I have some time before the next match, maybe three hours. It's me and a group of Bronze rated summoners representing Lucid's nephew against Sivir's investment office. The Battle Mistress has an eye on his tea plantation.

What is the word for off-stage fright? I feel great confidence performing in front of a large audience. Staring out towards onlookers, all I see is a wall of people, distant like the sea. But when it's just me and one other, I'm treading water.

So when Sona and the League pulled me along on a trip to the Voodoo Lands, I found out what she meant by me getting out of my comfort zone.

We traveled by carriage to our destination. Dense petrified forest dominates the landscape, allowing only for small settlements stamped on bare clearings and near weakly flowing streams. The Grey Order encampment attracts students and masters of magic from all corners of Valoran. People practiced their craft in the open, making businesses out of selling trinkets and rare potion ingredients. Tea seemed to be a booming industry, with all the energetic bodies exerting themselves past their physical and mental limits. But even with a cloudless sky overhead, there was an overbearing gloom about the place. The air carried the scent of decaying wood and incense.

The Hastur family lives in a rather opulent tent on the edge of the clearing. Gregori Hastur and his daughter Annie greeted us at our passing. The father is a well aged man with a chiseled jaw and a hungry gaze. Annie perceives the world with those same eyes. Amoline was away teaching a group of novice mages.

The child eyed me with a look of mild curiosity as Gregori took us in. One could tell that, like any parents would, he and Amoline are especially proud of their daughter. The tent itself was held up by a lattice wooden frame and a pole in the center. It looked as spacious as any mansion's parlor. Magical artifacts were everywhere. Glassware, charms, gems and metal trinkets hung on racks all around. Annie's toys, almost indistinguishable from her parent's things, erupted from a toybox in one corner. A modest sized table stood in the center of their home, draped in a floral tablecloth. A tin kettle steamed over a tiny wood stove.

Annie's pyromania came from her father's side. His temperament flares up into a passionate firestorm at random. Sona gestured at something that looked like a tiny dagger, glowing blue and nay big enough to pierce through a boot. "That's my old guitar pick." Gregori warmly reminisced. "I played a bit in my rebellious youth." Immediately afterwards, she leaned her head into another similar artifact, hued a glowing orange.

"IF YE LOCK EYES WITH ANY MUSICAL TRINKETS OF MINE, MAKE IT NOT THAT ONE, MAVEN!" he cried in a booming grandiose crash of thunder. "SITTING BEFORE YOU IS THE PICK CRAFTED DURING MY FIRST DAYS WITH AMOLINE! WITH IT, I WOOED MY LADY WITH SWEET MUSIC THAT...no wait." He stopped as abruptly as he began. "Wrong pick."

He was sort of intimidating in an endearing way. Sona smiled all the way through that outburst and more. Taking advantage of a lapse in his enthusiasm, I laid out our offer over lightly bitter tea. In honor of the anniversary of the Grey Order's exodus out of Noxus, we came to set up a choir concert to perform a selection of pieces celebrating magician culture. Naturally, he agreed.

Annie's pyromania would be outright comic if it weren't so unsettling in person. "Silk smells like grass when you burn it" she chirped to Sona, pulling on the hem of her dress.

I was "the man people talk about in the reports" as Annie observed. Sona smiled in amusement, but I could only laugh nervously. Gregori hastily assured me that these reports, from contacts in the Institute of War, are only gossip. I have never been the subject of any significant gossip. It scares me just a little. Will our encounter in the Serene Gardens turn into scandal?

After smoothing out the details of our plan, we stepped outside to meet with another visitor. A bright blue parrot flew over our heads, circled around two or three times at a low altitude, and landed on a nearby shrub. It began to speak almost immediately afterwards, wailing "...Who's parrot is that? It's a beautiful bird!" Sona walked toward it in vivid shock. She looked between the bird and Gregori as it continued. "What's happening? What is it saying?"

Gregori explained that this parrot, Orsino, belongs to another resident some five minutes away. Orsino is infamous for his pestering of visitors by reading their minds and voicing their inner thoughts aloud. He perched onto Gregori's shoulder and preened himself. "I can shoo him off, but it may be a bit difficult" warned Gregori with an amused smirk.

Sona lay a hand over her jaw, at a loss for what to do (as alerted by Orsino.) A moment later, she sighed and let her smile wash over her. "It can't be helped" barked the parrot.

We walked to the schoolhouse where Amoline worked. Orsino began to whistle a festive tune during the while. The settlement wasn't very crowded at all, in stark contrast to the scene we entered only hours ago. Dust lay settled along the road, stuck in mired time. I sped the clock along by making small talk.

Thinking of the Hastur family brought a concern to mind. I asked Sona of her foster parents.

"Lestara was my adoptive mother." said the parrot. "She taught me the etwahl."

The name Lestara occasionally crossed her mind as we shared thoughts on the Fields of Justice. I never saw an identity to go with it, not even a face. "What is she like?"

Orsino made a strained craning motion with his avian neck, forcing something out. "She means the world to me. Music defines her existence as it does mine."

"Do you visit her often?"

Orsino whistled a pair of high notes as Sona wistfully glanced at the dead forest on the horizon. "When I can. About once a year at least."

I entered her mind around three times, yes, and this biographical information was readily available to me as mine was to her.

But I held myself back at every opportunity, in fear of discovering something unsavory. So I still know little of her past.

The tiny schoolhouse, built with haste and magical assistance, crept up onto the horizon. The sun hung a bit lower above us, and the day itself seemed impatient to be over with. A middle aged couple joined us on the trail, almost sneaking up from behind. The wife wore a flowery amber dress and smiled with a round face. She displayed a fountain of jewelry all over herself. The husband was a creature of modesty, dressed as if he were her shoe-bearer, but beaming with an alike smile that told of nobility.

Sona was taken aback at the sight of the lady. "Lestara?" pitched Orsino after a descending chime of notes. "No! My eyes stay partial to these old damned memories!"

Damned memories of Lestara? After sharing with us her love for the woman? It was clear to all of us (save maybe for Annie) that Sona had said something contrary to her own conscious, or grimly concordant with it.

With her eyes tightly closed, she waved her hand to strangle the bird but retreated a feather short. "Away!" Orsino barked. "Away from me!"

Gregori reacted tactically, conjuring a ball of fire and waving it around the bird's face. "You heard our lady! Retire your feathered arse back to your master's cage!" And with quite the performance from him, Orsino was off shouting "Lestara forgive me! Perdonami Lestara! Il tuo assassino ti chiede perdono!"

Sona retreated back into herself to a whole other degree. She avoided eye contact for the rest of the walk, and could only manage a weak, tired smile once we met up with Amoline. Even Annie's youthful charm couldn't cheer her up. I feel it would be vulgar to describe Sona's condition now.

The rest of the trip went without incident. Suddenly I feel there is nothing more I want to commit to the archive right now. I need to get ready. Lucid's nephew has a plantation at stake.