation," Joanna said dryly as she began to gather an armful of rusted and bent spades, rakes, and post-holers to carry outside where she could inspect them better. She'd been living among mortals for so long her first impulse was always doing things the "normal" way, without magic.

[st_oh_honestly]

Dot was placing a basket of muffins on the front desk when the woman came out of the back office, and the fact that she'd never seen anyone back there peaked her interest. The reticent desk clerk asked the woman about towels and then turned as though to ask Dot who out of politeness had more towels than she may ever need.

She backed away before he could offer, but not so far that when the woman started around the desk she couldn't step forward with a second basket and offer, "Muffin?"

[st_oriedqueen]

The young woman carried herself like one used to service, something Regina knew from experience was difficult to fake. Since she sensed no magic in and around her, and she'd seen her baking from time to time, she would have to be a very old and very subtle witch to be pulling off so convincing a glamor.

Even so, Regina replied carefully -- if with a very Mayoral smile and light tone-- as she reached for one of the muffins, "They're not poisoned, are they?"

[st_oh_honestly]

"No," Dot was visibly horrified by the suggestion. "They're just muffins."

[st_oriedqueen]

"And an apple is just an apple," Regina observed, amused by her private joke. But she considered it a fair warning to the girl as well. This place wouldn't be kind to the naive. "They're not apple muffins by any chance?"

[st_arknaked]

Scrub dessert, for all that it was mostly barren, held a surprisingly decent number of rabbits. The meat wasn't that different than the chicken perpetually served out of the kitchen but he'd been out hunting and thought a variation in protein might be in order.

WHich was why when he came around the shed, heading toward the stables he carried a half dozen medium size rabbits and there was a sprinkling of blood on the part of his chest visible at the neck of his shirt, but none on his clothes.

"We have to stop meeting like this," he stopped when he saw her. She kept turning up like a bad penny. "People will talk."

[st_oriedqueen]

For the space of several seconds, her heart stopped. A rough, outdoorsy man returned from a hunt with blood on his person? She knew who it was, but who it could have been pierced her heart (Robin, Graham, Daniel).

If anything, the realization made her voice sharper, her eyes and face harder, when she replied, "Let them talk. As long as you don't."

Whether she heard the unintentional innuendo or no couldn't be said, as she showed no sign of it, instead ostentatiously levitated a dusty, cobwebbed truck pallet with a flick of her hand.

[st_arknaked]

"I've never been good at following orders." He watched her levitating things without a flicker of surprised interest. After all, she'd hit him with a blast of energy that had thrown him across the room.

"You haven't come across a two by four, nails and a hammer in there by chance?"

[st_oriedqueen]

"Looking for a clue?" Regina gave a scathing snort.

She told herself she wasn't curious what he'd do with it. And she sure as hell wasn't going to ask for his help with her project. Just because he'd reminded her of men who mattered to her for a second didn't make him an ally.

[st_abby]

"Are you out for a picnic?" The voice came from just behind Regina in the tall grass of the meadow, and slightly to one side, though there had been no sound of his approach. She might take it as coincidence that he hadn't seemed to loom (and most people did), but it happened that the speaker knew exactly how to stand to keep a stray shadow from giving him away, even when it was high noon. "Or are you planning to do a bit of sunbathing?"

His was the tone of someone who knew very well it was neither.

[st_oriedqueen]

If Regina noticed that he cast no shadow over her, she gave no sign of it. Neither did she give away any sign of irritation at being approached. "You sound like my son, asking questions to which you already know the answers," came her mild response instead. She'd recognized the voice as the one on the phone and let go of prospective annoyance. It would do no good, anyway.

"We spoke on the phone the afternoon." She paused to let him connect the dots and then added, "Regina Mills," in case he didn't.

[st_abby]

"The only mill I've met who can speak," he recalled.

"What are the sketches for, Regina Mills?" Not that he'd been peeking, but... Yes, okay, he had had been peeking. It was more difficult not to, in his line of work.

[st_oriedqueen]

In spite of herself, she smiled at the reference. He had a feeling about him, smudged like smoke and velvet, a friendliness that didn't grate by presuming intimacy or forcing cheer. It took very little insight to see that, like her, he'd encountered the dark and been changed by it; he wore shadow like a cloak.

"Plant husbandry," she answered him without dissembling or snark. He hadn't provoked her yet. "I don't care for being at the mercy of our captors for a food supply. There's land, it will take only a little labor to make it arable, and thirty-some people with very little else to do."

[st_rutsthepolka]

Hermiting in his room and hoping he'd wake up in Chicago was decidedly not working. Every morning, chintzy wedding decor. Butters was entirely sick of chintzy wedding decor.

So today he was having his obligatory chicken (grilled, on focaccia) actually in the cafe. (He was almost as sick of chicken as he was of his room, but at least you could have chicken any number of different ways.)

Talking to people--like, say, the vaguely intimidating-looking professional lady at the next table--was probably the next step, but Butters. well, Butters hadn't gone into forensic pathology for the scintillating conversation. Also he was probably staring, trying to nerve himself up, so that was a thing.

[st_oriedqueen]

Engaged as she was in her planning, Regina didn't notice him at first--the same way that Mary Margaret didn't notice David coming into Granny's every morning for his coffee (yes, she knew about that), if for entirely different reasons. One didn't rule a kingdom with fear without learning to feel eyes that lingered too long.

She let him stare a few moments to see if he would spit out whatever was on his mind, but when he didn't, irritation drove her to ask, "What? Did I raze your village or something?"

[st_rutsthepolka]

Butters blinked and jerked upright. "Um. No. I mean, I don't think so, Chicago was fine last time I was able to check, or, you know, at least within the usual margin of error. Do you... raze a lot of people's villages?" Come to think of it, he'd mostly discounted the Faerie explanation, but given Harry's penchant for enthusiasm when describing attractive women, this lady could be...

Well, no, wait, hang on, this was completely the wrong climate for a Winter Queen, unless she was also trapped here, and if Summer could do that to a Winter Queen then global warming would be a way bigger deal. Still. Anybody scary enough to maybe be a Queen of Faerie was somebody to be careful of.

"Sorry. I'm trying to get back into practice at people skills and I'm rustier than usual."

[st_oriedqueen]

"Apparently." Regina snorted, rolled her eyes and then sipped her soda without looking away.

He reminded her of a rabbit. A scared rabbit. She didn't miss the White Rabbit and his twitching whiskers and ridiculous stories, of course she didn't. Even if she'd grown accustomed to feeding him at the kitchen counter with Roland. Certainly not. If she felt something, it was longing for Roland and his giggles.

"It's been decades since my last village." Her voice dripped with sarcasm, but it was true enough.

[st_illavirgin]

Carlos settled in far too easily to his new role in the restaurant in the hotel, years of helping out in his family's restaurant coming into play. Though really, they had far too much chicken on hand for him to even keep on top of things.

It was only when he was meandering his way to the kitchen today that he saw the office was occupied. He knew other people worked here, but other than chatting to the bar staff, he didn't know much about them. With time to spare before his shift, and after all, what else was there to do here, he made his way to the office, tapping lightly on the door frame, smiling a little when Regina looked up. "I'm just about to start shift early, do you need anything?"

[st_oriedqueen]

Regina glanced up at the knock on the doorframe, not betraying her surprise at having a visitor who wasn't Snow. She didn't recognize him other than to say he wasn't one of the five real staff (no towels on offer) and he wasn't new (the shift, and a vague sense she'd seen him before).

"Answers, a way out, Advil?" she replied, somewhat lightly. "Your name would be a good start."

[st_illavirgin]

He'd take it. He had spent most of his time investigating, and trying to work out how to get home in between shifts at the hotel. He'd been friendly, but there were still so many people he didn't know.

"Advil I can probably find. Way out - haven't been able to find one myself. Answers... well who knows if any we find are even right?" He might be a touch cynical. "Carlos Ramirez. I work in the restaurant kitchens, and other odd jobs."

[st_oriedqueen]

"Sarcasm," Regina said, lest he run off and try to find her Advil. She had a supply in her desk drawer. Instead, she stood from behind her desk and walked around to the door to offer her hand. "Regina Mills, fellow inmate."