And out of the corner of her eye, she sees... something. A wire-thin line of darkness in the middle of her study's floor.

She nearly doesn't notice it at first, lost in her thoughts as she is. She soon notices it out of the corner of her eye, however, and focuses upon it. She returns the picture to her desk carefully, adjusting it slightly before she releases it, and then approaches the slit of blackness, treading carefully.

The line stands up from her study's floor, black and thinner than hair.

Upon closer inspection, the line seems to be supporting some sort of spiked orb. It hangs halfway up the right-hand side, supported by a thumb-width cylinder.

And of course she steps around it to the right to take a closer look. Her brow furrows with caution.

As she steps cautiously around to its right, the line widens into a door of dark mahogany. Black iron rose-vines dig into its surface, intertwining and overlapping each other: on its right side, they twist together, thorns interlocking into a fist-sized orb of spikes.

This might well be the world's most inconvenient doorknob. 

Ashilynn stands before the bizarre door for a long moment, brow twisting as she studies it, its composition...and, with more scrutiny, the fact that it seems to be a door standing literally in thin air, with no support.

She gathers her staff from where it leans next to her desk and holds it in her left hand. Her right hand extends toward the doorknob, though she stands safely about a foot away, and she extends some mana to grasp the handle and open it, twisting her hand in a miming of the motion as she does..

The door opens onto a room that should not be there. 

A black iron chandelier hangs from the ceiling, capturing a dozen burning roses in cages of thorns. Their unsteady blue light casts odd, flickering shadows that twist and turn. 

A woman sits beneath this chandelier, a rose-vine pen digging thorns into her hand as she writes out contracts in suspiciously-colored ink. Her chair rises as a solid block of gnarled wood, as if someone had taken a lightning-struck hawthorn tree and carved out its heart for a throne. Across from her, a vaguely-seatlike crystal formation juts from among the floorboards. Someone has put a pair of red cushions on it. 

Abstract stained-glass murals enclose the room: as the blue light of the chandelier flickers, they seem to slowly shift, like a heartbeat or a breath.

Outside the door, Ashilynn peers into the strange room, unsettled by its sudden appearance, though curiosity tugs in her chest. Regardless, she remains outside the door, and lowers her hand to her side.

She raises her voice, speaking firmly and clearly. "Hello? Who is there?"

The woman at the desk looks up at Ashilynn. Her face is young, despite her silver hair. A quartz pendant dangles from her neck.  

"Sorry, what?" 

Ashilynn pauses, gasping lightly as she spots the face of the woman at the desk. She seems confused for a brief instant, but it fades swiftly.

"Forgive me for interrupting you." She manages a polite smile, despite being unnerved. "A door to this room has suddenly appeared in my home, and it's...alarming, to say the least. Can you explain this to me?"

The woman frowns. 

"That's... Definitely not supposed to happen. Let me see if I can raise Positioning, one moment..." 

She holds up a hand, and seems to concentrate. 

"Please, if you could explain it..." Ashilynn advances a few steps forward, and crosses the threshold of the door. "I'd like to understand it."

The woman nods. "One moment, I'm on hold..." 

She frowns suddenly. 

"... Great. There's being some instabilities in the Treadstone Plains, everyone is grounded in a Local Reality until the problem can be fixed. It looks like my door might be in the middle of your study for a while." 

She sighs, and leans back into her chair, one hand on her face. "Please, take a seat. This could take some time to explain." 

Ashilynn glances back over her shoulder into her study, then back to the woman. "I have plenty of time to listen."

She doesn't take her hand off her staff as she approaches, but she carefully takes a seat in the crystal chair in front of the woman, settling onto the red cushion.

"So, please, tell me what this is. It's very unusual."

The woman spreads her hands, the broad gesture encompassing the whole room. 

"Welcome to the OTC - that is, the Oifeili Trade Consortium. We are a multiversal corporation, bringing you the finest goods anywhere. And when we say anywhere, we do mean anywhere." 

She smiles crookedly. "At least, that's the official line. But with Positioning down, I'm limited to what we have in stock at the moment. Not that I expect you to want to buy anything: you probably just want me gone."

Ashilynn shakes her head. "No, actually...you are hardly intruding at the moment. The door is nowhere obstructive."

She leans her staff down onto the floor carefully, then clasps her hands in her lap. "I have never heard of the Oifeili Trade Consortium. Where does it originate?"

"Oifeili." 

She smiles slightly. 

"Yes, that's the name of a universe. And no, I don't know much about it: I'm not Chronology. Exploration, actually. My job for the Consortium is finding new and interesting worlds for us to expand our operations into." 

Whatever understanding Ashilynn seemed to have vanishes from her face as the woman speaks. She straightens up in her chair, brow furrowed. "The name of a universe? What can you possibly mean?"

"A world. A different world from yours, with different people, magic, technology, language, culture, laws of physics..." 

She makes a rolling motion with one hand as she trails off.

Ashilynn remains silent for a few moments, thinking. She eventually looks up at the woman, wringing her hands. "Are you typically so abrupt about these sorts of revelations?"

"Well, to me it's..." 

She checks her desk clock. 

"Just another Friday. Sorry, I honestly wasn't really expecting to have this conversation right now." 

Ashilynn nods hesitantly. "It's quite alright...you hardly expected this either, did you? " She smiles, though she still seems bewildered. "Perhaps you can tell me about yourself, and this trade consortium. What is your name?"

"I'm Evangeline. Eva for short. I've been working for OTC for... Well. It rather depends on how you reckon it. At least two hundred years, relative to my home universe."

Ashilynn smiles. "I see...a fair amount of time, then. It's lovely to meet you, Eva. I am Lord Iron Hand Ashilynn, of House Senn'raethi."

Eva raises an eyebrow. "It sounds like I've chanced upon the nobility, then. Is there anything I can do for you, Lord Iron Hand?"