"Ah, well, welcome to our humble neighborhood, the room you want's that one." Point.

"Thanks. Did you get one of my pamphlets about my powers?"

"Believe so but haven't read it yet, I have history."

"Fair enough. Some of them benefit from having help, and you said to let you know if there was anything you could help with."

"I can skip history if you need me!"

"Not urgently, I'm going to do a couple of experiments and then take a nap. But just letting you know."

"Okay. My room's that one," point. "Have a good nap!" And off she goes.

"I have class too, if you're all set for now?"

"Yeah, I'm good, thanks."

"Sleep well!" And she follows Aadhya.

"What are the ideal qualities of this nap you are about to receive?"

"I need to be able to dream. And it should ideally get me through the night with a relative minimum of fatigue, but I can make stimulants, so that's not critical."

"How long shall you be out, how dead to the world?"

"Ah, let's say about an hour, and you had better be able to wake me if something goes horribly wrong but I would prefer not to wake up besides that."

"All righty then." She has her spellbook and opens to the page she wants. "Get cozy up."

She pulls a sheet out of the santa sack, and puts that on the bed, and then a pile of pillows and a soft comforter, and finally a stuffed toy of a skull. She flops down and snuggles the skull.

And when she is cozied up, Nia croons in Swahili about getting all her dreaming done for the long vigil ahead.

She closes her eyes. 

She opens her eyes. 

She's standing in her dad's office. He's behind the desk, looking deeply stressed, and--

Papa is off to the side, looking like--

Well. It's not that she hadn't heard how many eyes he has, when he shows up in people's dreams. But she hadn't, actually, seen it before. 

"Dad! Papa!"

Both of them shift their attention to her at once. Dad's eyes widen.

She doesn't bother to wait for him to come out from behind the desk; Lightfoot lets her vault it effortlessly. HUG. 

"Were you watching?" she asks quietly. "When I was in the warehouse?"

"Of course I was. Kareen--"

"The book didn't lie. I'm fine. I'm totally fine! I'm somewhere else, and I know it isn't just some weird Spiral illusion thing because the trick I asked for worked, I can just stop being scared. If I'm not scared, at all, of anything, it can't be something the Fears are doing." 

He sighs, but he also hugs her back. "It may be a longer game."

"I guess. Maybe. But then how am I here?"

"I confess that question does concern me."

"No, no, listen. If this is real, and I'm here, I bet I can use More Magic on you two!"

"I didn't actually get that much detail about this...notebook," Papa interjects, then looks surprised at himself for being able to do anything while in Spooky Dream Watcher form.

Kareen has sufficient control over the dream to produce and hand him one of her pamphlets. He reads it, eyebrows raising. She pokes him, invoking More Magic, then pokes her dad in the forehead. 

"Wizardry," she says with some satisfaction. "Wizards build 'mana' through effort and annoyance, and can spend it on spells--I have a hack for mana, but I don't think it works through here--I've only learned a couple of spells so far, but--anyway. When you wake up you can confirm that it all works, and then you'll either know it's real or construct some truly amazing explanation for how anything could fake it..." 

Some time later, she wakes up, stretching. "Thanks," she tells Nia.

"You are most welcome!" Nia has the pamphlet on her lap, alongside some homework. "As regards dead people do you take requests?"

“Absolutely.” She takes out the second notebook and a pen. “Please tell me as much as possible about them.”

"My sister died right when I was inducted, I did not find out for sure till the next year when I got a message. Her name was Zuri -" She can go on about Zuri for a bit.

It becomes clear, quickly, what it is exactly that Kareen got from applying Dragon Fairy Elf Witch to her papa.

The Archivist generates an effect that makes it easier for statement-givers to produce coherent, flowing, complete statements. That make the difference between “I saw a ghost” and a full narrative of a burning woman who appears in the night.

Either she got that, or Nia is a practiced storyteller.

“Thank you,” she says, when Nia is finished, instead of “Statement ends.” “I’m going to save her.”

"Thank you," Nia beams. "Do let me know if you need more naps."

“I will. First, though, I have some practical research to do.”

She gets up and walks over to the void wall. “Excuse me. May I have a spellbook, please?”