Ambrose is hiking through the Dreaming holding Sir Tristan's eyes. "Don't drop them," Tristan cautions him, following behind him as usual.
"Could you walk where I can see you sometimes?" Ambrose asks him, feeling nervous about somebody constantly standing right behind him where he can't see.
They're heading toward the City of the Forgotten. Rey asks if Ambrose ever had an imaginary friend. He doesn't believe so, he says.
Ambrose thinks the City of the Forgotten looks weird. "Well," Rey puns, "since the eyes have it...," receiving groans all around. The eyes lead them to a junkyard. Ambrose likes it; it's full of all sorts of odds and ends. A cute moleman with enormous front paws is digging there.
"This place is awesome!" Ambrose greets it.
"Yeah. Yeah," the moleman agrees, looking around at the piles of stuff lying around. "Pretty neat. I dig it up."
Ambrose shows him the box that holds the eyes and asks if he has anything like that. "Think I have that. I have what you want," the moleman mumbles shyly. Ambrose asks him about making a trade, which confuses the moleman, who tells him he "digs and keeps," and gives things to his child but not for 150 years. Ambrose feels sad for him.
"This guy's a kid at heart," Rey tries. The moleman apparently likes Ambrose enough that he goes and roots out the box. Ambrose still feels like he should give the moleman something. It tells him to call when he wants something dug up.
In the box is Tristan's head. They have to put the eyes back in (Jared does it). After they do, the head opens its mouth and begins to spout a prophecy.
Ambrose makes a sling to carry the head in, since he doesn't want to swing it around by the hair. Faris teases him about how creepy it is, and offers to attach it to Ambrose to complete the image. The head mumbles in upset. "I agree, shut up!" Ambrose tells Faris.
Next they have to find the tongue. "Awwww, it's a ritual thing, ew!" Ambrose complains.
"Hope the satyrs don't have it," Faris jokes.
Ambrose covers Sir Tristan-head's ears. "He's been traumatized enough!"
But where to find a tongue? In a place of communication or silence. Eshu takes point.
Their path takes them to a huge amphitheatre called the "Concert of Forgotten Songs." A ghost gives them directions to a disembodied tongue that sings faerie sagas. He tells them that musicians here keep track of forgotten music, which reminds them that they're looking for songs about Astarte. Jared and Faris go look into that, while Rey and Ambrose search for the tongue. They find three of her songs and get copies. "Scratch three more off the list," the archivist mumbles.
The tongue is in the keeping of a Nocker, who complains that it's his diva.
"It's a guy," counters Rey.
"Don't go enforcing gender roles on me!" the Nocker snaps. The book hits him.
Nevertheless, the Nocker doesn't want to give up the tongue.
"Look at this gentleman," Rey points out Sir Tristan. "He's not a changeling. He's True Fae. If you help, he'll probably owe you."
"Well...," the Nocker drawls. "If it's for the cause, I want to give him my best tongue."
They get what they came for and vacate before that conversation goes any further.
Ambrose is led to the gateway to the City of Balloon, a Pooka city of inflatables. A sphinx perched over the door challenges him: "What is your quest?"
"To put this guy back together," Ambrose answers it, then shouts as he's hurled into the air. "Augh, I know this one!"
He lands in a muck pile, where the fae find him. Rey explains that he has to lie to the sphinx. Anyway, they're in the city. From the head's indications, they need to head upward onto the balloons. Rey tells him about the city: it's a communist collective. Leadership belongs to the most recent funny-man.
There's rococo everywhere, which the Pooka consider the greatest joke of architecture and design ever. "Be kind to animals" posters are slathered all over. Faris tells them that to defend the city, the inhabitants toss out flyers containing the funniest joke in existence, which is so funny that it makes your head explode.
They get a dirigible pilot to take them to their destination, paying him with a funny story. He takes them to a dog pooka who sells boxes. Ambrose shows him an example of what they're looking for, and he does have it. But they must pay via...balloon race!
Ambrose is thrilled, but Rey calls dibs on piloting.
Dirigibles have afterburners! While Ambrose is looking theirs over, he gets a call from Jonas, telling him they've just met a mage named Walking Hawk. Ambrose knows the name all too well, and while he works, he tells them all about the First Cabal, the first team of magi the Traditions ever put together, with one member from each Tradition. Walking Hawk represented the Dreamspeakers. The First Cabal fell when the Solificati member betrayed them to the Technocracy after going Nephandi. Many of them died. Walking Hawk didn't, but no one ever heard from him again. They're all legends.
The race begins. Ambrose fires up the souped-up afterburners, and they blast past the boundaries of the city. Rey whoops and tries to maintain control. When a dog on a broom flies past, Ambrose cuts the power, and the winds lift their dirigible up into cloud castles. The box appears and opens, a hand pointing out toward their next destination: Courts of the Silfer, the wind elementals.
When they arrive, they're met by crystallized ice manifesting into armored knights. They do have a body part to guard, but they tell the travelers it must be won in a duel. "Have fun!" Rey chirps to Jared.
Jared kicks the other knight's ass in the duel, for which they're awarded a torso. Now they just need two legs, an arm and a heart. "The count is off," Ambrose realizes. They were told they'd need to find six pieces, but that's eight. Even if the tongue was removed later, it's still wrong.
Upon investigation, it turns out that Sir Tristan's heart is also in the book. They also realize that a bit of Sir Tristan is stuck in the Shadowlands. Ambrose wonders if that's weird for him, and whether it might affect his nature.
Ambrose gets a call from the Garou asking about Victoria Station. They think that's where he's supposed to put Sir Tristan back together. He tells them the prophecy thing is "kinda neat." Faris tells him that's totally cracked by everyone else's standards. "Fate tends to warp and bend around you people like candy."
"If the world always did what we thought it should," observes Ambrose, "It would be a bad place." No one can really argue with that.
Birds start flying past them, whisking them off the silver path toward Parrot Island in South Carolina. Faris says it's tied to the "reptilian dream." This is one of those places that exists in the real world, though not the way it does in the Dreaming.
The birds refer to their visitor as "shiny." One chats with them, telling them the birds are preparing for war against the Fomorians. They have a body part for Ambrose. Ambrose promises them shinies if they'll take them to it. The parrots have seen the White Court waking in the Forest of Lies, stirring as long ago as 1969, when they chased sidhe back into the real world. They also have rumors of the Red Court.
The body part is a leg, which with apologies to Sir Tristan, Ambrose decides not to attach yet, for ease of transport. Sir Tristan doesn't mind. Ambrose worries over the idea that putting him back together might spell his doom, but Tristan says he doesn't mind dying. He was a sorcerer in life as well as a knight. He understands that an influx of Glamour like that near the Moon must be a good thing. Ambrose isn't so thrilled, but "Well, the way you guys work, you'll explode if you're supposed to, right?"
A giant, three-stories-tall parrot who calls himself the King of the Birds flies them to Santa Fe and drops them on the top of Turtle Rock--a giant granite turtle who was wrapped in chains. Except now it's free. Ambrose talks to it, and realizes it is Turtle! Or Turtle's dream, at least, which Turtle Rock says is basically the same thing. This confuses Ambrose.
Turtle gives them the other leg. Ambrose sticks them on the torso, which stands up and starts following him, and asks Tristan if it's actually him now, and if it's weird. Tristan says it is, a little. Turtle advises that they inform the High King. Their next destination, Turtle riddles them, is "at the edge, when Now becomes Then." Ambrose gets this one: Greenwich.
"Awww, back to England!" he moans.
Rainstorm's Edge, Faris realizes, the edge of Spring.
Mark calls Ambrose. The lightning bolt Hermetic popped up in his bedroom. Mark stabbed him and teleported him away in self-defense before he realized who it was. Ambrose laughs, then tells him about Walking Hawk. Mark wants to meet him, fanboying over it a little before turning serious. Ambrose reminds him of their little time travel jaunt in Egypt when they met Walking Hawk, and asks Mark to get him to autograph a book for him.
At Rainstorm's Edge, the rain heals Sir Tristan and his arm grows back. Ambrose is pleased for him. They decide to take him to Tara for now, till they can put his heart back. Rey gets excited about showing Tristan off, but Ambrose asks Tristan if he wants to be shown off. Yeah, he's basking in the very idea.
Jared slaps a Kingdom Hearts 'Heartless' sticker on him.
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