A Snowed Abode

Castle

After so many conversations and so much reading the two did, though, feel tired, and so straight after exiting the library they went not to some potentially dangerous castle as one assumes someone who would like to quickly come to the bottom of all this would do, no... they went to an inn, for why would they not relax a slight bit just before they were going to go out once again?

It was a modest sort of inn, of course, for Ignis was such a village too... nothing grand, a simple place by the coast; it had some flowers, but it also had a painting, on which was inscribed...

"The landscape, anew
...the minds, askew
...for what binds sanity?"

Good question, Pax thought, except he could not quite figure out how the landscape, or the painting more generally, had to do with sanity, unless of course one loses it trying to figure this very thing out... and whose minds were askew? Perhaps the ones using archetypes, he thought, now more knowledgeable than before... still, a painting could not possibly know of that, surely?

There were two pieces of papers near these painting... for some reason... and one of them said...
"Be patient today, for tomorrow might test you" while the other one...
"Rest in the present, for the future might be tiring"... and sure enough, Pax had no idea inscriptions will suddenly become some self-help one-liners? He hoped not, at any rate, for there might not be anything more insufferable, surely, he thought... well, some things. Then again, one must admit that these were not too inappropriate in an inn...

There was the innkeeper there in the corner of one room, an ancient looking fellow...

"Hello, there. I am the innkeeper, but I presume that is obvious. What is not at first is the arbitrariness of what seemingly just sprouts up from behind actions... this sudden hostility by our formal ruler, for example..." This guy does not hold back, Pax thought... most innkeepers say, what, "would you like to stay?"

"Why, do you reckon, spontaneously someone just decided to do something? From a potential for repercussions, possibly... lack thereof would enable certain actions, but even if there were, sometimes actions are still committed..." And sure enough he keeps on keeping on... some intense night this will be, Clemens concurred, as if they just could not stop from being connected to this incident, as if this whole thing with the archetypes was the be all and end all of their entire existences (from now on at least); like really, can they not catch a break and sleep a little? Or so they wondered...

"Ah, why have I myself acted to ramble on needlessly... might you need a bed to rest?" Well, he finally grew some self-awareness, it appears... and so they rested, at any rate...

As they woke up they noticed a...
"A curious, red hat... I do not suppose it belongs to the old man, but then who wears pointed red hats?" Who indeed? Perhaps a certain type of magus?

There were also some plants at the back, which this time seemed to also animate the words...

"Sleep when you can in this world...
...for until you are unfurled, to keep the calm is...
...not quite in the palm of your hands..."

Pax assumed this was but apt for an inn, yet again, but what exactly is unfurled...? He did find it strange, to say the least at any rate, how plants would commentate on sleep, I mean do they even sleep themselves, or perhaps like dolphins do it only partially? Anyway...

There was also a...
"Mirror of shades, why must one not see the outline of thus" which completely baffled the two, one must say, until, that is, they realized in the other room that there was another mirror saying
"Thus, see the outline why must one not of the mirror of shades" - not that this clarified things any further, but Pax noticed that this seemed to... mirror, in fact, the words in the other room... well, not quite perfectly, but then absolute symmetry is not usually reality either, is it?