Isla Crown often fell through puddles of stars and into faraway places. Always without permission - and seemingly on the worst occasions. Even after five years, portaling will made her bones groan. She held her starstick tightly, her breath bottled in her chest like the rare perfumes on her vanity, the glass room spinning and fractured colors bleeding together, until gravity finally pinned her down a loose thread in the universe.

And it was safely tucked down the back of her dress, along her spine, by the time the door swung open.

"What happened to your hair?" Poppy shrieked so loudly, Terra cam rushing in behind her, the many knives and swords at her waist clanking together.

Her hair was the least of her worries, though she didn't doubt it resembled a bed of moss. Travelling between the realms' newlands with her starstick had the habit of undoing even Poppy's most tightly wound coils and firmly made braids- an unexpected perk, really.

Isla didn't pretend to be an expert at using the device. In the beginning, the puddle of stars took her unexpected places. The snow villages of the Moonling Newlands. The airy jubilees of the Skyling newlands. A few lands that hadn't been settled by any of the six realms at all. Little by little, she learned how to return to locations she had been to before. And that was the extent of her mastering of the starstick. All she knew for certain was that somehow the mysterious device allowed her to travel hundreds of miles in seconds. Terra sighed, hand dropping from the hilt of her blade. "It's just a few loose strands, Poppy."

Poppy ignored her. She rushed over to Isla, wielding a brush and a vial of syrupy lead oil the same way Terra had taught Isla to brandish weapons years before. Isla grinned at her fighting teacher over her charm teacher's shoulder and cried out as Poppy roughly removed the pins. Poppy shook her head. "Have to start from scratch." She stuck the clips between her lips and spoke around them. "I leave you alone for an hour, and you're a mess. Even locked the door for good measure! How in the realm did you manage to mess it up in your own room, little bird?"