In an uncharacteristic discovery, Raguna finds Anette parked outside of his house early in the morning. For the first time in several weeks, she appears to be exhausted. She said she saw a monster in the village and it attacked her suddenly. Raguna looks around town for clues, but it doesn't see any signs of the monster. He then talks to Mist, who tells him that she saw a duck in the lake near her house. Raguna thinks it might be the monster Anette ran away from earlier. Mist tells him that it's pretty tame, and actually warmed up to her after she gave it some food. The duck isn't in the lake at the moment, but there's a possibility he could see it later.
He then goes to the church, where she sees Selphy talking to Stella. It's unusual for her to be in church at all, but according to Lara, Selphy is working part-time there to pay off the money that is owed to her. Perhaps it would teach her a lesson on how to spend wisely, but at the rate Selphy goes through money and books, she might soon be able to telekinetically manipulate paper.
Miraculously, Danny's store is still doing business. He seems wholly determined to outdo Rosetta, which at this point seems highly unlikely. Instead of begging Ragnua to buy something, he goes off on a tangent about how he knitted his own store apron, and asks for some Good Cloth (Quality Cloth, maybe?) to maintain it. Always "gimme gimme gimme" with this dude...
Meanwhile, Bianca's villa is still open. It seems she and her elven maid will be staying a little while longer, not out of any attachment to the village, but because Francoise can only thrive in a region such as this one. Even Bianca is taking a turn to brush Francoise's coat. After Raguna visits Bianca and Tabatha, he runs into Brodik, the owner of the house across the street from Kross and Erik. He won't respond to people knocking on his door, but seems to love to go out of his way to pester Raguna for no good reason. (And here, I thought Danny was a real peace of work. The game seems to recognize this, too, as the guy is shown as "Irritating Guy" and "Loud Guy" before actually introducing him.)
He retreats and moves on to more friendly territory, where he finds Cinnamon at her daily fishing spot. She tells him that she used to live in the big city before moving out to Trampoli. She hated it because she couldn't concentrate on her magic studies. Nowadays, she doesn't practice magic anymore...just fishes and gazes at the stars. There was a meteor shower early in the morning in the southern sky, but she couldn't get up quickly enough to see it.
Speaking of skies, Raguna hasn't gone up to Whale Island in a couple of days, so he climbs the beanstalk. The whale greets him again, but warns him that it's losing rune energy at an alarming rate. If it dissipates completely, there's a possibility that it could crash into Trampoli and kill everyone. (Oh, gee...I hope this isn't one of those Majora's Mask-type Timed Missions where I have to solve the problem in X days or risk being caught in a Colony Drop). Raguna hurries to investigate, and when he reaches the tail, he notices that the large Rune cluster at the top of the tree has shrunk considerably. This, unfortunately, hasn't stopped the large fruits from falling off it and rolling down the stalk. Raguna has suffered a lot of injuries just getting up here, so he leaves and goes back to the surface, where he finds the duck monster swimming around in Mist's pond. He remembers seeing several of them in the Lava Ruins, but they were slightly more dangerous, attempting to batter him with Magic Music. Seeing the duck makes him wonder...was Anette doing a midnight mail run when she encountered it?
