Episode Four: Datura

Featuring: Shakespeare, music from ghosts, a sly serving-girl, and too many riddles to count.

Episode description: Anna reads Mabel a story and begins a treasure hunt.

Episode Overview
In which a trail is followed.

Anna goes to the library and discovers a trail of clues around a mysterious riddle.

Trigger Warnings:

 * Distortion, illness.

Episode Summary
Anna goes looking for a book to find out what "datura" means after seeing it in her dream in episode two. She finds an encyclopedia with the page she needs carved out, instead finding an EP record with "hold with the hare" written on it. She plays it and finds a bead from a doll stuck on it, and when she goes to find the doll she finds the page buried in the doll's skirt, overwritten in reddish ink with a riddle.

Anna hangs up and comes back later, telling Mabel that her mother's gotten sick but she doesn't want to talk about it, and that her mother told her what "hold with the hare" means-- it's from the saying run with the hounds, hold with the hare, and is used to call someone a hypocrite. She then recounts her dream, where a child version of Mabel led her outside to show her the house overrun in vines and ivy.

Continuity
''' Please note that this section contains spoilers for later episodes of Mabel. Continue at your own risk. '''


 * Seeing as the EP record presumably belongs to Sally, we can assume Luna is the hare mentioned.
 * This is the first in a series of riddles Anna has to solve.



Trivia
'''Please note that this section contains spoilers for later episodes of Mabel. Continue at your own risk.'''


 * Luna's a hypocrite who broke her promise, which makes the hare metaphor a bit on the nose.
 * All the mirrors in Anna's dreams are covered, meaning we're probably seeing the house as Mabel remembers it, rather than how Anna knows it.
 * Anna reads Mabel a line from Richard the Third-- "and nothing can we call our own but death / and that small model of the barren earth / which serves as paste and cover to our bones." She quotes this again in episode 28, adding another line: "for God’s sake let us sit upon the ground / and tell sad stories of the death of kings."