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Isabella falls from her horse first, caught by a low branch she didn't see. She's a better rider than that, she ought to have - ow - she reaches for Jamie, grabs her hand, but while they clasp hands Isabella's got too much momentum and Jamie falls too -
Something snags Isabella's cloak, something snags her bag, she's got a heap of pine needles prickling her face and can't see. She flails a leg but only loses her shoe for her trouble, and the other slips off when she twists, trying to find 'up' before her horse steps on her - when did it get this dim, the sun was only just setting a moment ago - she can't see anything - "Jamie -"
The next time she inhales it's not the smell of pine needles, it's old fur. Not the hay-sweet shallow pile of having somehow planted her nose in her horse's flank; like a coat. Smell jogs memory. Coats - and wood, not the pines but old treated planks -
She's lost Jamie's hand somewhere along the line. She was wearing gloves against the cold and her hand's bare on fur, on wood.
She feels dizzy and small and something's gone wrong with her clothes and she can't hear the horse breathing or feel the wind anymore.
She fumbles around in the dark, looking for Jamie, the horse, a tree, anything.
She finds a shoulder, too small and skinny to be Jamie's, and then with her other hand she finds a door and blinding light and tumbles out of the wardrobe onto the floor.
deepest_magic
neverbeatme
James realizes that she managed to forget what Chris's car looked like. Since Chris's car is a black-and-white Mini Cooper, it should really have been harder to forget than that. It comes back to her as soon as she sees it, but... she sighs unhappily.
neverbeatme
"I'm annoyed that I forgot what kind of car Chris had," she says, getting up and proceeding to the car. Her hand remembers how to open the door even if she doesn't.
queensidecastle
"Now, I know it's been a while, but I seem to remember you kids having backpacks when I dropped you off," says Chris.
neverbeatme
"It's kind of a long story," says James. "I'm not sure if we should save it for when we get - home or not."
queensidecastle
"About half an hour's drive," says Chris. "Is that enough time to explain what's going on?"
neverbeatme
"We went through a magic door and saved a kingdom from an evil witch-queen and then spent the next fifteen years ruling it," says James. "I'm twenty-six now."
deepest_magic
"Whatever spat us back out let me keep my magic notebook. So there's that for proof if you don't want to put us in separate rooms and get coherent too-complicated-to-be-rehearsed matching stories of the last decade and a half."
deepest_magic
"It has personal notes in it along with stuff I don't mind sharing. It'll open to whatever page you want," says Bella, "so be careful of that. Go find, um, the knighthood ceremony photo album, that'll be a nice spread." She hands it over.
deepest_magic
It has James knighting various creatures as captured by the photo card thing. In chronological order. Some of them are relatively recent.
queensidecastle
"Okay, I believe you," says Chris. "Well. This is a bit of a mess, isn't it. I assume you've already tried going back?"
neverbeatme
"Yeah. It did not work," says James. "The magic door is broken, or not accepting visitors at this time, or something."
neverbeatme
"I think so... if I'm remembering right, it was a door every time I walked into it, and the back of a wardrobe every time I stood outside and stuck my arm in. But I only went through a handful of times. For all I know it had a limited number of uses... I don't feel like that's right, though."
deepest_magic
"Limited uses seems out of step with how magic items typically behave there, anyway, I don't know if it's different since the wardrobe is on this end."
queensidecastle
"I... haven't seen that many magic items in my life," says Chris, handing Bella back her notebook, "but I'd be surprised to find a magic door that worked exactly four times and that's it."
queensidecastle
"I have a magic chess set. It's not good for much and I've never been able to find anything else that was verifiably magic."