Sunday dawned bright and cold. Isa and Alice donned layers, and Alice drove them down to Oaks Bottom park for an early morning run. They both liked the park’s trail for running, and Isa also liked that the early part of the trail reminded her of Varana. It had been very beautiful there. Dangerous and deadly but beautiful, too.

The Oaks Bottom trail loops through groves of aspens and ash, mossy rock-covered hills, and boggy lowlands. In the early spring Sunday morning, the trail was also all but deserted.

Although Alice could run faster than Isa, she tended to match Isa’s pace for the first few miles, then she’d speed up and circle back later in the run. They’d gone less than a mile, so Alice was running right beside Isa.

They came to the crest of a hill in one of the wooded areas of the trail when Isa spied a figure in white on the trail ahead. She slowed her pace, thinking that she’d drop behind Alice until they passed the figure on the narrow pathway. With a glance down, Isa slipped in behind Alice who surged forward down the hill.

“What? What’s wrong?” Alice looked over her shoulder at Isa.

They should have been passing the white figure, but the path was empty. Isa stopped and looked around. “There was a person. On the trail. To pass them I got behind you, but….”

“No big deal, babe. They probably went off trail. Mushroom hunter or tweaker.” Alice wiped her face.

“No, but they were right--” Isa looked at the ground and spied something gold. She picked up a necklace with a circular medallion. Stamped on the golden circle, a tree with a key tangled in its roots.

She’d seen this symbol in Varana. On Vernal Fedru’s wrist, and here it was in Portland. Isa took 2 steps toward the wood. Where had the figure gone? Who were they?

“Isa? Isa! What’s wrong?” Alice looked alarmed.

“This.” Isa held up the necklace. “I--” If she told Alice about the symbol, she’d have to tell her everything, no matter how crazy it sounded.

Alice shook her head. “Baby, what are you-- You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I saw someone, on the trail, and they dropped this.” Isa held her hand out so that Alice could see the medallion.

“A necklace?” Alice brushed a finger across the design. “That could have happened anytime. It could have been here for days.”

“Come on - in Portland?” Isa closed her fist. This necklace meant that someone from Varana was in Portland. She knew that was possible, probable even, but why here? Why now? Was it coincidence that they were in Oaks Bottom just when Isa was?

“I didn’t see it,” Alice said. “Only you and your eagle eyes saw it, so yeah, it could have been here for days untouched.”

“But who dropped it? If not that person in white, who?”

“It is not a big deal, not a grand mystery, Isa. Just put it back, and maybe the person who dropped it will retrace their steps.”

“I’m not gonna--”

“Or keep it! That’s fine. It’s a cool design. Just, let’s get back to our run, yeah?” Alice put her hands on her hips. Her brown hair was pulled back for the run. She had her jacket zipped to the top still; they hadn’t been running long enough for either of them to get hot.

Isa couldn’t keep the necklace. This tree & key design, it was Fedru’s, and even if he wasn’t an evil wizard, Isa didn’t want to be reminded of him. But leaving it? That seemed nuts, too. Here was evidence that Varanese were here.

Still Isa had to make a decision. “I’ll just hang it from this branch.” She shrugged. “Maybe the right person will find it.”

Later, at brunch with Felix, Alice told the story of the necklace, and Felix laughed at the idea that the rightful owner would come back to reclaim it. “That necklace is long gone. Either around some hippie’s neck or pawned for $5.”

Isa tried to be a good sport. “It just seemed special, alright?” She took a sip of coffee. “The person who lost it, they’ve got to be missing it.”

The conversation flowed on, as did the day. About 4 o’ clock Alice went back to her place on Belmont since Isa had the paper to finish.

It hadn’t been a fortune, but the gems that Isa had brought back were enough to allow her to start grad school a quarter sooner than expected. It was just 2 classes until summer, but that was fine with Isa. She was still part-time at the clinic and the light workload and light class load were designed to help her ease back into academia. Come summer Isa would jump into the OHSU dentistry program with both feet.

But Isa couldn’t settle into writing the paper. She’d focus on her laptop for 20 minutes and then pace for 5. Her paper was on frenectomies, a procedure Isa knew well. At 10 years of age she’d had a maxillary frenectomy to remove excess tissue between her front teeth. The experience should have been frightening, but Isa had been fascinated, and that fascination led to her interest in dentistry.

That personal touch had no place in an academic paper, but it was interesting to revisit the process and see what had changed in the ensuing 18 years. That was good for half a paper. For the rest, she’d found an interesting study on lingual frenectomy on newborns to alleviate ankyloglossia - commonly called tongue-tie - which could prevent infants from being able to nurse properly.

Except none of that could compare with the gnawing thought that people from Varana were in Portland. Were they here for her? Maybe they were entrapping other people as she sat in her apartment writing about mouth surgery. What did the figure in white want? Why had he or she been at Oaks Bottom? Were they trying to get Isa back to Varana? But why?

The only way she was going to find out was by going back to Oaks Bottom.