Location: Leaving the Void. Hopefully. Destination: Towards the Weird Shiny Thing, apparently. Buckle up.

  Gods. Okay. Breathing. Mostly. The stones… they actually did something. Not just a vague nudge, but a clear, unequivocal direction. A destination. Sort of. That mental flash of a map – threads of light across the impossible black – burned itself onto my memory, fragile as it was. And the stones themselves, even after the light faded, kept pulsing slightly faster, humming with a low, resonant energy that spoke of connection, of somewhere else.

  No time for tea. No time for careful consideration or second-guessing the sanity of aiming my failing house towards potentially hostile, non-Euclidean geometry based on directions provided by sentient hair channeling power through prehistoric rocks while stranded in the literal void. Nope. This was quite possibly our only shot before the capacitor fully drained and we became a permanent, frozen art installation titled 'Hubris and Hair'. Action first, existential dread later.

  Grabbed the stones carefully – they felt warm now, alive, the internal pulse strong and insistent against my skin. The Hair, unprompted, detached a few guiding tendrils from its main mass coiled around my arm and flowed ahead of me, leading the way down to the cellar, its movements now fluid and purposeful instead of anxious or listless. It knew what needed doing. Or at least, it had more of a clue than I did.

  Down in the damp, cold cellar (which felt even colder now, the ambient chill of the void palpable even down here), the Navigational Orb was still dark. Lifeless. Useless. But that wasn't my target. To the side, usually hidden behind spare casks of purified water and emergency warding components, is the Primary Directional Matrix interface. It’s not a wheel or a lever; this house predates such crude controls for its core dimensional drive. It’s a smooth obsidian panel etched with complex, interlocking runes that shift and flow based on the house’s spatial awareness and energy state. Normally, it passively reflects the Orb's data or follows ambient ley lines. Inputting a specific, non-standard destination? That’s… tricky. Haven’t had to do it manually in over a century.

  Placed the three pulsing stones directly onto the obsidian panel. They settled instantly, the panel beneath them seeming to ripple slightly in response. Okay. Contact. Now what? Tried channeling raw navigational energy again, like before. The stones pulsed brighter, the house groaned, the capacitor reading dipped alarmingly, but the panel runes didn't lock onto the signal. Just more fuzzy intent, no calculable vector.

  Right. Think, Rachel, think. How did these activate? The Hair. The resonance. The focus provided by its unique energy signature interacting with the stones' frequency. It wasn't just my magic; it was sympathetic resonance. Gods, this was going to be awkward.

  "Alright, you," I addressed the Hair, which was now coiled possessively around the stones on the panel, occasionally nudging one slightly with a questing strand. "Remember that humming thing you were doing? The specific frequency that made these rocks wake up? Can you do that again? But this time… channel it? Through me? Onto the panel?"

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  It tilted its 'head' end, a ripple running through its length. Communicating complex intent to the Hair is guesswork at best. It understands emotion, simple commands, occasionally complex sarcasm (I think), but abstract magical theory? Probably not.

  Tried a different approach. Visualisation. Poured energy into my connection with the Hair – that strange, intrinsic link forged by the Deal. Pushed the memory of the mental map – the threads of light, the pulsing destination – towards it, focusing on the direction the stones had indicated, the feeling of connection. At the same time, I laid my hands gently on the obsidian panel, trying to act as a bridge, focusing the navigational intent. "There," I whispered, more to myself than the Hair. "We need to go there. Understand?"

  For a moment, nothing. Just the low groan of the house, the faint, rapid pulse of the stones, the cold seeping from the walls. Then, the Hair began to hum again. That low, pure, multi-toned chord. It resonated through the stones, through my hands, directly into the obsidian panel. The runes beneath my fingers flared. They stopped their chaotic shifting and began aligning, forming complex, interlocking patterns I hadn’t seen before. The Navigational Orb across the room suddenly flickered, not coming fully online, but displaying that same cryptic star-map thread pattern for a split second before going dark again.

  The entire house shuddered. Not a groan of strain this time, but a deep, resonant thrum, like a vast engine coming to life. Power levels on the capacitor reading actually spiked for a moment, drawing energy not from its reserves, but from… outside? From the void itself? Or maybe from the destination? The stones on the panel glowed intensely, their light projecting swirling patterns onto the cellar ceiling. The Hair tightened its coils around them, humming louder, acting like a living conduit.

  "Okay," I breathed, trying to keep my hands steady on the vibrating panel. "Okay, house, good house, you recognize that then? Good. Now go." Pushed a final surge of intent, mingled with the Hair's resonance and the stones' directional pulse, directly into the accepting matrix.

  The reaction was instantaneous and far more controlled than the violent ejection from the Biblioplex. No ripping sound this time. Instead, a profound sense of disengagement. The view through the cellar's small viewport didn't blur or tear; the stars simply… elongated, stretched into impossible lines of light, then folded. The oppressive silence was replaced by a rushing, roaring sound that wasn't quite sound, more like the universe itself holding its breath before a sneeze. The house vibrated intensely, a feeling of immense, controlled power flowing through its very structure. We were moving. Not drifting. Moving. Destination: Unknown, possibly terrifying, definitely pointed out by sentient hair and weird rocks. Standard.

  Can’t maintain this interface indefinitely, the energy feedback is already making my teeth rattle. And I need to be upstairs to monitor the jump, reinforce internal stabilizers if necessary. Who knows what the transition entails.

  So. This seems like a logical place to pause this… record. This guide to getting through it. Which mostly seems to involve improvising wildly and hoping for the best while complaining about one's hair. Maybe that is the lesson. Managed to fill almost a year's worth of entries, documented a fair slice of absurdity. If anyone ever finds this, maybe they’ll get a laugh. Or a headache. Probably both.

  Right now, though, survival takes precedence over record-keeping. Time to see where this reality-bending ride actually takes us. Hopefully somewhere with decent tea and less existential dread. But I’m not holding my breath.

  * Rachel