[ Ciri turned her face against the humming glow of the table lamp into a pillow that smelled of dust and something astringent that tickled the back of her nose. Palms flat on the mattress, she pushed herself up with a groan as chainmail rattled against the sword still strapped to her back. If she must confess, this wasn't the worst place she had woken up in or even the worst nightmare. The bed wasn't stuffed with straw, and there was no scrambling of rats under the furniture or in the walls. Her skin wasn't even crawling from being a late-night meal for mites. So aside from the kidnapping and the abiding awareness that something was terribly, horribly wrong, she was rather comfortable.

Which only left the letter and that pesky feeling nagging at the back of her mind. Anyone in the room who had woken up around the same time as Ciri would see the young woman start moving around the room. Cursing under her breath about other worlds and their 'new sciences' before making for the door. ]

Alright. [ Ciri announced, facing the door with the stubborn vigor of something catching its second wind before drawing the longsword strapped to her back. The metal sang as it slid from the sheath and glinted in the room's sickly yellow light. ] Any volunteers?

[ Trading blades for four little plastic wheels on each shoe was not the seamless transition Ciri had hoped it would have been. Years of honing her ice skating to a proficient art wintering on the isles of Skellige should have made this instinctively easy. Apparently not. Ciri had been hugging the rink wall for the first ten minutes with a newborn fawn's gracelessness.

Eventually, with a lot of swearing and knees that were going to be black and blue by the next morning, Ciri found her footing. Not content to simply do the lap around the rink, Ciri quickly picked up the pace. She pivoted and pirouetted with a dancer's flair around the others and weaved the last stretch backward with a self-satisfied smile playing on her face.

When she received her prize, Ciri turned the walkman over in her hands a few times — before shrugging and tossing it on a nearby bench without a second thought. That might have been important, but she had no blessed clue what was being foisted on her. ]

Is there really money in this thing? [ Ciri asked the nearest person that didn't strike her as a local. Consonants slid messily over her tongue as she spoke around mouthfuls of a comically large soft pretzel in one hand while holding up her gift card in the other. Just moments ago, she had been clearly mystified watching the cashier swipe her card, and it magically satisfied the barter for the salty monstrosity she was still wolfing down. ]