Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Awareness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
loose ends
There is a Nobody In Particular who holds a certain belief about the world. He believes there are separate worlds, co-existing and occasionally intermingling, but essentially separate. He believes when somebody from the Day-kingdom moves through the Night-kingdom, the Dark world, they're in mortal peril they're in danger they might find themselves dragged out of the world where there is a beginning and an end finite laid-out a track to follow they might find themselves up to their elbows in darkness and shadow they might find themselves dealing in souls they might find themselves trapped caught as certainly as any bug who ever thought that tree bark looked tasty a moment before the amber rolled over fixed fixated held forever. There are pleasures in the Dark world but they're vicious pleasures, frightening, and they're not for those of the Day-kingdom.
Of course, those of the Day-kingdom do find themselves pulled off of the path, peeled from one world and forced into another, or they find themselves chained to the Courts of Shadow of Between of Forever and they're not quite drawn away from the Day-kingdom completely but they're no longer entirely part of the Day. They've still got the chance, though: and that's important. There is a Nobody, somewhere in the world, who believes -- and it is important that he believes this -- in the quest to right wrongs, in the truth of curses, in Molly Toombs, who belonged to the Day, but was one of those people who found herself splashing into the Dark-world just once and then she couldn't quite shuck it. Did she want to shuck it? She was so curious, and everywhere she turned, there they were: emissaries of this otherworld pale and cold and immortal and they'd all been like her once upon a time, or maybe not all, because she did her research, didn't she? She heard myth and rumor about all sorts of things.
This Nobody, he didn't share his views, although in one of his Guises (Faces, Masks) he and Miss Molly Toombs did discuss his beliefs and his interests and she could guess at them perhaps if she thought long and hard about it. He didn't share his views because the other creatures (all of them, dangerous) in the world he himself was part of would mock him and laugh: and those who were part of the Day-world were never to know. That was part of what kept them Day-bright, Day-safe.
But he was right about one thing. Those who find themselves coming up against the "Night Kingdom" have a difficult time disengaging, sometimes because -- how does that old saying go? -- when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you, or something like that. And sometimes it's a mixture of things: obligation, curiousity, just knowing -- how does one go back to Day when one knows about the Night, eh?
One July, Nobody was hit by a bus. Molly saw what he really was then. Saved him. Put him in a box, gave him blood, just in case, just in case, talked to her contacts, and then there was nothing.
August came, August went.
Boots came and went, too. Ugly cat, hungry cat. He came and went so quiet. He and Florence seemed to be great friends. He sometimes slept under her neighbor's car. If Molly still has Lucy, and Lucy isn't fixed, well. Boots is a living cat. Living cats have living cat needs, even if this living cat is a monster, a blood-hungry, immortal-for-now, immortal-by-permission, monster.
Molly had her friends and Molly had her research. Molly had her job, more demanding than ever, because there never would be less patients at the ER. There was a new drug going around on the street, something really fucking people up. The first whispers about it reach her ears in September, see, although it's been around for almost a year at that point, but that's just because this is when one of these guys tries to fuck one of the doctors to death and bites off their ear before security can get a handle on it and they can get the addict properly sedated.
September arrives, and Molly's shift has just finished. It's nearing dawn, but it's not dawn yet. The parking lot is dark, with half the lights on the blitz. They were putting up the Christmas decorations -- pardon, the Holiday dectorations -- late, and something happened, so now the employees are being told to walk with buddies if they can and if they can't just be safe. 'Just be safe.' That's all you gotta do: right?
(As if the hospital parking lot hasn't been hunting grounds before.
As if it isn't still. Hasn't always been.)
Molly's shift has just finished. She's in the locker room or she's in a bathroom and she hasn't left quite yet when something catches her eye, because her eye is sharp, and maybe that's what's kept her in the strange position she occupies, nobody's thrall and nobody's enemy but a right knowing one.
But something catches her eye, and it's a movement and it's a movement in the nearest reflective surface. The hand-dryer, then the sink mirror, or her compact, or the hardened plexi-glass of the bus shelter advertising the upcoming Winter epic.
This has happened before. She's felt this before, a faint, niggling sense of something -- (Spiegelung) not normal or mundane.
Then there's this monster, looking at her sad eyed. Familiar eyes, at first glance. Eyes she probably thought she knew real well.
Molly Toombs
If you were to ask one who walked between the worlds-- who lived in the world of the Day but whose mind and investments were all and always in the world of the Night-- she didn't belong in either place. She could try to consider herself to be an ambassador of sorts, one who could step into the sunlight and appeal to the people of the Day, but who understood the Night (or so she thought) and could navigate it.
But she knew better than to think that any such ambassador could exist. There were few 'better senses' that she could appeal to there in the realm of dark and undead mysteries, and she was fortunate (or not, depending on your take) to have found what alliances she had already. It was those connections, the weight of names and the looming threat of consequence, that kept her head attached to her shoulders. There were always bigger names, though, ones that carried more weight, and those were certainly worth being concerned about.
After all, the people of the Night really did not care for wayward In-Betweeners. 'Liabilities', they called people like her.
Loose ends.
Since August Molly had been doing a good job of keeping herself off the radar. She'd made contacts to know what she needed to know and do when she tucked her friend-revealed-to-be-liar/monster away for safety, and after that she kept to her books and her apartment and her job. It was the end of summer, and the E.R. was plenty busy in the times of year where it was warm enough for people to want to be out on the streets, in the mountains, in the world where peril could seek them out. Broken limbs, gunshot wounds, blunt trauma and near drowning, overdoses and strange breakdowns found their way through the doors time and time again. Molly was ever-keen, ever-watchful, ever-attentive, so she was acutely aware of the new drug that they were beginning to see, the one that made her think of the bath salts stories she had been reading about in the years previous.
She was aware that something else was going on that had administration concerned, had them encouraging staff to use the buddy system when walking to their cars at night. She considered this, and compared it to the dangers that she really knew of and made speculations to herself one evening while she was changing from her scrubs to her street clothes in the locker room.
It was when she was standing in front of the short wall of mirrors that existed before the bathroom stalls, housed over a long counter with multiple sinks, when something unreal caught her attention. Her eyes had been out-of-focus while she washed her hands, but a motion in the bottom corner of the mirror glass nearby snagged her and brought her back from the depths of her own mind. The motion she'd seen had moved on, faded and slipped elsewhere, but the all-too-familiar tingle of something unreal in her bones and shoulders was ringing alarms in her mind.
Molly Toombs straightened up and turned the water off, lifted her head to see a reflection at the end of the bank of mirrors that had no physical being associated with it. A monster, with sad eyes that stared right at her, sought to make contact.
To her credit, as though she truly were that ambassador that she insisted could never exist, Molly's cool did not shake and her calm did not slip. She stiffened some, but reached for a paper towel and dried her hands slow and meticulous.
Were anyone else there in the locker rooms, they would think the red-headed trauma nurse crazy, for she was speaking to what anyone else may perceive as Nobody when she said:
"I was wondering when I'd see you around again. Business seemed... unfinished."
loose ends
The monster grimaces, and it is of course a disconcerting sight because he is so ugly, so Once-human, so Human-no-longer, though he still has all his teeth, they've only begun to float into a more sinister alignment. He'd always had glaucoma when he'd come to Molly in what seems to be an infinitely more appealing package now (that is, assuming, of course, that this monster this reflection has any connection at all with the monster-in-a-sleep in-a-slumber), but the glaucoma is beginning to fade, if sharp-eyed Molly were to pay attention.
He grimaces once because of her words and then grimaces again in order to express something, a directive, leans closer to the mirror (it's like looking through a window) and mimes breathing on the glass.
(No breath fogs up. Not on his end.)
Mimes writing with a finger. The last time Molly saw this reflection, it lead her and Jacky on a merry chase; after it mimes, it shifts restively, looking around with wary alertness.
Molly Toombs
While Molly had been drying her hands, she kept an eye on the reflection that didn't belong to her. Her reflection stood alongside it, a couple of feet away within the mirror. Approximately or a little-less-than an arm's reach away from the beastly looking monster-man. This did lead Molly to wonder, as she tended to do, if he actually could physically grab on to her reflection. How that would impact her, how it would feel, if it would hurt, if he could rip it away and take it back with him where he came from.
But no such threat came, no such thought appeared to cross that grotesque face. Instead, the ugly mug came closer to the sheet of glass that separated them, jaws opened, and it mimed breathing on the glass. Of course, no fog was generated, for you'd need to have a warm breath in your body (and a body, at that) to make fog occur.
Her lips pressed together thoughtfully, but Molly set the paper towel down on the counter and leaned forward and to the side. With her palms braced on the counter's edge, she breathed on the mirror in a broad swatch to create a temporary canvas for this thing to write his message in-- at least, that's what she figured he wanted, as it seemed he didn't have the option to actually speak with her otherwise.
loose ends
Win some. Lose some. How's cat?
He writes quickly, and the lettering comes out backwards -- at least until the monster hesitates, realizes, and then turns those letters around (on his end) so that halfway through they read properly to her.
Her breath is disappearing from 'win some' by the time he's gotten to 'the cat.' Molly can see the frustrated flinch when the breath is gone, a certain steadiness in the monster's gaze.
Molly Toombs
The fact that the letters were written a second time, reverse-to-the-monster, was a courtesy, something that this reflection was focused on correcting himself. Molly's eyes had focused on the original message hard for a few moments, but recognition was clear in her eyes soon enough, and when she read the message again but more legible it was only to confirm what she was already sure had been asked.
"Healthy, he seems. He likes Flo."
Her answer was casual and conversational, but there was no trace of gentle humor or kind familiarity in her expression. Her mouth was flat, her eyebrows set in a straight line to one another, her gaze hard. Not angry, but focused. She was piecing things together, learning as she went along.
This reflection was attached to its owner, apparently. Concerned about the cat, aware of the cat, much as the owner likely would be. It had her wondering how lost this reflection ever actually was. If the connection went both ways or just one, and if that's why Jacky had turned her to help look and understand and rediscover this reflection. Or if, perhaps, it had all been some grand ruse (though she still wasn't sure what stood to be gained from it).
She leaned forward again, bringing her face closer to the mirror. She would breathe another swatch of fog for him to write in, this one slightly below or to the side of the original, because she understood he needed it to communicate. The canvas for him to answer was provided only after she'd asked her question in a low voice.
"What are you doing here?"
Molly Toombs
[Init! Die + Dex 3 + Wits 4]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Molly Toombs
[16!]
loose ends
Spiegelung! +6.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
loose ends
Houdini. Escapistry. He's -
But snickersnack! very quickly, the monster smears the word 'he's' with the side of its hand, as if it's a natural accident, and writes -
I'm in tunnels. Dark. Rats at my eyes. Hel
At the last letter the monster runs out of breath to write, and closes its eyes for a moment. This doesn't improve anything, but see how it sags, rubbing its face.
Molly Toombs
The feigned-mistake and quick correction certainly did not go unnoticed. The four a.m. hour was difficult for many, as it wasn't a time that those who walk the Day were really meant to be conscious and moving about still. This time of night, soon to bleed into morning and dawn, was where the mind was supposed to be clouded if it wasn't already at rest. Molly Toombs, however, has been a swing-shift nurse for quite some time, and was no stranger to working later hours than that even. Four in the morning was no problem for her, and sharp-witted as she was she caught the fact that 'He' was replaced with 'I', and that combined with the query about the cat was noted.
Noted, but not commented on. She knew this reflection was a flighty thing, and could flee and leave her uninformed and hanging for another several weeks or even longer. She was becoming skilled at playing along-- manipulation was a muscle that had to grow strong in the world of Night, otherwise you wouldn't make it far.
So when the reflection ran out of space to write, Molly breathed: "Go on." And breathed again to provide him the room he needed to do just that.
"What do you need?"
loose ends
Bartender at Blue Room. Ask for cards.
I need a door. Theseus. Thread.
Isn't it funny, being stricken by a curse doesn't provide you with the ins and outs? I t mst be like
The door opens to the locker room and somebody else comes in; the reflection is a skittish thing, and it darts from the mirror to the faucet; Molly can just see it, distorted and distended, while a co-worker she's never had much occasion to run into comes chatting on a phone, gives Molly that serene resting bitchface nod of acknowledgment, and then continues on into the stall.
The monster slips into another mirror, and it looks thinner, somehow. Not more transparent - of course not. But worried, wary, beseeching.
Molly Toombs
Bright blue eyes-- not sad and faded and covered with shifting glaucoma, but clear and alive and alert-- followed the letters as they were scrawled onto the glass. The Blue Room, ask for cards from the bartender. The reflection-- or Jacky?-- needed a door. She wondered if he was aware that he was mixing up the identities that he was trying to portray, but wasn't left with much time to contemplate as her train of thought was interrupted when the locker room door opened and the reflection shrank and jumped from mirror to sink faucet.
Molly had started a little, blinked and turned her head to look at the woman who was chattering on her phone. The nod of acknowledgement was answered in turn, and Molly then turned to the mirror and leaned forward to fuss with her bangs and mascara, pretending to preen her appearance as a way to play off the fact that she's been hovering in front of the sinks with dry hands.
When the bathroom stall closed and the woman kept chattering, the reflection shifted again, further up the row of mirrors and appearing smaller, thinner, distorted somehow.
Molly turned her head and watched the reflection for a thoughtful moment, then leaned forward to quietly blow another lungful of hot breath onto the mirror. This time it was her fingertip that thoughtfully scrawled the message in reverse, so the reflection could read it with ease:
Blue room / cards / door. I will help. For Jacky / to see this through.
And, right under that:
Even if he did deceive.
Rest assured, this would all be smudged away before the other woman could flush and exit her stall. Molly, however, wouldn't walk away from the mirrors without some kind of confirmation from the wary monster in the glass.
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Awareness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
loose ends
There is a Nobody In Particular who holds a certain belief about the world. He believes there are separate worlds, co-existing and occasionally intermingling, but essentially separate. He believes when somebody from the Day-kingdom moves through the Night-kingdom, the Dark world, they're in mortal peril they're in danger they might find themselves dragged out of the world where there is a beginning and an end finite laid-out a track to follow they might find themselves up to their elbows in darkness and shadow they might find themselves dealing in souls they might find themselves trapped caught as certainly as any bug who ever thought that tree bark looked tasty a moment before the amber rolled over fixed fixated held forever. There are pleasures in the Dark world but they're vicious pleasures, frightening, and they're not for those of the Day-kingdom.
Of course, those of the Day-kingdom do find themselves pulled off of the path, peeled from one world and forced into another, or they find themselves chained to the Courts of Shadow of Between of Forever and they're not quite drawn away from the Day-kingdom completely but they're no longer entirely part of the Day. They've still got the chance, though: and that's important. There is a Nobody, somewhere in the world, who believes -- and it is important that he believes this -- in the quest to right wrongs, in the truth of curses, in Molly Toombs, who belonged to the Day, but was one of those people who found herself splashing into the Dark-world just once and then she couldn't quite shuck it. Did she want to shuck it? She was so curious, and everywhere she turned, there they were: emissaries of this otherworld pale and cold and immortal and they'd all been like her once upon a time, or maybe not all, because she did her research, didn't she? She heard myth and rumor about all sorts of things.
This Nobody, he didn't share his views, although in one of his Guises (Faces, Masks) he and Miss Molly Toombs did discuss his beliefs and his interests and she could guess at them perhaps if she thought long and hard about it. He didn't share his views because the other creatures (all of them, dangerous) in the world he himself was part of would mock him and laugh: and those who were part of the Day-world were never to know. That was part of what kept them Day-bright, Day-safe.
But he was right about one thing. Those who find themselves coming up against the "Night Kingdom" have a difficult time disengaging, sometimes because -- how does that old saying go? -- when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you, or something like that. And sometimes it's a mixture of things: obligation, curiousity, just knowing -- how does one go back to Day when one knows about the Night, eh?
One July, Nobody was hit by a bus. Molly saw what he really was then. Saved him. Put him in a box, gave him blood, just in case, just in case, talked to her contacts, and then there was nothing.
August came, August went.
Boots came and went, too. Ugly cat, hungry cat. He came and went so quiet. He and Florence seemed to be great friends. He sometimes slept under her neighbor's car. If Molly still has Lucy, and Lucy isn't fixed, well. Boots is a living cat. Living cats have living cat needs, even if this living cat is a monster, a blood-hungry, immortal-for-now, immortal-by-permission, monster.
Molly had her friends and Molly had her research. Molly had her job, more demanding than ever, because there never would be less patients at the ER. There was a new drug going around on the street, something really fucking people up. The first whispers about it reach her ears in September, see, although it's been around for almost a year at that point, but that's just because this is when one of these guys tries to fuck one of the doctors to death and bites off their ear before security can get a handle on it and they can get the addict properly sedated.
September arrives, and Molly's shift has just finished. It's nearing dawn, but it's not dawn yet. The parking lot is dark, with half the lights on the blitz. They were putting up the Christmas decorations -- pardon, the Holiday dectorations -- late, and something happened, so now the employees are being told to walk with buddies if they can and if they can't just be safe. 'Just be safe.' That's all you gotta do: right?
(As if the hospital parking lot hasn't been hunting grounds before.
As if it isn't still. Hasn't always been.)
Molly's shift has just finished. She's in the locker room or she's in a bathroom and she hasn't left quite yet when something catches her eye, because her eye is sharp, and maybe that's what's kept her in the strange position she occupies, nobody's thrall and nobody's enemy but a right knowing one.
But something catches her eye, and it's a movement and it's a movement in the nearest reflective surface. The hand-dryer, then the sink mirror, or her compact, or the hardened plexi-glass of the bus shelter advertising the upcoming Winter epic.
This has happened before. She's felt this before, a faint, niggling sense of something -- (Spiegelung) not normal or mundane.
Then there's this monster, looking at her sad eyed. Familiar eyes, at first glance. Eyes she probably thought she knew real well.
Molly Toombs
If you were to ask one who walked between the worlds-- who lived in the world of the Day but whose mind and investments were all and always in the world of the Night-- she didn't belong in either place. She could try to consider herself to be an ambassador of sorts, one who could step into the sunlight and appeal to the people of the Day, but who understood the Night (or so she thought) and could navigate it.
But she knew better than to think that any such ambassador could exist. There were few 'better senses' that she could appeal to there in the realm of dark and undead mysteries, and she was fortunate (or not, depending on your take) to have found what alliances she had already. It was those connections, the weight of names and the looming threat of consequence, that kept her head attached to her shoulders. There were always bigger names, though, ones that carried more weight, and those were certainly worth being concerned about.
After all, the people of the Night really did not care for wayward In-Betweeners. 'Liabilities', they called people like her.
Loose ends.
Since August Molly had been doing a good job of keeping herself off the radar. She'd made contacts to know what she needed to know and do when she tucked her friend-revealed-to-be-liar/monster away for safety, and after that she kept to her books and her apartment and her job. It was the end of summer, and the E.R. was plenty busy in the times of year where it was warm enough for people to want to be out on the streets, in the mountains, in the world where peril could seek them out. Broken limbs, gunshot wounds, blunt trauma and near drowning, overdoses and strange breakdowns found their way through the doors time and time again. Molly was ever-keen, ever-watchful, ever-attentive, so she was acutely aware of the new drug that they were beginning to see, the one that made her think of the bath salts stories she had been reading about in the years previous.
She was aware that something else was going on that had administration concerned, had them encouraging staff to use the buddy system when walking to their cars at night. She considered this, and compared it to the dangers that she really knew of and made speculations to herself one evening while she was changing from her scrubs to her street clothes in the locker room.
It was when she was standing in front of the short wall of mirrors that existed before the bathroom stalls, housed over a long counter with multiple sinks, when something unreal caught her attention. Her eyes had been out-of-focus while she washed her hands, but a motion in the bottom corner of the mirror glass nearby snagged her and brought her back from the depths of her own mind. The motion she'd seen had moved on, faded and slipped elsewhere, but the all-too-familiar tingle of something unreal in her bones and shoulders was ringing alarms in her mind.
Molly Toombs straightened up and turned the water off, lifted her head to see a reflection at the end of the bank of mirrors that had no physical being associated with it. A monster, with sad eyes that stared right at her, sought to make contact.
To her credit, as though she truly were that ambassador that she insisted could never exist, Molly's cool did not shake and her calm did not slip. She stiffened some, but reached for a paper towel and dried her hands slow and meticulous.
Were anyone else there in the locker rooms, they would think the red-headed trauma nurse crazy, for she was speaking to what anyone else may perceive as Nobody when she said:
"I was wondering when I'd see you around again. Business seemed... unfinished."
loose ends
The monster grimaces, and it is of course a disconcerting sight because he is so ugly, so Once-human, so Human-no-longer, though he still has all his teeth, they've only begun to float into a more sinister alignment. He'd always had glaucoma when he'd come to Molly in what seems to be an infinitely more appealing package now (that is, assuming, of course, that this monster this reflection has any connection at all with the monster-in-a-sleep in-a-slumber), but the glaucoma is beginning to fade, if sharp-eyed Molly were to pay attention.
He grimaces once because of her words and then grimaces again in order to express something, a directive, leans closer to the mirror (it's like looking through a window) and mimes breathing on the glass.
(No breath fogs up. Not on his end.)
Mimes writing with a finger. The last time Molly saw this reflection, it lead her and Jacky on a merry chase; after it mimes, it shifts restively, looking around with wary alertness.
Molly Toombs
While Molly had been drying her hands, she kept an eye on the reflection that didn't belong to her. Her reflection stood alongside it, a couple of feet away within the mirror. Approximately or a little-less-than an arm's reach away from the beastly looking monster-man. This did lead Molly to wonder, as she tended to do, if he actually could physically grab on to her reflection. How that would impact her, how it would feel, if it would hurt, if he could rip it away and take it back with him where he came from.
But no such threat came, no such thought appeared to cross that grotesque face. Instead, the ugly mug came closer to the sheet of glass that separated them, jaws opened, and it mimed breathing on the glass. Of course, no fog was generated, for you'd need to have a warm breath in your body (and a body, at that) to make fog occur.
Her lips pressed together thoughtfully, but Molly set the paper towel down on the counter and leaned forward and to the side. With her palms braced on the counter's edge, she breathed on the mirror in a broad swatch to create a temporary canvas for this thing to write his message in-- at least, that's what she figured he wanted, as it seemed he didn't have the option to actually speak with her otherwise.
loose ends
Win some. Lose some. How's cat?
He writes quickly, and the lettering comes out backwards -- at least until the monster hesitates, realizes, and then turns those letters around (on his end) so that halfway through they read properly to her.
Her breath is disappearing from 'win some' by the time he's gotten to 'the cat.' Molly can see the frustrated flinch when the breath is gone, a certain steadiness in the monster's gaze.
Molly Toombs
The fact that the letters were written a second time, reverse-to-the-monster, was a courtesy, something that this reflection was focused on correcting himself. Molly's eyes had focused on the original message hard for a few moments, but recognition was clear in her eyes soon enough, and when she read the message again but more legible it was only to confirm what she was already sure had been asked.
"Healthy, he seems. He likes Flo."
Her answer was casual and conversational, but there was no trace of gentle humor or kind familiarity in her expression. Her mouth was flat, her eyebrows set in a straight line to one another, her gaze hard. Not angry, but focused. She was piecing things together, learning as she went along.
This reflection was attached to its owner, apparently. Concerned about the cat, aware of the cat, much as the owner likely would be. It had her wondering how lost this reflection ever actually was. If the connection went both ways or just one, and if that's why Jacky had turned her to help look and understand and rediscover this reflection. Or if, perhaps, it had all been some grand ruse (though she still wasn't sure what stood to be gained from it).
She leaned forward again, bringing her face closer to the mirror. She would breathe another swatch of fog for him to write in, this one slightly below or to the side of the original, because she understood he needed it to communicate. The canvas for him to answer was provided only after she'd asked her question in a low voice.
"What are you doing here?"
Molly Toombs
[Init! Die + Dex 3 + Wits 4]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Molly Toombs
[16!]
loose ends
Spiegelung! +6.
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
loose ends
Houdini. Escapistry. He's -
But snickersnack! very quickly, the monster smears the word 'he's' with the side of its hand, as if it's a natural accident, and writes -
I'm in tunnels. Dark. Rats at my eyes. Hel
At the last letter the monster runs out of breath to write, and closes its eyes for a moment. This doesn't improve anything, but see how it sags, rubbing its face.
Molly Toombs
The feigned-mistake and quick correction certainly did not go unnoticed. The four a.m. hour was difficult for many, as it wasn't a time that those who walk the Day were really meant to be conscious and moving about still. This time of night, soon to bleed into morning and dawn, was where the mind was supposed to be clouded if it wasn't already at rest. Molly Toombs, however, has been a swing-shift nurse for quite some time, and was no stranger to working later hours than that even. Four in the morning was no problem for her, and sharp-witted as she was she caught the fact that 'He' was replaced with 'I', and that combined with the query about the cat was noted.
Noted, but not commented on. She knew this reflection was a flighty thing, and could flee and leave her uninformed and hanging for another several weeks or even longer. She was becoming skilled at playing along-- manipulation was a muscle that had to grow strong in the world of Night, otherwise you wouldn't make it far.
So when the reflection ran out of space to write, Molly breathed: "Go on." And breathed again to provide him the room he needed to do just that.
"What do you need?"
loose ends
Bartender at Blue Room. Ask for cards.
I need a door. Theseus. Thread.
Isn't it funny, being stricken by a curse doesn't provide you with the ins and outs? I t mst be like
The door opens to the locker room and somebody else comes in; the reflection is a skittish thing, and it darts from the mirror to the faucet; Molly can just see it, distorted and distended, while a co-worker she's never had much occasion to run into comes chatting on a phone, gives Molly that serene resting bitchface nod of acknowledgment, and then continues on into the stall.
The monster slips into another mirror, and it looks thinner, somehow. Not more transparent - of course not. But worried, wary, beseeching.
Molly Toombs
Bright blue eyes-- not sad and faded and covered with shifting glaucoma, but clear and alive and alert-- followed the letters as they were scrawled onto the glass. The Blue Room, ask for cards from the bartender. The reflection-- or Jacky?-- needed a door. She wondered if he was aware that he was mixing up the identities that he was trying to portray, but wasn't left with much time to contemplate as her train of thought was interrupted when the locker room door opened and the reflection shrank and jumped from mirror to sink faucet.
Molly had started a little, blinked and turned her head to look at the woman who was chattering on her phone. The nod of acknowledgement was answered in turn, and Molly then turned to the mirror and leaned forward to fuss with her bangs and mascara, pretending to preen her appearance as a way to play off the fact that she's been hovering in front of the sinks with dry hands.
When the bathroom stall closed and the woman kept chattering, the reflection shifted again, further up the row of mirrors and appearing smaller, thinner, distorted somehow.
Molly turned her head and watched the reflection for a thoughtful moment, then leaned forward to quietly blow another lungful of hot breath onto the mirror. This time it was her fingertip that thoughtfully scrawled the message in reverse, so the reflection could read it with ease:
Blue room / cards / door. I will help. For Jacky / to see this through.
And, right under that:
Even if he did deceive.
Rest assured, this would all be smudged away before the other woman could flush and exit her stall. Molly, however, wouldn't walk away from the mirrors without some kind of confirmation from the wary monster in the glass.
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