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

[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...

[calledtoventure]

Let's not make the same mistake twice, shall we?

"Hello."

[eternally_aggrieved]

There is no spider here.

[calledtoventure]

Another ephemeron.

She opens a new note in her KI.

* Cat (???)
* Poem, sense of about to --
* Light on mirror
* Spider with eye

about to what?
my eye?
memory? dream? other Age?
  sleep?
  serenia?
  halfsleep?
  just sitting still? (don't scare it off?)

means of travel:
books
mirror
OTC door
party portal thing
Bahro caves
star fissure
bahro stones
OTC delivery?
how did the cat get here?

poem, mirror seem separate but: poem, books - words?
  virtual-Selenitic theory

London
'not on the Surface' - is there a Cavern below London?
  how to get there if so?
  journey cloths, earth rotation?
  extremely dangerous, DO NOT DO THIS

egg room?

maybe-not options:
  fly to london, look around (or maybe someone has a book to there)
  ask for help (cavern)
  ask for help (forum)
  ??? mail a cat ??? (traditional, why?)

She leans back against the wall and lets herself zone out again.

[eternally_aggrieved]

Ahrotahn stands in front of a polished brass mirror. Her reflection watches her. Tension builds in the stillness. If she moves... If she moves...

She wakes back up.

[calledtoventure]

Interesting. +1 for the dreams hypothesis. She makes a note.

She'll come back to this later. For now, she moves the mirror somewhere more out of the way, down by the docks, and then goes about her day.

[eternally_aggrieved]

Her day otherwise remains untroubled by inexplicable mirrors, cats, or spiders.

[calledtoventure]

She goes to bed an hour early that night, after minting a Dyne.

[eternally_aggrieved]

The dream is waiting for her there.

She walks slowly along a corridor, brass mirrors to each side of her. To her left, they reflect her walking through an endless desert of ash, spiked here and there with the charred stumps of trees. To her right, an endless array of herself stands, watching her pass with somber faces. It feels oddly comfortable to meander here among her endless reflections.

Then she reaches a door in the right-hand side of the passageway.

[calledtoventure]

She opens the door and steps through.

[eternally_aggrieved]

It opens into an unremarkable room. She catches a glimpse of her reflection in the mirrors. It steps across the threshold, so she knows that it must be safe to enter.

Then she wakes back up.

[calledtoventure]

She records this in her journal, then checks the time. Time to get up? Or go back to sleep?

[eternally_aggrieved]

There appears to be time to go back to sleep, given that it is four in the morning.

[calledtoventure]

Zzz.

[eternally_aggrieved]

She walks slowly along a corridor, brass mirrors to each side of her. To her left, they reflect her walking through an endless desert of ash, spiked here and there with the charred stumps of trees. Turning to her right, she falls out of bed. When her eyes jolt open, moonish light filters into the room: for a moment, the floor beneath her seems to ripple, reflecting like a pool of mercury. Cupping her hand, she draws the silvery fluid up to her mouth, but it drains away through her fingers.

No, wait, hold on, she's awake. That definitely just happened.

[calledtoventure]

—the floor—the light—

Apart from memory, what remains, now that she's awake?

[eternally_aggrieved]

Nothing. The floor is as solid as it ever was. The light is no more silver than usual.

[calledtoventure]

...

She records her dream in her journal. And she sits on her bed and thinks.

...

A smile slowly spreads across her face. She knows how to deal with this.

To: OTC
Subject: Re: Further purchase, and minting

I'd like to buy 10 Ka, 1000 Buddhitanka, and 1000 Dyne for Takkarash.

(Might as well get some other stuff while she's at it.)

---

She holds the brass wheel of a Buddhitanka coin between her fingers, and thinks. What does she want to know?

What does she need to know? She doesn't want to overdo it. What is the smallest answer that will get her unstuck?

What is required, to travel by mirror?

The coin disappears—

[all_the_worlds_have]

It doesn't take long at all for the message to return:

"Minted."

A vermilion crystal appears on the bed beside her, throbbing with red light. It is followed immediately by a tiny golden cogwheel with thousands of teeth, and a chrome orb the size of her head. The chrome orb hovers in the air near her right shoulder, shining intermittently with electric light; each flash of static corresponds with a matching tone, 'singing' a simple round that's annoyingly catchy.

After a few moments getting change from OTC, she's ready. The brass coin throws her into a memory. A girl with blonde hair sits at a small table, looking up at the looking-glass above her mantelpiece. A pair of kittens, one black, one white, sit on her lap.

She shoos the kittens down from her lap, climbs up her mantelpiece, touches the mirror, and disappears.

[calledtoventure]

Surely it can't be that simple. Someone would have noticed if touching a mirror in the presence of a black cat were sufficient to travel between Ages.

She redeems another Buddhitanka. What else is required?

[all_the_worlds_have]

Familiar-looking spiders sit in rows of cages, each cage with one mirrored side. Someone drones on in the background about something or other. The words are indistinct at best.

One of the spiders disappears from its cage, followed by a scream from the adjacent room, accompanied by a screeching sound, as of something sharp being dragged across glass.

[calledtoventure]

So the cats don't seem to be required.

...She's tempted to try again. But it's easy to become too free with taking hints. She'll wait, and maybe she'll figure out something on her own.

She lies back on her bed and stares at the ceiling.

Time passes.

[calledtoventure]

Later that morning, after reading the forum, she decides to try drawing blessings. She writes the name of each one on an index card, shuffles them, and draws three times: resolve, swiftness, change. Seems promising.

---

It's around noon when it occurs to her that the cat needed to know where it was, before it could use the mirror. She goes back to the docks to try again.

She contemplates where she is: the depth of the cavern, the shape of the continents, the earth in its course around the sun, the Book Written by Ri'neref of Garternay, the other Books and Stones and mirrors throughout D'ni, the KI on her wrist and its sisters, the Sending Stone and the business card in her pocket: land and space and worlds reaching out around her.

She thinks of these things, and she thinks also of that half-seen and whole-remembered light, as she gazes at the mirror's glass. She tries to reach with her mind, to find-see-discover-intuit-sense-feel where or how here might connect to there.

And if it doesn't work, she'll keep trying anyway. Resolve was her first blessing today, and she is determined to make proper use of her hints.

[eternally_aggrieved]

She remembers in the morning that she dreamed that she stood between two mirrors. Her reflection moved its hand, so she moved hers. Her reflection smiled, so she smiled back. It seemed a perfectly sensible way to act.

In the light of the cavern, however, nothing seems to be working.