Cleanup on Isle 12...

[Will Stanton]

The dorm room was still a mess, though a mess being actively dealt with.

The broken window had been tarped off, the shards of glass swept away. The shelves were in the process of being put back up, books replaced in their proper place. Furniture being un-tossed and turned, broken bits marked and checked. It was a process, restoring a room after this level of fight, but the process was well underway.

Performing the process was six different Wills, working in tandom and unison to try to get the apartment shipshape before Miriam or Sam got home. One (Null?) kept an eye out the window, his eyes darting around the quad looking for more threats, while the others ran vacuums, lifted heavy things, and the like. Normally, there wouldn't be this many active Wills in once place, but they were sort of stuck here -- the mirror, with three gouges in it's surface, not letting anyone in or out.

This also meant there was less stuff in the room than there normally was, but that's a problem for a different day.

[Miriam Bell]

"What in the bloody hell happened here?" Miriam asks as she comes into the room from the hall, surveying the chaos of cleaning up a minor disaster area. She looks over at the tarp and frowns. "Did Sam throw somebody out the window? Did you?"

[Null]

"We were invaded, is what happened here," the one peering out the window said. "That short girl. Ryn or whomever. Came sneaking in here when you were gone.

She opened the window, carefully. She did not leave with the same courtesy," he scowled.

[Miriam Bell]

"She really did seem too intense to be here for clothes. What did she want? More beef with our resident Triad? I knew making friends via punching was stupid." she says, still under the impression that Will send her packing.

[Null]

"She wasn't exactly entirely talkative. Didn't come with a manifesto or anything. She just came, scratched up the mirror a bunch, and then was chased off," 'Null' said, jerking his thumb at the mirror.

[Samantha McManus]

A familiar voice nears.

"It looks like a bloody bomb went of in the hallwa-"

"...oh," she says, looking in on the room.

[Will]

"Sorry, Sam," a Will said, with an abashed smile. "I hoped to get everything clean before you got back, but, well..." she said, gesturing. "I think I left my most efficient cleaning practices in my other brain."

[Miriam Bell]

"She attacked the mirror?" she says, walking over to check on the scratches, carefully running her fingers over them. "What a bitch." she says before noticing something about the damage. "She scratched up my telepathic construct. How the bloody hell...!?"

[Null]

Miriam's reflection in the mirror, identical except for the green hair and green eyes, nevertheless seemed to fit wearing her expression of annoyance and confusion.

"She's got some razor-sharp claws, or something," the Will by the window frowned. "Diced me into fucking pieces without so much as a by-your-leave, and then managed to run away from a half dozen of me. So I've been both literally and figuratively emasculated today, and it's barely even lunchtime."

[Samantha McManus]

"Wait, she? Who did this?"

[Will Stanton]

"Your friend from the forest," Will piped up for the first time. 'Ryn."

"She shimmied the window open and went over to the mirror first. Looking for more clothes? Or a passageway back somewhere; did the Vortex not work?" Will added, scratching her chin.

[Miriam Bell]

"I knew something was wrong with her." she says, then suddenly winces when she reaches out with her mind to brush over the gouges. "Ow!"

[William Stanton]

A good four heads turned Miriam's way when she suddenly cried out out of nowhere.

"You ok there, Miriam?" one asked, frowning, and walking over.

[Miriam Bell]

"I'm fine! Just didn't expect to run my mind over a razor's edge or something."

[Null]

"I assume whatever that is is why I can't go in and out, right?"

[Samantha McManus]

"She exists both physically and almost as a mental construct all at once."

[Miriam Bell]

"Great, so she came in, punched Will into the thoughts I gave him and left. The outfit wasn't that bad." she frowns.

"And yes, she messed it up. It's supposed to help guide your chaotic thoughts. I think you could probably force your way back in, but I wouldn't even try the other direction right now."

[Null]

"Well, I did try, and got nowhere. You think the little brat coulda gotten away from an army of me ready to punch her? She was lucky she got stuck with the remnant brigade," Will frowned.

[Samantha McManus]

"She did seem almost afraid of you. Or her world's version of you."

[Will Stanton]

"So, maybe she was trying to help you by sealing me in? A thank you for the fight?" Will posited.

[Samantha McManus]

"I honestly don't know. She's very direct, always in motion."

[Miriam Bell]

"She seemed happy enough to walk out of here wearing Stanton Chic."

[Will]

"And who could blame her.

Not sure the whys matter so much at the moment, though."

[Samantha McManus]

"No, we've got to fix this first. Maybe some of you in the mirror saw more."

[Will Stanton]

"I don't usually have a great viewpoint from the mirror, but I mean, we'll ask," Will nodded.

[Miriam Bell]

"It's the best thing I've ever done. By which I mean I don't know if I can just... fix it like that." she says, snapping her finger.

"It was a whole... moment, you know?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Hmm. What if we... well, you know how if you can't repair a dam, you build another one behind it and knock the original one down?"

[Miriam Bell]

"This is no dam we're talking about, it's a piece of art!" she huffs. "Besides, the 'water' played an equal part in making it..."

[Will]

"Not all art lasts forever," Will frowned. "Though if this one isn't, then we have a real problem on our hands."

[Samantha McManus]

"Okay so... if we view it as art, not all art can be repaired perfectly. It's not always the same after, but the repairs can be beautiful."

[Miriam Bell]

"Right, yes. Okay. We'll fix it, Will. Just... it was an emotional process. Make sure I don't screw it up?"

[Samantha McManus]

"I mean, this kind of work the intention and mindset matters, so I'm absolutely here for you, aye?"

[Miriam Bell]

"It's probably bad that my first instinct is to not do this sober..." she mutters. "Alright, fine, but I need a moment to put myself in the right headspace. Can you give us a mental staging area? Something not-so-rowdy from the fantasy epic inside your head?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Something secluded and relaxing, eh? I can do that."

Sam's mind reaches out to Miriam with the warmth of a stone hearth in a hunting hall, a fire crackling away with an iron pot of rich stew hung above. Around the hearth, wooden benches are made comfortable by draped animal pelts. Just the sort of place one might find Will Stanton, at least from one perspective.

[Miriam Bell]

"I really should have anticipated the cottagecore. That's on me." she says as she lets herself sink into Sam's mental impression and crosses her legs on one of the benches.

"Ready? I'll bring in the mirror..." Finding the mental construct and bringing it to the fore of this mindscape is the easy part, though it still feels like an incredible weight bearing down as the hall they're in expands in all direction. The walls recede into infinity and yet somehow still remain as a defined border in the endless distance. It's dizzying and disorienting to try and reconcile.

The stamped dirt and worn stones of the floor ripple before settling into a perfectly still surface of water. Beneath it a similarly staggering expanse. But the calm tranquility of the infinite is disrupted by four giant gashes where the water tears upwards in frozen shards of glass around a pool of chaotic iridescence within each furrow. The sound of glinting glass rings out only to be immediately swallowed and muffled in a way that goes immediately forgotten until the sound begins again.

[Samantha McManus]

"You ask me to dredge up Narnia, you get what you paid for," she quips as she sits down.

[Miriam Bell]

"Well... at least it's obvious what's wrong." Miriam says, looking out at the expanse and the four elongated geysers of broken glass. "How good are you at jigsaw puzzles?"

[Samantha McManus]

"Doesn't seem all that simple. I'm not sure how much of the damaged material we can salvage."

[Miriam Bell]

"We could peel back the whole surface and try to redo it but I still remember the chaotic mess underneath. At least right now it's still keeping things calm and settled."

[Samantha McManus]

"Still, glass is the metaphor you used, and glass isn't made to come back together like nothing happened."