Reminder. The mezzanine-level courtesy refreshments remain available exclusively to registered enthusiasm affiliates. Credentials must be verifiable and internally radiant.”
A second voice breaks in behind the recording, muffled but still caught: “No, I told you, that schedule wouldn’t work...”
Then the original voice resumes, slightly frayed at the edges, as if recovering its place in the script. “Tampering with distribution carts will result in the gentle suspension of privileges. We thank you for your patience. While the resonance well remembers how to balance.”
Curious now, Eileen chooses a direction, any direction really and continues on, only to run into another potted plant. Then another. Around the next corner: two more. Not quite too many. Not yet. But enough to make her pause.
She considers backtracking, wonders if she’s being ridiculous, then turns again. Another hallway. Another plant. A fig, this time. Then a thick succulent. Then a topiary with a badly trimmed spiral that leans like it’s ashamed of itself. They don’t seem planted so much as misplaced.. like centerpieces left behind after a party that forgot them first.
By the time she reaches the end of this corridor, she realizes quite firmly now there are simply far too many plants in the hallway. They crowd now like house guests who have been provided hors d'oeuvres, entertained, fed a main meal, provided dessert, coffee and conversation, brought to the exit and still don’t know that it was time to leave.
And that’s when she sees it. One oversized fern, particularly bushy, lush, and placed far too carefully. Pushed up against the wall near the base of the ornate door which now blocks her path. She narrows her eyes.
“I see you,” she says, setting her basket down. Then, with the dignity of someone who once ousted a feral goose from a community bake sale, she drags the plant aside. Her full intention being to then use the reclaimed space to open the ornately carved door ahead.
But before she can try the handle she is stopped by something just slightly out of place beside the door, almost like an afterthought. It is a shabby hole in the wall, stuffed with stained rags and dyed sheets, clearly meant to blend in with the natural stone of the resplendent decor. A patchwork lie, dressed for polite company.
As well as voice from within the hole and its covering too soft to be speaking to anyone, but too sharp to be nonsense. “Mirror.” it says. “My name...”
A pause. Then, more hurried, “My name is ... Seraphine. I am line-blooded. I’m.. I’m refinement. I don’t need exemption, I don’t need...”
Her voice breaks, then resets, like someone reciting from a waterlogged script. “Legacy is an investment. It’s restraint. It’s cycle... I reflect the cycle...”
A beat. Faster now. “I am the legacy that.. that chooses... chooses me...” The cadence stutters. Too many echoes. Like she’s reading the footnotes of someone else’s ceremony.
Follow closely by a sharp inhale and the sound of a wet palm slapping glass. “I am enough. I’m enough. I have to be...”
A scream, sudden and sharp. Then the unmistakable sound of glass shattering, not once, but in layers, like the pane had been waiting for permission to break. The sound ending in profound silence and then just a breath latter, jagged, uneven breaths.
Followed by a hiccup, which has Eileen leaning in slightly, brows creasing. “Oh, my dear,” she whispers. “That doesn’t sound like believing at all.”
Eileen sets the basket down without ceremony, her hands practiced, almost fond. Pushing the plant again, she finds it yields easily, its weight off-center, the sheets pulling free with the softness of something that had been waiting to be found. Beneath it, the floor gives way, not a hatch or trapdoor, but a quiet absence in the shape of a sloping hole. Dark. Damp. Rimmed with neon moss that pulses faintly. Not with light. With caution.
She doesn’t pause. Warnings like these are for people who still need them.
She steps forward, lets the curve of the earth take her, slides, not cleanly, but comfortably down into the waiting dark. The descent swallowing her whole, gently. Then deposits her on a nest of crushed cushions, old and overused, but still listening. They sigh under her weight like something that remembers her shape. Not specifically. Just kindly.
She arrives in a room that is shaped around her like a teardrop, its edges thick with velvet hush. The cushions scattered as though tossed by someone who knew where they’d land. In the far corner, a curtain bright pink, too bright, like the color had been turned up after the fact. Covers something, held taut as if the secret behind it had volume.
From the other side: a sound. A slow, rasping whisper. The kind a child might make while blowing on burned fingers, trying not to cry. Compels Eileen to step forward before freezing several paces in.
Lights flicker around the room. Once. Then again. The curtain pulses outward, not with air, but with intention, like a held breath resisting her presence. A soft thrum vibrating beneath her shoes, not danger, exactly, but a warning. For something here remembers being hurt.
There’s a beat. The curtain ripples again, then stills, not an invitation exactly, but something close enough. Permission to try, perhaps. So Eileen draws the fabric aside and scoots forward, her hands falling instinctively to her sides in search of her basket. But it isn’t there. A brief flicker of alarm rises, followed just as quickly by calm. She reminds herself, gently, but firmly that she’d left it behind. Of course she had. No basket. No trusty toolkit. No familiar weight at her hip to draw from when things needed a moment of grounding. Just her, then. And whatever came next.
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“It’s alright to cry, my Little Wibbler. Just getting through each day can be so hard, even for us adults.” Eileen coos as she peers past the certain.
Beyond, a decrepit bathroom emerges, its tiles stained and cracked. On the far wall a shattered mirror dominates, its jagged cracks catching the light in unpleasant ways. The air thick, sour and spoiled with an iron soaked stench that curls in Eileen’s nose, threatening to crawl down her throat. So much so that she stumbles, almost, gagging as her vision blurs with the spike of what feels like a migraine.
And that’s when she sees it. In the center of the room, half-lost in shadow and broken reflections, lies a figure curled into the fetal position. A naked woman, trembling. A thick sheen of sweat covering her welted mossy green skin that catches the dim light in a way that makes her seem fevered and unreal. Which does nothing to soften the sorrowing sight of the woman who is rocking herself gently, back and forth, arms folded tightly across her torso. As if trying to fold herself inward. As if vanishing might be possible... not through magic, but through compression. Like a letter folded too many times, hoping the creases will erase the words inside.
But the room does not forget her. It simply… holds her there instead like a page left open too long.
And atop her head, woven into the scalp like a coronation no one bothered to witness, snakes begin to stir. Tiny green ones, braided through moss-damp strands, shifting in eerie unison. Not yet striking, but watching. Measuring. Heads lifted. Tongues flicking. Jaws parted, just enough to reveal teeth. A calculation running behind each pair of eyes. As they decide if Eileen qualifies as threat.
Eileen does not flinch.
Instead, her eyes move quietly across the room again, scanning for something else. There, against the far wall, she sees a thick, plush bathrobe of deep purple, trimmed with a regal silver that catches the weak light like old moonlight on still water. Stepping towards it she unhooks it carefully from its peg, giving it a small shake. Shards of glass fall from its folds like the remnants of a long-forgotten ceremony. A single silver thread dangling from one sleeve, delicate and nearly invisible, but present all the same.
Brushing the thread aside, she feels the air shift around her, just slightly. A warm current brushing the back of her hand, thin and curious, as though it too is trying to decide if this moment matters. Eileen says nothing. But the tension in her shoulders tightens briefly as she carries the robe toward the only light in the room. Not to wear it. Not yet. Just to see if its something she can salvage.
Brought under the light now, she finds it is. As such she takes her the opportunity to remove pieces of glass one by one while beginning a soft humming tune in a low steady voice, a lullaby honoring Urgu, which she sings through several times.
Hush now, hush now, rest your heads,
Urgu walks where soft light treads.
Winds may wander, rivers roam,
But weary hearts will find their home.
Oh, gentle hands, oh, quiet sigh,
Moonlight watches from the sky.
Traveler lost and creature small,
Urgu’s grace will love thy all.
Lay your worries, shed your fear,
Soft steps fall, the path is clear.
By silver thread and whisper bright
Urgu guides all through the night.
With one final shake, Eileen smiles, then meanders back to the woman, her hands outstretched like someone offering birdseed to something nervous and half imagined. The snakes tilt toward her fingers, slow and in sync, their movements less hostile, more habitual. Still the snakes do bite, not hard, not even convincingly. Their teeth pressing downward like dandelion stems, a warning, maybe, or just the echo of one. Eileen barely registers it. “Please don’t move a muscle, my dear wibbler,” she murmurs. “Grandmother is here.”
She lowers herself then with the care of someone placing a fragile secret back into the world, arms sliding beneath shoulders that feel too light, too warm. The snakes continue their quiet inspection, nipping without commitment, like they’re waiting for a reason to escalate. Eileen breathes through it. Grace, yes. But not the easy kind. The earned kind.
So with practiced ease, she sweeps the robe over the girl’s shoulders and for a breath, it seems to catch. Then it slips and Eileen has to catch it mid fall.
Not shrugged. Not rejected. Just... forgotten. Like the body it was meant to warm didn’t recognize the gesture as real. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t correct. Just hums.. a low, knowing sound, like someone dusting off an old medicinal remedy that still works even if no one believes in it anymore.
Drawing the robe close again, Eileen presses it briefly to her own chest like a borrowed memory. “It’s still here,” she says softly. “It’s only cloth. But it’s got good manners. It’ll wait.” Then, gently, she folds the robe and places it into the crook of the girl’s arm, not to clothe her, not yet, but as a suggestion. The kind a lap offers a cat, or a seat saved for someone in a crowded room. Something that says, I thought of you before you were ready to arrive. “No rush,” she adds. “We’ll make it yours when you’re ready.”
A pause follows, long enough to count. Slowly, almost uncertainly, the Little Wibbler’s hands shift. One rises from her side, fingers twitching like they’ve forgotten how to ask. She touches the fold of fabric nestled beside her. Not to grip it. Just to feel that it’s real. Then the other side joins, gathering the robe in towards her chest, pulling it, not to wear, exactly, but to keep close. A quiet motion. A private one. The realization that it was hers, or could be.
And for a while, that’s all she does... holds it close. The robe pressed lightly to her chest like a question she’s not sure she’s allowed to ask.
Until slowly, she begins to move. Not with confidence, not with clarity, just the soft unrolling of someone remembering how to be held. Her arms shift. Her shoulders loosen. And without announcement, she draws the robe around herself.
This time, it stays.
The snakes react as if they’ve felt something settle. They lean into Eileen’s chest like confused ornaments, no longer biting, no longer testing. Instead they sway, slowly, rhythmically, as though syncing to a heartbeat they hadn’t known was missing. The Little Wibbler breathes in, once, jaggedly. Then again, quieter.
The trembling slows. The heat returns. Not safety. Not healing. But willingness.
Only now does Eileen finally begin to let go of the Little Wibbler, with that same quiet grace she'd once used to put a fevered child to bed, one who couldn’t sleep unless she heard the sound of rain on a tin roof. And once the Little Wibbler feels adequately supported she guides them back, steady and sure. Back to the comfort of the previous room, the room that hadn’t asked questions, the one with the pile of cushions scattered about the floor.
Wherein she settles the girl onto the old rug just before the cushions and begins the careful work of glass-picking through the snake like hair, her fingers steady despite little fangs occasionally nipping curiously at her fingertips. The process of the moment eventually developing into a peculiar thought, for the more Eileen looks, the more the snakes seem... fused. Not leashed or perched or tangled in hair, but grown. Rooted. As if intentionally part of her, in some private and permanent way. Clearly something that young'uns must have been into these days. Even if Eileen could not figure out why.
“There we are,” she says at last, brushing away the final shard with a whispery flick. “All better. And really, what does a little munchkin like you need with a mirror anyway?”