Students were relaxing. Professors were preparing their lesson plans. A giant owl was flying around and leaving feathers everywhere. It was a relatively peaceful Saturday afternoon at Garreg Mach Monastery. Or, at least, it would have been if not for a frantic Caspar running around the monastery looking for someone.

    "Marianne! There you are!" the turquoise-haired lad shouted into the chapel.

    "Eep!" squeaked Marianne as she was suddenly disrupted from her praying.

    Caspar ran up to Marianne, nearly crashing into her. "You can talk to horses, right?!" 

    "Uh... I... Where did you hear-" stuttered Marianne.

    "We have a situation at the stables, c'mon!" Caspar interrupted Marianne's indecisiveness by swiftly grabbing her hand and leading her to the source of his problems.

    The two made it back to the monasteries stables in record time, rendering Marianne completely out of breath.

    "Haaah... you still... haven't told me... why-"

    "Ok, so y'see," Caspar interrupted yet again, "The Professor assigned Dorothea and I to stable duty for some reason. Now, I'm much better at swinging an axe than dealing with animals, and Dorothea told her she wasn't good at riding anything, but Teach insisted that we try to get some riding practice in for some reason. Anyway, Dorothea kinda got her leg caught in a stirrup and her hand caught in between some wooden slats when one of the horses started freaking out and, well... maybe you should just take a look."

    As Caspar opened the door to the stable, Marianne was finally able to focus enough to hear the agitated horse noises coming from within. She then immediately noticed that something was off about the stable; the whole place seemed to be covered with some sort of thin string. It was stretched taut around nearly every wooden support of the stable.

    "Who put all this string all over the stable? The horses won't be able to get around with all this..." Marianne asked.

    "Oh, uh, well... it's Dorothea."

    "But she's so nice, why would she-"

    "No no no, I mean, like, it is Dorothea. The string. Is her. See, there's her hand up there!" Caspar pointed to a thin gap between two wooden planks where there was a feminine hand sticking out. However, on the other side of the planks there was only the strange string that was looping around the rest of the stable. Marianne was too shocked to say anything.

    "Don't worry Dorothea, I brought Marianne to calm Oscar down!" Caspar shouted, not sure where the string's ears were within the stretchy mess.

    Dorothea weakly wiggled the fingers on her intact hand.

    "...Oh... Goddess..." Marianne gasped.

    "Yeah, so that's why you gotta calm Oscar down! C'mon!" the urgency suddenly returned to Caspar's voice as he once again took Marianne by the hand and led her out the other side of the stable. There, one of the horses was stomping up a storm seemingly upset by the fact that it was wearing a saddle and that it was being prevented from going any further by a very thin but surprisingly sturdy strand of Dorothea keeping it in place.

    "Oh, poor Oscar! He hates that type of saddle!" Marianne cried upon seeing the restless mare.

    "Poor Oscar?! More like poor Dorothea! Look, do you think you can calm him down?"

    "I can try," Marianne responded. She careful approached the horse, who seemed to recognize the gentle blue-haired girl in an instant. After a very pleasant horse to human conversation, Marianne got Oscar to calm down and removed the irritating saddle from his back.

    "Ok Oscar, go get some food while we figure this out," advised Marianne, patting the horse's head and sending it away.

    "Whew, thanks Marianne! You're a life saver!" Caspar said, removing Dorothea's foot from the stirrup, "Though, I was kinda hoping that Dorothea would just, y'know, untangle after all that..." He held one of the two unstretched portions of the former opera singer in his hand as it twitched, seeming relieved that at least that part wasn't being stretched so tightly. Still, despite that slack portion of her laying limply on the ground, she was still thinner than rope and most of her was tightly wound around the inside of the stable.

    "Guess I better start getting her unwound, huh... Man, I hate cleaning," griped Caspar.

    Marianne hesitated for a moment, then spoke up, "Uh, well, I guess if you need help-"
 
    "Really?! Aw, you're the best Marianne! Here, let's go inside and follow the trail! I'm sure we'll get her unwound in no time!"

    The unlikely duo re-entered the string-strewed stable. Out of curiosity, Caspar plucked one of the errant strands of girl, producing a pleasant, harp-like sound. He then plucked a shorter strand, making a higher pitched but still rather nice sound.

    "Hey, that's actually kinda nice..." Caspar pulled on a few more random strings, seeing if he could make a simple tune out of it.

    "Um... I don't think Dorothea appreciates that..." Marianne whispered.

    Caspar blushed and stopped, "Oh, right, sorta lost track of myself there." He looked over to Dorothea's intact hand and saw it making a rude gesture in his general direction.

    "Sorry Dorothea, I guess you just make beautiful music even if you can't sing! Hahaha!" Caspar laughed at his own joke.

    Marianne tried not to be rude, but after all that tension had been dispersed, she couldn't help but also chuckle at the ridiculousness of the scenario.

    Dorothea's hand went limp in resignation as the thought crossed her mind: I really need to have a talk about switching my focus to reason and faith...