Since she has not had luck finding Astgabels or anyone who can direct her to it by flying in slightly different directions each day and asking random people, she stops trying, and instead tries to come up with ways to rejigger the available divination spells into producing a compass direction for her to follow. Or maybe she can come up with some variant on the food-generation spell that would be practical for a long trip, and bring Nona with her, and then they could be gone for days looking farther afield than she can get in half a day's flight.
Eventually she finds a spell that is not exactly right, but might be close enough, and she shows it to Nona.
And after she has done it, and then had a good wash, there can be snuggles! The broken-off head of a boar-spear that is going to serve as their compass will continue to point in the right direction until and unless they bury it for a month.
The next morning, Etty sets out, carefully, in the direction the spell indicated. She doesn't stop at mid-day; there's a river in this direction, so she will at minimum have water, and she thinks that if she flies straight she will be at Astgabels before sundown - even accounting for the Baron's greater flight speed - where she will meet people she knows who will feed her. Hopefully, her father.
She is back the evening of the next day, and when she transforms, she doesn't look happy.
Etty reads a lot, the next few days. She breaks to eat with less regularity, her sleep cycle keeps skewing later and later, but often - when she can't go through any more notes, decipher any more handwriting - she finds her way into Nona's arms. And there, there are kisses.
Increasingly squirmy kisses with increasingly whimpery little noises behind them.
This sort of pleasedness becomes a more frequent feature of Etty's breaks from research.
The research, meanwhile, progresses. Etty copies Baronly notes into more atomic, more easily legible parts, and strews the pages around the library, rearranging them, adding extra bits, connecting them with bits of string and paperweights, writing and rewriting.
She doesn't get to the point of coming up with anything to resurrect Carl, but eventually she thinks she has a form of immortality with much mitigated side effects. Two, actually, one for her, one for Nona: Etty's age will re-set every time she changes between swan and human, so as long as she does this regularly, she won't get any older. (Defenses against other mishap will have to be handled separately.) Nona's is more complicated, and she can't draw on captive swangirls or a reasonable facsimile as a sacrifice for the spell any more, so -
"I could probably think of something else, but you might think this one is fine - um -" And she shows Nona the spell summary, which will allow Nona's age to re-set if she skins one of her hands. "As long as it's a steel knife we can heal it after just fine."
Later, Etty puts the finishing touches on the spells, helps Nona set up to cast them - the maintenance for hers is gentle and easy but she didn't have as much incentive or ability to mitigate the casting - and turns into a swan to see if it worked. There's no visible difference when she changes back; she really is the age she resets to, but she can feel it work.
Etty continues working on her resurrection project.
She doesn't get much of anywhere, but there isn't a lot else to do. (She'd go around disseminating the immortality spell that doesn't require turning into a swan if she thought anybody in the world but Nona would eagerly skin their hand for the result in question, but she does not think so. She'd try offering the spell to call up meals to people who don't have enough, but she is somewhat concerned someone would attempt to burn her or Nona or both at the stake.)
She flies for fun. She has other fun with her girlfriend. She studies. She eats, she sleeps.
(Lots of that second thing.)
"His Bella's going by Aether, now, since there are a lot of us and a lot of us are called Bella," says Glass. "You can keep 'Etty', no one has anything like it. We can go from world to world more or less whenever we want and there are a lot of us and we're here to collect you, since Aether told us about you."
[It's a Janepoint. It'll make sure that time doesn't travel more slowly or quickly here than the other worlds we have access to. Whether you'll think it's interesting or not I couldn't say, Nona. It does involve going to some places you haven't seen and you could learn about the magic Etty's getting, you'll probably want some of it yourself.]
"I can get doors whenever I want," says Shell Bell, reaching for the door and opening it back up to Milliways, "but even if I couldn't, Jane can move people between any two places she can see - she's the complicated thing I mentioned - and she can see out of that Janepoint, or my gem, or Glass's, and soon you will have your own."
Then she goes back to the book.
She goes through her checklist, except for her aura (she wears her Janegem in an earring, with another Janeless one to match on the other side) and waits for Nona for aura-ing. She writes in the book.
"Okay, interesting. I think Jokers can all pick it up but some of you will have an easier time than others - ones without any magic or practice splitting their attention and who've never dreamed to Milliways will have it hardest. It's related to dreaming Milliways; your template interacts strangely with being stuck in both cases. I don't think freecasting is exclusive only to you forever, but trying to pick it up probably is not worth the time investment for anyone else whose life's ambition isn't to be able to do it. It's not-technically-magic, in the sense that it doesn't show up to my witchsight, only to my metacauasality sight."
Predictably enough, Glass diagnoses her with an aura of cold. "It's developed enough now that it should behave itself with people you're close to, though, and shouldn't actually harm anyone you don't want to hurt. I'm not sure what this other part does - I'm getting better at interpretations but still... It looks like a cross between Aurora and Kerron, so I guess it's something like detecting other people's intentions? Are you getting anything like that - let it out?"
Etty lets her aura out. (Humidity crystallizes around her; frost gathers on her skin and snowflakes adorn her hair and eyelashes, and in the white feather dress she looks like some kind of ice-spirit.) "...Yeah. Kind of - I can't tell exactly what either of you want, but I can tell that you aren't set up to be in my way?"
It acts superficially similar to Kas and Petaal's, but with a difference - Kas and Petaal's aura is focused on being very inviting to people who they'd like to touch them, and then on discouraging people they wouldn't. Nona's aura is less welcoming - more of a 'why yes, you could snuggle me, if you want' than a 'come snuggle me! right now!'.
Etty could definitely snuggle her. Glass would also be allowed, if she liked.
And there's one more thing, although no one presently in the room is experiencing that aspect directly.
Besides Corona, three others learned it while she was gone - Jellybean, Beast, and the Joker. Sue shares the sensations around; no two Jokers do it quite the same way, and there are departures in flavour going off in all different directions from just his and Harley's original independent discoveries.
Nona isn't next. That's Alice and Queenie, within a few minutes of each other. But she manages it a little while after that, and then it clicks for Micaiah, and there's nobody left here without it.
They celebrate.
And then Nona decides she would like to celebrate with Etty some, so she freecasts home - landing in the orchard, because it's the easiest place to get to. (She's learned how; that doesn't mean she's perfect at it yet.)