Tress

Dark is thankfully over and the mansion is slowly returning back to normal, and it's honestly not a moment too soon. They'd gotten through it, because clearly the mansion spirits didn't want everyone dead, but since everything had happened without any real warning, and in the middle of winter at that, there hadn't been a real way to know to be ready for it.

Clearly, though, that wouldn't be the case next time.

Tress did still have her notebook that she'd brought from home, full of her original notes on sprouting, as well as a bunch of notes she'd added since arriving here, but it seemed to her that a long term project that's going to be quite as wide-ranging as preparing for next Dark would probably need one of its own, so she had found another notebook in her closet. (And she had smiled so brightly upon discovering it, with its charcoal gray cover and pristine pages. It was another sign that things were going back to how they had been.) She had then proceeded to jot down what ideas she had this early on on the first few pages.

She also knows, though, that this isn't a one-person project, and it absolutely can't be. Obviously not everyone here is going to be interested in the extremely early planning stages, but not everyone really has to be involved in those, either. She knows exactly who will be, though.

So she's off to find Susan.

It's been a few days since the arrival of the temporary visitors and Tress has become a wraith.

Her routine is established enough that she's sticking to the fundamentals, but out of rote instead of any sort of enthusiasm. She wakes, she tries to meditate (unsuccessfully, with Crow's poisoned words echoing in her memory and eluding any attempt to clear them), wordlessly brushes Fenyes (she obviously notices the new horse but does not know the new horse), gets food from the kitchen (pre-prepared things she finds in the refrigerator or cupboards, as she cannot muster up the will to cook), and retreats to her room. Her workshop notably remains unused. Crow was there, and although Tress knows she won't be back (and that she was right, Tress would trade places in a heartbeat), she can't bring herself to go back and step into where she'd been, where the undeniable situation had been laid out in plain and simple words.

On such rare occasion that she manages to pass someone in the hall, she offers a smile of greeting that comes nowhere near reaching her eyes, as rote as everything else is.

She's fallen into this before and knows she's doing it again, but a new-found resolve is what brought her out of it before, and she'd had that, to no effect, so that clearly won't do it again.

She has no idea what will.

Tress is, as she often is, in her workshop. However, what she is doing in her workshop is not even close to her usual activities.

Instead of her usual array of spores and sprouter's gear, she has found some more standard tools which are sitting on the table next to a rubber mat that is holding... a toaster. She secreted one from a kitchen that isn't particularly used. To the side are a couple books from the library as well as her open notebook.

She turns the toaster upside down and starts undoing some screws on the bottom of the case.

After all, the best way to figure something out is often to gain practical knowledge.