"How are you still perfectly fine!?" moaned Wanderer. "Are there any potions that cure alcohol poisoning where you come from? Is that why you're not dying like me!? I feel like— urp."
Poor Wanderer didn't even get to finish his sentence before last night's dinner began making a sudden return up his throat. Clutching his mouth with one hand and cheeks puffed out like a hamster, he stumbled out of the longhouse where they'd passed out the previous night, before quickly locating a suitable shrub for himself— one that would soon endure unspeakable horrors.
"There, there," said Oleandra peaceably, patting Wanderer on the back as he vomited. "It'll pass…"
Thankfully, she didn't have to relive the ordeal she'd endured during her Hogsmeade outing with Tracey, since she'd already purged most of the alcohol from her system back then. Still, thanks to the power of beer, Oleandra had come away from this unfortunate experience with valuable information, beyond the obvious lesson about the consequences of overindulgence.
Previously, Oleandra had wondered if Theo's experiment hadn't somehow split her into two halves sharing the same consciousness, which would have explained the back-and-forth time slipping whenever she fell asleep. However, this experiment in drunkenness clearly indicated that she still occupied one single body— else she'd have woken up in the past feeling sick, just like Wanderer.
Which meant that she was actually living two consequent lives, just like Theo had surmised!
Now, if she could only figure out why she kept yo-yoing back and forth through time… There had to be something anchoring her— something that kept pulling her either to the past, or to the present… or perhaps even to both.
"The Dusk-Elf's heart…" Oleandra muttered to herself, putting a hand to her breast.
Oleandra barely understood the rules behind her Fairy magic, let alone its mechanics. In truth, a Great Fairy's powers were much closer in nature to the instinctual magic performed by magical creatures than the rule-based spells of Wizards. Still, it was an undeniable fact that she had somehow forged an unbreakable connection between herself and the young Dusk-Elf girl, back when she had seized her heart for herself.
Two bodies, two minds, one heart.
If the Dusk-Elf died, Oleandra would have the heart all to herself. However, that meant there would be nothing anchoring her to the present any more, which would effectively strand her in the past. Furthermore, unless this time period had become her default place in time, there had to be something anchoring her here as well… but what could it be?
Oleandra glanced at the pale-faced Wanderer emptying his stomach into a bush.
It couldn't be him; she'd never seen him before the day he'd pulled her from the frozen lake, and she couldn't think of anything that might tie them together, other than the fact that they both used runic magic. Oleandra sighed— she would just have to keep searching. Whether a solution to her conundrum even existed in the first place, she certainly wouldn't find it by staying here.
Oleandra decided to leave Wanderer to his own devices, and she headed indoors for breakfast with the Muggle villagers. Breakfast consisted of ale (once again, since water wasn't exactly safe to drink), thin porridge, black bread and butter, and small oat cakes.
"Lady Viviane," said a woman, approaching Oleandra at the dining table and bowing deeply. "I have finished repairing Lord Wanderer's boots."
"Er, thanks," said Oleandra, washing down the hard bread with some herbal ale. "Just put them down over here, I suppose."
In this time period, small villages like the one Oleandra had found herself in had no dedicated craftsmen other than smiths— no cobblers, shoemakers, or anything of the sort. People either went barefoot or fashioned crude footwraps and boots from scraps of leather on their own.
Incidentally, there were no taverns or inns, either— peasants or farmers had no business travelling, so they wouldn't have had any clientele. In this era, the only people who travelled were those who already had the means to bring home along with them, such as wandering merchants, rich landowning nobles and royalty, who would move about in large parties.
"A thousand pardons for interrupting yer meal, Milady," came a voice behind Oleandra. "But I did not know who else could help with my troubles…"
Oleandra turned in her seat to face her interlocutor— a shabbily dressed farmer sporting a thick beard, bowing deeply to her.
"I'm listening," said Oleandra, taking a swig of ale.
"It's my cow, Bo, she's all I got left," explained the farmer tearfully. "She's expectin' calves, but I fear she won't survive the winter with her injuries. I 'ave no money or riches or food to spare, but if yer could use yer mighty powers to heal her, I swear I'll repay yer in full, some day…"
It turned out that the man had previously owned a few Highland cows— that is, until the three Giants had descended from the mountains, devoured most of them and flattened the rest. Feeling bad for the man and his last cow, Oleandra accepted to lend a hand, and an hour later…
"Hey, that tickles!" Oleandra giggled, as the grateful furry cow licked her hand with its coarse, sandpaper-like tongue. "Well, if there's nothing else…"
Apart from healing the cow with the spells Viviane had taught her, Oleandra had also used the Mending Charm to repair the man's house and his barn, saving him weeks of home repair, which was usually done in the winter when crops wouldn't grow.
"No, no, I wouldn't dare ask for more!" said the farmer frantically. "Please, my wife made this fresh butter yesterday— please take it, I insist!"
Despite Oleandra's protests that she had no use for such astronomical quantities of butter, the man pressed the large yellow slab wrapped in sheepskin into her hands, much to her disgust.
And so, butter in hand, Oleandra stepped out of the man's barn— only to find a long line of people waiting outside.
"You wouldn't all happen to need help, would you?" asked Oleandra, feeling slightly discouraged.
Oleandra was starting to understand why wizards had abandoned living alongside Muggles—there were simply too many of them, and they all seemed to think their problems could be solved with magic!