Cleanup on Isle 12...

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam is about to object, but then she remembers they're dealing with Will and Sam is probably exactly right.

"I know. I just don't want to deal with the cacophony." she admits. "Let's just do it then and hope the gouges come off with it..."

[Samantha McManus]

"I'll see if I can get a grip here," she says, reaching out with her mind to feel out the contours and boundaries, cautious about the gouges.

[Miriam Bell]

How does one undo something so tied to having reached a certain tranquility and acceptance herself?

As Sam traces the outline of the paradoxically infinite expanse, Miriam plunges her hands into the thus revealed edge and grips it. It tears through her hands so cleanly, even she doesn't notice it at first. Not until shadows and blood pool beneath her fingers, rivulets running down across the surface as she lifts the mirror. Like tearing off a scab, bits clinging to the underside that have bonded to it, but the spill of Miriam's shadow seeks to soak up the anguish of it. It's not fun, but... bearable, even if the pain of it is written clear as day on her face. Unmoored. No belonging. Directionless. Alone amid so many voices.

But then the lifting and dissolving surface reaches the gouges hit a snag, the splintering shards extending inwards as much as out, sunk and spread like roots. Unearthing them opening burning gashes on Miriam's arms that slowly crawl up past her elbows and towards her shoulders. Betrayal. Abandoned. Shunned. Pity.

[Samantha McManus]

"How long have you been holding this in?" Sam asks. She's back on the bench, but somehow she's also all around. This was pulled from her mind, after all.

"You don't have to be alone anymore. You can belong. This isn't pity at all, it's realizing you came all this way with me."

She tries to give the words emotional weight. Something to bolster Miriam, and drawing from what Sam feels.

[Miriam Bell]

"For years, Sam. It's how my power works. How it's always worked." There's quite a bit of annoyance and even a bit resentment in the current of her thoughts. Even if Sam's feelings do ease the sting, halting the advance of the wounds on her arms.

"You reconciled other peoples thoughts with compartments and mythology. I did it with loneliness and hurt. If I hurt then I know I still exist apart from others and their own lone thoughts in their minds. Just because I'm coping better doesn't mean it's gone."

[Will Stanton]

With the surface layer of Will removed here in the mindscape, the clay began to spread out and flow, released from the restraining tension of the mental construct. Slowly but surely, it oozed out, fleeing the remnants of Miriam's mental prison.

[Miriam Bell]

"I can't keep them in..." Miriam groans, still holding on to the mirror's edge as she tries to let it slowly dissolve even as it begins to crack and splinter. "If this breaks apart while they're spilling out I don't know what will happen."

[Samantha McManus]

"I'll do what I can."

Samantha's presence on the bench becomes increasingly blurry and indistinct as she focuses more on the flock surrounding Will. She intervenes here and there. A peck, a caw. Mostly just nudging to keep the shapeshifter's mind corraled where it strays.

She only has to be everywhere. Simple, right?

[Will Stanton]

The shapeshifter did not seem to be content to be corralled.

It had been difficult enough to shove all of Will into the mirror in the first place, and in the months since that had happened, the pressure inside had only built more and more. The radiant sensations of calm, warmth and contentment that had been a staple of the mirror had broken down, too; and the cacophony of thoughts, ideas and actions were back, growing louder and louder by the moment.

Whether Will was consciously aware of anything here in the mindscape was questionable, at best; there weren't any real coherent thoughts here. Just pure subconscious urges and desires, straining back against the attempts to bundle them back up once again.

[Miriam Bell]

"This is bad. This is really quite bad!" Miriam tries not to panic. The number one lesson for telepaths. Don't lose your focus or you spiral. Which is hard when raw emotion bucking against serenity is the problem in the first place. She tries to focus on the parts of the mirror that are still whole just to calm herself, but she can't keep her mind from the rending gouges. Everything has a faultline, an expiration date, the one step that pushes things too far.

And now there is nowhere for the sea of emotions to go but out. Into the world as a deluge of clay, into their minds. They burst a dam that feels like it could drown the world. Unless...

"The empty places! Sam, we need to bring them to the halls I wandered into!"

[Samantha McManus]

"Alright, which way do you want to go with this? I push, you pull?"

[Miriam Bell]

"I'll find the door, you push us through." she says and with that she drops the mirror, the surface splintering into a million cracks.

Inbetween. Empty. How the fuck did I get there? Lost track of myself wrapped up in their thoughts. Drifted off into the connection. Not my mind, not Sam's, not Will's but the endless gulf between us...

A heavy cloud of melancholy settles over them and yawns in the sky. The joyous pain of being known and the haunting relief of connection. In that fine line that splits the world above them they see an inverted landscape of buildings and roads, sprawling and empty.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam's realized by now that she can't contain all of Will so she just tries to limit his options, hoping that the pressure releases into the yawning rift to terra incognita that Miriam has helpfully torn in the fabric of the Astral.

[Will Stanton]

This, at least, seemed to be a more promising approach, with the ravens serving as more as funneling mechanisms more than out and out barricades, diverting the rapidly increasing flow of clay from the former mirror down the passageways Sam so chose.

[Miriam Bell]

The torrent of Will flows into the twisting turns and passages of this liminal space. There's plenty of space for them to occupy or even populate. Empty corridors bereft of anything but the most barebones of set dressings. Convoluted office spaces just begging to be filled with people. Forest paths and train lines, airport terminals lined with empty stores, subway stations and wayhouses on dusty roads.

As an interim space to hold the (near?) infinite amount of Wills it works quite well, but more than that it's just asking to be filled and staffed and decorated. It doesn't need it to function, as a metaphorical space between people that both divides and connects them it's transitory and empty by design, but 'serviceable' can certainly be improved upon. A lot of that sentiment they can feel coming from Miriam. Maybe here her walls are down or maybe it's her own growth that is letting the thoughts out, but she considers Will a large reason for being better at making more honest and lasting connections.

[Will Stanton]

An infinite number of people filling into an infinite number of rooms only works in thinly-veiled mathematical thought exercises and conceptual mindspace shenanigans. Absorbing massive amounts of real-world clay into one's mind? Well, we'll have to see how that works, won't we.

Rivers of clay flowed into the empty rooms, both directly in Miriam's headspace and...wherever else these things lay. For the most part, it was just cramming as much sheer mass as could be found in them; little time for organizing and sorting as the initial torrent had to be dealt with. But slowly, forms and figures began to emerge -- half-shaped and crude at first, as they tentatively felt out this new space.

[Samantha McManus]

"Holding it together?" Sam asks from everywhere and nowhere, making sure the last of the stragglers made it through.

[Miriam Bell]

"Have to." she manages. Something about this feels heavier than she anticipated. More solid somehow though in what way she struggles to tell. It's like her power is being weighed down. No, urged on, as if the added weight is trying to press these places into reality through her. She has no idea what that would do to campus but she's pretty sure she'd give out long before it was done. If it could even finish with how seemingly endless the halls and corridors are.

"It's trying to spill out. Become real, I mean. We need to... make it smaller somehow, change the metaphor, something that won't explode who knows how many nonsense buildings into the world. And still give Will something to be that can contain all of them." she adds, frantically trying to look through Will's mind for anything she can use. "A gate or something. With a doorman or a latch or chain? Something with enough metaphorical weight to control passage to bloody green-haired Narnia."

[Will Stanton]

Finding ideas in the mass of subconscious that was Will at the moment wasn't the difficult part. Holding on to one was another matter entirely.

The mirror had been a carefully thought out plan, metaphor carefully entwined with Miriam's powers and Will's sense of self. Coming up with something else on the fly would be...tricky. But how would you keep the boy in the glass once they've seen Paree?

[Samantha McManus]

"I don't suppose we've got room in the dorms for a little model Will-Town..."

[Miriam Bell]

"Still too much to fit... More abstract. Or intangible? I don't know. Fuck!" she curses. "A switchboard? Radio tower?" she rambles, apparently having stumbled into the 50s section of Will's couched memories. Radiowaves really stretched the definition of being 'physical' but maybe it would do to contain all these desires for expression? Tape reels of Wills and a broadcasting tower.

Carefully, like easing her foot of the brakes of a sports-car, she lets the mass of Wills dribble into the vague shape of her idea taking shape, trying to see if Will is receptive.

[Will Stanton]

It wasn't so much a matter of being receptive or not -- without a conscious mind here in the mindscape, it took relatively little effort to guide and shape Will in any manner Sam and Miriam so chose.

Some of the clay started grouping together, piercing the roof of these...whatever they were that was currently containing it as it grew up, and up, and up. A physical structure in a mindscape was a confusing concept to begin with, but a tall, narrow, red and white tower began to grow up, looming over the disjointed hallways of Miriam's mind.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam can't tell if the idea was sound but lacking in details or execution, but she can feel the pressure building in the radio tower without any way out of it. At first she thought it maybe clogged, metaphorically speaking, but as things get worse she realizes it's like trying to shove something through a wall. There's no turning Will into airwaves. Maybe something doesn't translate or it's just plain impossible. She can't tell, perhaps having overestimated what she is capable of. It's easy to think she can do whatever she wants when she's working in the medium of thought and Will but that is very clearly not the case.

"Fuck!" Her mental avatar clutches her head as if it might explode with clay. It certainly feels like it might. Why did she undo something that had worked rather than try to repair it. Now there's no calming either of the down enough to replicate the calm mirror lake. She recognizes she's spiraling but can do precious little to stop it. The radio-tower bulges and twists, pulling up and taking the building with it as corridors and hallways and facades climb up around it like vines on a trellis. "There's no room! I don't know how the mirror compressed it all!" she gasps, mind skipping across metaphors. Warehouse full of flat-packed Wills. A tree, branches heavy with fruit that are a more vibrant shade of green than what you'd expect to find in nature. Bits and pieces of Will's factory and town wedging themselves between buildings and gaps on campus. A thick cloud, every drop of rain grey clay and letting out a faint 'Weeee!' as they fall. A garden of yellow-gold flowers with large glowing bulbs. A factory chunking and clunking as it puts together different kinds of Wills, mixing and matching body-parts from countless hoppers going from 'Hero' to 'Dad' to 'Maid' to 'Cowboy' and so forth into more and more specialized and detailed ones.

She seems unable to latch on to any one of them, the increasing urgency and her own failures leaving her unable to tell what, if anything is doable for her.

[Samantha McManus]

"The mirror worked because it wasn't just containment, it was a release valve. I think the more complex we make this, the harder it's going to get. We need simple. Little to no moving parts."

"Take a step back. If you focus too much on one detail it's easy to get lost."

[Miriam Bell]

"I don't see you coming up with any ideas!" she snaps before she can think better of it. She regrets it almost immediately and them being telepathically connected means the wave of shame is quite noticeable, but it also let her feel the full extend of the outburst in the first place.

Sam does have a point, but it's hard to listen and take advice in moments like these. Reminding herself that Sam is trying to help takes precious time and attention, but she wasn't exactly making progress to begin with. "Simple. Right." Furniture or an appliance. Dispenser. Vending machine? Water cooler? Simple but boring. Not nearly expressive enough for Will. And it doesn't have to be a dispenser. It's Will; they made a mirror produce more of themselves. A repository then. An encyclopedia? With extra blank pages to write and draw on that can spring to life when torn out?

She focuses her mind on the thought, letting the pressure flow into letters, images and pages...

[Will Stanton]

The radio tower began to almost shimmer and quiver in the light, metallic beams twisting and contorting and reshaping themselves in the strange fluidity that Will's shifting often brought with it.

Miriam caused the once-rigid structure to bend and fold in upon itself, like a sculptor working with the clay, folding Will inside themselves like a flower wilting in the heat. Sparks flew, from the metal smashing against metal and the wiring shaking itself free, crumbling down and changing from steel to leather, cabling to paper, as Miriam shrunk him down into a book...

[Samantha McManus]

As Miriam condenses Will down, the flock circling around tightens. Ultimately, there's just three of Sam ringing Miriam as she works, the representations fairly mundane with just their hair color showing Miriam who she's dealing with.

[Miriam Bell]

There's so much that Miriam has to stop paying too close attention to shaping every bit into a page. She'll just have to hope that the process is well enough on it's way and Sam can finish corralling everything into the tome. Will's mind is pouring out of hers, through it, around it, she can't tell anymore. She's directed the flow best as she could but now she's being swept up in the swirling tornado of countless pages around her as it descends towards the book that will hold them all somehow. She feels herself blurring at the edges but she knows herself, knows Will, she can draw the lines where one begins and the other ends. But buried deep inside of Will are the shards of broken glass that are his memories of Melpomene. Those, she worries, would be harder to tell if they sliced through her and embedded themselves. Like invisible splinters hidden in the storm of paper.

My name is Miriam Bell. I am only me.
My name is Miriam Bell. I am only me.
My name is Miriam Bell. I'm me. Just me.
My name is Miriam Bell. I'm me.
I'm me. I'm me I'm me I'm me

Her avatar is floating, still clutching her head as the paper-storm around her is being drawn down into the book below and slowly flickers and fades as the book is finished.

In the real world Miriam slumps over on the couch, head rolling limply as she falls to her side.

[Null]

"Ah, hell. We've got some mind problems going on again," one of the Will's said, catching Miriam before she could land too harshly. "Bit off a bit more than we could chew, I suppose?" they sighed, laying Miriam down on the couch.

[Samantha McManus]

"I've got you, Miriam." All three of Sam say, drawing closer, warding off any stray pages as the book condenses.

"You did a good job. This is working," she reassures.

[Miriam Bell]

"Just me..." Miriam mutters as Will gently lays her down. Her eyes are open but unfocused.

[Null]

This particular Will frowned, looking at Miriam's blank expression, going through his head about the best reactions to such a situation. Will would normally have a wide-ranging and compassionate response to such a situation... but this particular Will had only come out of the mirror for defensive purposes.

And so, they reared back and slapped Miriam across the face, trying to shock her back to awareness.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam jerks upright but still sways slightly.

"Wassat? Where... who?"

[Samantha McManus]

With Miriam abruptly yanked out of her midst on the mental front, it takes another moment or two for Sam to condense her mind back down into her body.

Her eyes flutter and she winces, pinching the bridge of her nose. "...bloody hell."

[Will Stanton]

A Will was by Sam's side too, quickly, trying to help her reacclimate to the physical world.

"You two alright? You kind of glazed over there..."

[Miriam Bell]

"...am fine..." Miriam mumbles, propping herself up awkwardly. "Just a lot of... everything..."

[Will]

"I see you ran into...issues," one of the Wills said, diplomatically, eying the book.

"Volumes even, perhaps..."

[Miriam Bell]

"The book... where's the book? Did it work?"

[Null]

The book was lying amidst what could only be described as a hazardworthy amount of shattered glass, presumably the remains of the mirror after whatever had happened in Miriam's mental construct had reflected and impacted the world at large. The dark forest green leather was clasped shut, the silver latch tightly screwed into the cover itself.

"'Did it work' is, I suppose, an open question," the Will over her frowned. "And depends a great deal on what it is you did in there."

[Samantha McManus]

"The mirror couldn't be salvaged. We had to make something else, or you would've just... expanded. Everywhere."