Well, she could always go find Tarakova and ask him to explain his cryptic comments from yesterday.

Or she could investigate that beautiful tower surrounded by gorgeous waterfalls in what might be the exact center of the valley. She could do that too.

She'll go with investigating that beautiful tower. Tarakova has kind of been through a lot. She doesn't have to add 'interrogate him first thing in the morning' to that list. It can wait until after lunch.

What's the tower like?

It's very tall, and hard to see into from the outside even though it seems to be mostly made of glass. The sparkling streams of water twining around it do a good job of obscuring whatever's inside.

Well, the only way to solve this mystery is clearly to find her way inside. Is there an obvious door somewhere, or does she need to ask the valley for one?

There is a door, made of glass and framed by falling water.

Pretty.

She opens it to explore inside.

Inside, the waterfalls spilling down the walls look like shining curtains of light. It's dazzling.

But the walls are almost forgettable compared to the thing they enclose. It's a rosebush, but it's a rosebush the way this palace is a palace. Thorny branches form intricate patterns, arching over one another, laden with scarlet roses. The ground is carpeted in petals. In the very middle of it all, a single stem rises like the trunk of a tree, up and up and up to end in a flower the size of a house. Lesser rosevines twine around the great stem, densely at the bottom where they mingle with the outlying branches, thinning out gradually as they approach the top.

Well no one said that anything in this garden had to follow the typical rules of reality.

She has the bizarre and slightly hilarious urge to climb up to the large rose and bury her face in it. The petals are probably absurdly soft. There are a number of reasons why she can't. She's not really great at climbing, those branches definitely have thorns and she wouldn't be able to avoid getting punctured, and a fall from that height into thorns might actually kill her. That's without even getting into the more esoteric ways the idea might be unsafe. She doesn't actually know what this rose is for - it might be for some kind of magical thing, maybe disturbing it in any way would cause the entire spell to implode. It might be decorative. Still, she wants to.

But since she can't, she's just going to stare at it for a little while.

It's very beautiful.

It's also - kind of hard to tell with the sun shining in through the walls and bathing everything in light, but - glowing, it's glowing. Very very faintly. Mostly the petals. If she picks one up off the ground and closes her hands around it and holds it to her face, there it is, definitely glowing with a faint silvery light.

Well that's - probably something towards the entirely baseless 'it might be for some kind of magical thing' hypothesis.

She peers at it for a while longer, then reaches out with her threads of starlight to see if magic can give her some kind of - idea of what this is. Her magic's kind of - well, it's absolutely terrible at telling her literally anything about anything besides herself, but she feels she needs to make an effort.

That there sure is a gigantic magic rose!

Yeah, that was about what she was expecting. Maybe she should instead use her words, and ask Tarakova.

Sigh.

Is there anything else noteworthy to stare at, here?

No, the gigantic magic rose is pretty much the highlight of the room.

She collects some rose petals, then debates whether or not to go bother Tarakova now, or wait a little while longer to bother him.

Eh. She doesn't need to know right now.

More exploring!

Gorgeous palace full of gorgeous gardens and gorgeous magical water features!

It is all very pretty.

Navethae eventually finds a nice place to picnic, and then requests that an appropriate picnic be brought to her.

The picnic shows up in the form of three flying picnic baskets, one big one and two littler ones. There is lots of tasty food.

Gosh, that's adorable.

She's honestly not sure that she can eat all of this.

"Were you expecting me to have help, valley?" she wonders. "Because you can invite Tarakova if you like, I don't mind."

No answer from the valley, for a few minutes.

Then she can see an enormous silhouette bounding through the fields toward her, now and then gleaming brilliantly in the sun. He slows as he approaches.

"Hi," she says, smiling a little. "Hungry?"

"The valley seemed to think I would be welcome at your picnic."

He sits.

"It brought me too much food, I pointed this out, and mentioned I wouldn't mind sharing it."

He looks away and sighs.

"... What? Would you rather not?"

"I..."

He shakes his head.

"Have you tried leaving again?"