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Brenda's is closed. Brenda's is never closed. Not during its usual hours, not at 5am. Except on national holidays, or during severe weather, neither of which is present today. There's no notice on the door, just the Open sign flipped around to Closed. This state of affairs is incorrect.
There was no indication that the coffee shop was in financial trouble. Max knew as much from eavesdropping on the teens working in the back. The manager didn't come out much, but she never seemed alarmed or upset- always a little smug, if anything. Max wasn't sure if her name was Brenda, or if that was just the chain- she was always Ma'am to the staff. Her employees-only room down the hall, near the bathrooms- usually dead quiet. All day long, at least when Max was there. Enough activity- footsteps, occasional laughter- to tell she was there, but nothing that indicated any trouble for the store.
An emergency, then. She'd been called away on some urgent business, and... told the kids not to come into work? It wasn't as if she did much managing- could she not trust her staff to do their job unsupervised, despite more or less doing so day in and day out? And...
And no, she couldn't have gone somewhere. Her car, that Volkswagen beetle was there. It was definitely hers, she left to go get lunch every day at 1:00. No other cars parked nearby, that he could see. So, unless she'd gone on foot to something extremely urgent, she was still in the building.
Max knocks. There's no answer.
Max goes around behind the building and takes the key from under the dumpster, where a less than cautious morning-shift barista had been fool enough to retrieve it while someone like Max could have been watching. He opens the door and goes inside, because they don't have cameras and he's a regular- they wouldn't charge him with breaking and entering, he's sure, even if they did find out.
People who aren't Max might have shrugged and gone to a different coffee shop. People who are Max are instead inclined to find out what it is that disturbed their nice, orderly little universe and demand it account for itself.
It's dark and no one is there. Max looks around for anything out of place, and finds that there is exactly one thing out of place. The manager's door is open. This is considerably more unusual than the related fact, which is that the manager isn't there. Max has seen how careful she is to lock that door before going anywhere.
He goes inside. Privacy is not something Max has a lot of regard for- more something he resents, to some extent. And the room is clearly the sort of thing someone might want to keep private.
There are bookshelves, and there is a desk, and there are chalkboards, and they are all covered in paper. As is the floor. The paper is covered in smears. Some huge collection of notes, or documents, or something, all smudged into illegibility. Written in pencil, erased by a particularly smeary eraser. Most of the shapes of the smears suggest diagrams and math more than they do writing. Max inspects all of it, searching for clues. Nothing is legible, except for a few notes posted by the door.
The other door. Not the one leading in. A door with scorch marks and dents. A door set into the wall, where according to the geometry of the building, it ought to open into the alleyway, despite no such door being present. The legible notes, written in ink and taped to the wall, read "I HAVE TO GO", "DO NOT OPEN" and "SOMEONE PLEASE BLOCK THIS OFF" and "DON'T LET HER IN" and "YOUR NAME IS PRECIOUS", scribbled in hasty capital letters.
Max wonders what is behind the door. He's unnerved somewhat by the surrounding evidence of the manager having some sort of psychotic break, but his thoughts have not had sufficient time to settle into questions before opening the door. He is still in the information-gathering stage, and there can clearly be nothing behind the door but additional information to gather. The question of whether to open the mysterious door in the mysterious place fails to even cross his mind.
He steps into a dark room.
Which abruptly stops being a dark room, and starts being a brightly-lit forest. Max's hand, halfway through reaching for the light switch, falls to his side.
unblinkered
imeanforever
And perched in a tree nearby is a woman who is five feet tall, wearing a dress made of leaves, and possessed of much larger leaves attached in winglike fashion to her back. Directly to her back; he can see the joins and they grow seamlessly from her skin.
She cranes her neck to see him when he makes a noise.
"Mortal!" she exclaims. "What are you doing here? Do you have a way home?"
She cranes her neck to see him when he makes a noise.
"Mortal!" she exclaims. "What are you doing here? Do you have a way home?"
unblinkered
Max's thoughts are somewhat too frantic for him to process this statement directly. His autopilot is just barely sufficient to enable him to turn around, observe the surprising lack of a door behind him (compounding his thought-franticness), and replying "Eh wha n-neh nuh nweh!"
imeanforever
"...Mortal? Have you got your senses?" asks the fairy, jumping out of the tree to flutter down to the forest floor. She flies like she's much lighter than a five-foot-tall human, however slender, ought to be. If they could fly. With leaf wings.
unblinkered
Max takes this in steps. Things to mentally process one at a time. What is step one?
Step one follows off his most recently coherent train of thought: the door did not open, as expected, into a brick wall. From where it was positioned with respect to the building's architecture, it ought to have opened into a brick wall, or perhaps pulled a brick veneer along with it and opened into the alleyway. This expected outcome did not happen.
Okay, what's step two? Step two is a fairy is talking to him. No! Bad! That's not step two! That's step four or five, at least! Hold your horses. The second thing is that it is 5 in the morning, and yet wherever the door DID open to, it was NOT 5 in the morning, but evidently midday. So far, his assumptions with respect to door placement and time of day have been thrown into question.
What else? The forest. There is a forest. There are not forests near the coffee shop, it being in the middle of the city. This throws into question, additionally, the proximity of the coffee shop to a forest.
Step four, let's observe how this does not make sense. There are no obvious explanations to account for the anomalous door placement, or the sudden brightness, or the presence of a forest. Virtual reality, memory manipulation, hallucinogenic drugs, and such things are acknowledged as possibilities and summarily ignored due to lack of useful predictive value.
Number five, there was a door behind him, and now there is not, and the thing that throws into question is the general truism that doors do not typically disappear upon being walked through. This is catalogued as support for the "things not making sense" explanation, which has not yet been unpacked substantially. This fails to provide any useful observations about the situation.
Okay, NOW Max's brain acknowledges the fairy. There's a girl in front of him with wings. Wings are not a thing people have, okay. Wings that size do not typically support the weight of a human being, so those wings are doing a thing that is further impossible on top of the existing impossibleness of existing on a person.
How about the things that the fairy has said? Max has been standing there processing things and looking her in the eye for a good ten seconds now without responding, so that should be addressed. What words did she say? She said "mortal", implying immediately that she is NOT mortal, okay, she is a fairy, this makes the "mortal" thing less confusing than it otherwise would be. She wanted to know how he got here and how he plans to get back, neither of which he has any useful answer to. She asks if he's got his senses, which is a prompt to start speaking immediately to demonstrate his senses-having.
He is not totally ready for this. He replies "You-!" several times in a row, interspersed with several vaguely interrogative parts of speech. A coherent reply does not emerge from the panic.
Step one follows off his most recently coherent train of thought: the door did not open, as expected, into a brick wall. From where it was positioned with respect to the building's architecture, it ought to have opened into a brick wall, or perhaps pulled a brick veneer along with it and opened into the alleyway. This expected outcome did not happen.
Okay, what's step two? Step two is a fairy is talking to him. No! Bad! That's not step two! That's step four or five, at least! Hold your horses. The second thing is that it is 5 in the morning, and yet wherever the door DID open to, it was NOT 5 in the morning, but evidently midday. So far, his assumptions with respect to door placement and time of day have been thrown into question.
What else? The forest. There is a forest. There are not forests near the coffee shop, it being in the middle of the city. This throws into question, additionally, the proximity of the coffee shop to a forest.
Step four, let's observe how this does not make sense. There are no obvious explanations to account for the anomalous door placement, or the sudden brightness, or the presence of a forest. Virtual reality, memory manipulation, hallucinogenic drugs, and such things are acknowledged as possibilities and summarily ignored due to lack of useful predictive value.
Number five, there was a door behind him, and now there is not, and the thing that throws into question is the general truism that doors do not typically disappear upon being walked through. This is catalogued as support for the "things not making sense" explanation, which has not yet been unpacked substantially. This fails to provide any useful observations about the situation.
Okay, NOW Max's brain acknowledges the fairy. There's a girl in front of him with wings. Wings are not a thing people have, okay. Wings that size do not typically support the weight of a human being, so those wings are doing a thing that is further impossible on top of the existing impossibleness of existing on a person.
How about the things that the fairy has said? Max has been standing there processing things and looking her in the eye for a good ten seconds now without responding, so that should be addressed. What words did she say? She said "mortal", implying immediately that she is NOT mortal, okay, she is a fairy, this makes the "mortal" thing less confusing than it otherwise would be. She wanted to know how he got here and how he plans to get back, neither of which he has any useful answer to. She asks if he's got his senses, which is a prompt to start speaking immediately to demonstrate his senses-having.
He is not totally ready for this. He replies "You-!" several times in a row, interspersed with several vaguely interrogative parts of speech. A coherent reply does not emerge from the panic.
imeanforever
The fairy takes a step back from him.
"Did someone bespell you?" she asks.
"Did someone bespell you?" she asks.
unblinkered
"Spell? Sp- there- there was a- there was a door, now there's- there was a door, now there's not a door... you have...! The sun is...! Trees?! Where's? How did?"
He cradles his head in his hands.
He cradles his head in his hands.
imeanforever
"Okay," she says in a soothing sort of voice, stepping forward again, "a door, so you came through a gate. I don't see a gatekeeper here - I didn't even know there was a gate here - so it may not be a stable gate. But you should definitely get home as soon as possible. Do you want help finding another gate?"
unblinkered
"Wh- no! I don't- go home? I don't want to go home, I want to know what's going on! What's- gates? There was a gate? Why- mortal? Wings? How can a door disapp- why was...!"
imeanforever
"You need to go home. It isn't safe for mortals here," says the fairy, slowly and clearly, like she doesn't think he's very bright. "You're a mortal because you're going to die, but if you're lucky it won't be very soon. I have wings because I'm a fairy; you can call me Promise. The door didn't disappear, it moved."
unblinkered
"Moved! Moved, okay, that's a thing doors do, sure. Got it. Moved. And you're Promise the fairy, okay, fairies are real. You- you get why I'm having trouble with this, right? I- the question is, I... christ, this- the question is, why didn't I already know this, why did...!"
He looks around nervously.
"...why d'you say it isn't safe?"
He looks around nervously.
"...why d'you say it isn't safe?"
imeanforever
"Because not all fairies are as harmless as I am," says Promise. "And someone could decide that you're a fun disposable toy."
unblinkered
"More fairies? Evil fairies? I'm in Evil Fairy World? How is there Evil Fairy World?! Why was I not informed about this? It seems like the kind of thing that'd be sort of hard to ignore!"
unblinkered
"To notice..."
This is a surprisingly good question.
"To notice things like- like magic doors! That... are those that rare, you- you said I needed to go home, are there other people who go home? Why haven't they told- what about the physicists, wouldn't they find... fairyons, or- oh, god, oh god. Fairies- is magic a thing, it's got to be a thing if there's doors that move, christ, someone..."
He looks at her again. She definitely has wings. No special effects going on here. This is real life. Real life is supposed to be very bad at keeping secrets. But then, this. Fairy. That's that.
This is a surprisingly good question.
"To notice things like- like magic doors! That... are those that rare, you- you said I needed to go home, are there other people who go home? Why haven't they told- what about the physicists, wouldn't they find... fairyons, or- oh, god, oh god. Fairies- is magic a thing, it's got to be a thing if there's doors that move, christ, someone..."
He looks at her again. She definitely has wings. No special effects going on here. This is real life. Real life is supposed to be very bad at keeping secrets. But then, this. Fairy. That's that.
imeanforever
"Sorcery is a thing but it doesn't work in the mortal world," says Promise. "The doors aren't really common - I certainly don't have a total of how many there are in the entire fairy realm but I'd have to fly for days to find one stable enough to use, and longer to find one with a cooperative gatekeeper."
unblinkered
"...I don't buy it. You didn't say- what about mortals? If people go back and forth at all... wouldn't the secret get out? How long has this been happening? How long... wait, magic doesn't... why doesn't it- no, that's a different question."
He starts pacing nervously.
He starts pacing nervously.
imeanforever
"I think mortals have only come through able to speak for the last few - millions years?" says Promise. "I'm not personally old enough to remember it. I don't care if you go home and tell everybody you met a leaflet, but if you don't go home soon you're going to wind up vassaled or dead."
unblinkered
Millions. Millions of- that's longer than there's been people, that... there were fairies, humanoid fairies who... before... what's that mean for evolution? The history of... or maybe before they weren't humanoid? The resemblance goes the other way, causally? Dinosaur fairies? Max realizes he's started thinking about dinosaur fairies and mentally slaps himself back on track.
"So nobody's ever- wait. You... what's "vassaled"?"
"So nobody's ever- wait. You... what's "vassaled"?"
imeanforever
"...Oh, I should warn you about that. Don't tell any fairies your real name, make something up - and don't eat anything here unless it is directly hand-to-mouth from a fairy who you are willing to be bound to serve until you die. It might be a better option than starving, if you like the fairy, but ideally you'll go home to safe mortal food before it's more than a minor discomfort."
unblinkered
He stares.
"Bound to serve until...?"
He turns around and starts muttering to himself.
"Doors that move, folding space, okay, unusual system, fits with... wings, some trick with mass, reasonable, that... bound to serve? That's- neural- brains are complicated, people... you can't... simple effect... someone would have to... nanobots? Nano... magic... thing? Why names, food would make sense but knowing a name! The mechanism... where's the softwa- who wrote- why would... that's not basic, that would have to..."
He turns around again.
"When you say "bound to serve", do you mean that they can threaten to kill you, or... is it mind control? How do they get it by knowing your name, why would that be the restriction, any effect that could trigger on a match between name and name-knowing could easily trigger on something easier. Why- did someone make magic? Why would they design that to...?"
"Bound to serve until...?"
He turns around and starts muttering to himself.
"Doors that move, folding space, okay, unusual system, fits with... wings, some trick with mass, reasonable, that... bound to serve? That's- neural- brains are complicated, people... you can't... simple effect... someone would have to... nanobots? Nano... magic... thing? Why names, food would make sense but knowing a name! The mechanism... where's the softwa- who wrote- why would... that's not basic, that would have to..."
He turns around again.
"When you say "bound to serve", do you mean that they can threaten to kill you, or... is it mind control? How do they get it by knowing your name, why would that be the restriction, any effect that could trigger on a match between name and name-knowing could easily trigger on something easier. Why- did someone make magic? Why would they design that to...?"
imeanforever
"I mean, if the Queen - the only person to whom I am vassal, because she knows every fairy's name - showed up here and told me to do something it would happen without my decisions in the matter entering into it, although technically my mind would be free to think whatever thoughts I liked. If you told me your name or took food from me I could do the same to you. If any magic that exists was designed it was so long ago that no one remembers why or who, I assure you."
unblinkered
...'YOUR NAME IS PRECIOUS'. Brenda- Brenda? The manager must have known. The manager must have used that door. The manager... that mystery hardly seems worth pursuing at the moment. He'll look into it later, perhaps.
"...and why the hell does it work that way? It's not... those rules are fundamentally complicated, someone had to... the Queen? How long has this Queen been around, would she know?"
"...and why the hell does it work that way? It's not... those rules are fundamentally complicated, someone had to... the Queen? How long has this Queen been around, would she know?"
imeanforever
"The Queen's been around as long as anyone can remember and I very much do not recommend attracting her attention in any way, shape, or form," says Promise firmly.
unblinkered
"...care to explain why that is?"
'DON'T LET HER IN' springs to mind. The queen...? No, more likely some other hostile fairy. Although... there was exactly one HER that was present on the other side of the gate, noticing him immediately and telling him that absolutely nobody else in the world could be trusted, including and especially the Queen of the entire realm.
Horrifying realization sets in. Max doesn't let it show on his face.
'DON'T LET HER IN' springs to mind. The queen...? No, more likely some other hostile fairy. Although... there was exactly one HER that was present on the other side of the gate, noticing him immediately and telling him that absolutely nobody else in the world could be trusted, including and especially the Queen of the entire realm.
Horrifying realization sets in. Max doesn't let it show on his face.
imeanforever
"The Queen knows every fairy's name. She doesn't have yours, but that doesn't give you any special protection from anything else her vassals can do, ranging from magic to forcefeeding to just tying you up and torturing you until you give up your name anyway. Look, do you really want to quiz me about the way the fairy realm works? I would think you'd want to get out of it as soon as possible."