A badly-wrapped package.

[eternally_aggrieved]

A brown paper package sits on Ahrotahn's desk in Relto. It shakes and wobbles, giving the general impression that it is grievously annoyed.

Comments

[eternally_aggrieved]

The cat follows a moment later.

[calledtoventure]

And they are standing in a short square tunnel cut out of the stone, overlooking a vast cavern and a dimly glowing orange lake.

Ahrotahn leans the mirror against the tunnel wall.

[eternally_aggrieved]

The cat pokes the mirror.

"No. Not here."

It looks up at Sonata.

"... But perhaps elsewhere. Do you have a London?"

[calledtoventure]

"Yes, though getting there would be a bit of a hassle. We're currently under New Mexico."

[eternally_aggrieved]

"Ah. The New World. That explains a few things."

The cat runs a claw along the mirror's surface.

"Well then. I suppose I owe you something."

It turns and looks up at Ahrotahn.

"Listen closely, now. You wouldn't want to forget this."

The cat's eyes fix on Ahrotahn's.

"In matters of the Bazaar, look to love, always. But make the stories or they will be made for you. Be careful who you are. Do you recall how It came to that place? And they sang of their lightnings and shapeful disgrace? And It tilted Its vanes and ennobled Its spires. They welcomed it then and commingled all choirs. And not enough, not enough. Still It mourns."

The cat clears its throat, touches the mirror, and disappears.

[calledtoventure]

Ahrotahn examines the mirror's surface, then touches it.

[eternally_aggrieved]

It appears to be a normal mirror, but something about the surface...

It seems fluid, for a moment, with the light of a lush jungle beyond a pane of glass -

No. It is solid, and silver.

But the light, that rotting, succulent light -

It still remains, in memory.

[calledtoventure]

Hmm.

She repeats the cat's rhyme.

Do you recall how it came to that place
And they sang of their lightnings and shapeful disgrace
And it tilted its vanes and ennobled its spires
They welcomed it then and commingled all choirs
And not enough, not enough: still it mourns.

And she touches the mirror again.

[eternally_aggrieved]

The mirror remains stubbornly solid.

[calledtoventure]

Perhaps the whole thing, then, starting from In matters of the Bazaar? And running a fingernail over the surface first.

[eternally_aggrieved]

No.

Though repeating the poem again does have a sense of... expectancy to it, somehow.

[calledtoventure]

Poem again, and then just look into the mirror?

[eternally_aggrieved]

Nope.

[calledtoventure]

Hmm.

Run a finger along the mirror. Look into her reflection's eyes, and hold the gaze. Start from Listen closely, now.

Clear her throat, and touch the mirror.

[eternally_aggrieved]

None of these appear to work.

[calledtoventure]

...

She remembers the light. There was definitely something there, in the mirror's surface. And there was something in the poem, too.

She sits down across from the mirror, back against the stone, and enters the poem into her KI for later reference. When that's done, she looks into the mirror and thinks.

[eternally_aggrieved]

Nothing continues to happen.

Upon further reflection, the light and the mirror are definitely interlinked, but the poem seems... different. Separate.

[calledtoventure]

...Not the reflection, but the surface. Ignore the mirror, see the glass.

She moves her head slowly from side to side, trying to catch the light. Or, hopefully, the other light.

[eternally_aggrieved]

... For a moment, perhaps. But no more. It is not the light she knows in her memories. How could this mirror create that? Such things do not exist in reality.

[calledtoventure]

And yet she has seen it.

She sits, and thinks, and remembers.

[eternally_aggrieved]

The memory of light still lingers in her mind, as corpse-bright as ever. Like a will-o-wisp or the egg of a strange god.

It does not seem amenable to prodding.

[calledtoventure]

She tries to remember it onto the mirror's surface, to see the surface not with her eyes but with her mind, to imagine the light so vividly that she can look at the mirror and see it.

[eternally_aggrieved]

That doesn't seem to work, either.

[calledtoventure]

Then she might just sit and rest here a while.

[eternally_aggrieved]

Just on the edge of sleep, there's something -

Something odd.

A spider, pale and gangly, skitters past on the floor. It holds an eye in its mandibles. Absently, Ahrotahn notes that it looks much like her eye...