"Is she dead?" Reve asks, because he can't sense Finley's mind in that statue.
June shakes his head no. So at least there's that.
Finley is not dead.
"Okay," Reve says. "So how do we fix this?"
Tried. June's psychic voice in Reve's head is just the one word, but conveys its point with accompanying despair, grief, and memories. June has tried to reverse this since it happened, and has had no luck. June has been trying for a very, very long time.
"In my reality, YOU died as a teenager, and it got fixed," Reve tries to appeal to reason and fairness, as if June has the power to give that to him.
June bites on his own knuckles, silent.
"So, we're going to fix this too! I just don't know how yet."
Reve closes his eyes and rubs the heels of his palms against them, sighing with exhaustion.
"I guess dying a horrible death before reaching adulthood is becoming a family tradition."
No, June projects sharply at him. Because Finley isn't dead.
"Okay. Okay. I... I actually have no ideas," Reve admits. "You were the artificer. I can't do any of that mage stuff."
June stares sadly at the floor, at his shoes, at the piles of books and the sleeping bag. Sometimes he cannot bring himself to leave Finley's side. Sometimes he sleeps here, and reads them both to sleep.
At least, he used to do that. As time passed, June used his voice less and less.
It may take a while to feel comfortable with it again.
"Well, this is going to sound stupid, but do you know anything about Lethe? Outside of what my memories showed you?"
Loki said the colony was gone from Lethe's forest, but that implied it was still Lethe's forest.
"I mean, the last thing I ever want to do is go back there, but the fae might know what to do..."
June looks thoughtful, then makes a few gestures Reve doesn't understand. Wait here, he projects.
Then he's gone, darting away for some reason.
Reve doesn't leave the general area, but after being left totally alone for several minutes he gives in to his curiosity and investigates what appears to be his uncle's kitchen.
June returns with hand written notes bound into a book. The lettering is from a version of simlish so old it's barely recognizable as simlish at all. June has helpfully translated it in the margins.
Reve sits down on a creaky sofa and flips through the pages. These are Oliver Masterson's writings about his encounters with the dryad colony, spanning many different time periods. It seems Oliver knew the river had odd properties, and performed experiments on its waters. This earned the wrath of the flora creatures. At first he had thought something in the minerals near a section of the river was responsible for the confusion and memory loss, but eventually he learned of the fae presence.
The dryads only call it "the river", and so too do Oliver's notes.
"So the TL;DR here is that we can't even get to Lethe with our minds intact... let alone force Lethe to take humanoid form, let alone speak to us, let alone help us..."
Reve was only able to approach Lethe because he was telepathically tracking the yellow fairy. If not for that, getting to that part of the forest without a dryad guide would have been impossible.
Assuming Lethe does know what they need to do to reverse Finley's condition, what could Reve possibly hope to trade for that knowledge? What would a fairy consider fair?
June shrugs. He wishes he could be more helpful to Reve, and to Finley.
"I guess I have to accept you've been working on this a really long time, so there aren't any easy answers," Reve says quietly.
June looks at him, big sad green eyes through those ridiculous thick blond bangs, and Reve cannot tell what he's thinking at all. But we WILL find an answer, Reve's Uncle Junpei might have said. This smaller version of him remains silent.
This place gives Reve the mega-creeps, but it is where his family is in this crapsack reality, and it seems he is welcome to stay.
Reve wonders if the chickens have names.
June makes it clear he won't tolerate Reve stealing food or anything else from the townsfolk. It's too risky to do that. June has survived just fine without resorting to such things. June grows all of his own food!
"Please tell me your clothes aren't actually a generation old," Reve groans.
June demonstrates how easy it is to clean and repair clothes with magic.
Reve has never hated magic more.
"If there's not a washing machine here, I am using my first paycheck on the laundromat," he grumbles.
When Reve's stomach growls, June introduces him more properly to the kitchen. Eggs, fruits and vegetables are all that's available, but June has had plenty of time to become an excellent chef.
June is also experimenting with growing cheese on vines, which seems absolutely insane to Reve but is apparently the reason behind the horrible smell in the icebox.
"Um... thank you for cooking for me," Reve says sheepishly.
They don't bother trying to figure out which of them this situation is weirder for.
One of Finley's successes before her dramatic failure, he assumes.
Reve only leaves for a few hours, to retrieve his clothes from the lodge, but June has an anxiety attack about it. What if he doesn't come back? What if he does? What if they don't get along? Can June even stand being around another person, after all this time? What if Reve wasn't real to begin with? June has been very lonely; nobody could fault him if he lost his mind and started to hallucinate imaginary company...
He can't just turn Reve away though, for goodness sake, the kid obviously needs help.
Though the fridge was a disaster, all of the upholstery in this place is clean and dust-free, kept that way by a relentless web of spells. When night falls, Reve is directed to what looks like a child's bedroom to sleep in.
He can't help but wonder about the history of this place. Masterson can't possibly have been responsible for this decor...?