"Too late, it's retracted. You'll have to do the more impressive part to get applauded again."
And then he gets to work, doing - staring. The frame doesn't visibly change at all.
After a while, he says, "There, something more impressive."
"Oh, it's not done yet, that was me making it lighter and stronger so it doesn't break your door, fall to the ground, and shatter into fifty thousand pieces."
He gets back to work. This time, something visibly does happen. The frame itself gets a wood-like coloring and finish, and then there is a frame around a stone background, and Prime gets to the real work.
First he pokes the spot where the portal will go (leaving a marker that matches the one in Pantheon) and then he does a lot of fancy, fancy magic. Rip open a doorway in the fabric of the universe, tell it to hide itself under a veneer of something like paint, telling it to stay looking like that and being closed unless someone says the correct thing - and contingencies for various purposes, reinforcing the portal to keep it from breaking, keeping it stable even when planes shift, that sort of thing.
"Done," he says, and the 'painting' looks it. "Now we hang it up and people may come through - or we may go there. Either."
"I'm a little short on picture hooks, but I can probably rig something up if you are not also a picture-hook-maker."
"Okay. Well, inside the door, here," she says. "Darren, why are you not watching your epic wizard alt do epic wizarding?"
"Oh my gosh I'm terrible is he epic wizarding?"
Then there is a deer with wings, rushing up to watch magic.
He gets to setting up the picture hooks with leftover bits of rock.
"You missed it. He turned the rocks into this painting and the painting into a portal."
And then Prime gets the Sad Deer Face.
"If you do magic again will you come get me?"
Phix pets her boyfriend. "Sorry I didn't think to call you over, I couldn't figure out why you weren't following by yourself."
"I was comfy," he complains. "I thought there'd be like - some prep time or something, not just - bam, portal."
"Bam, portal. Seems to work a lot like fairy princess magic, at least from what I saw."
The painting stops looking like a painting and looks like a doorway.
"Done. Shall we get Aya and go, or do you feel like hosting a house party?"
"Our neighbors aren't nosy, but they're - existent. Pantheon sounds like a fine place to hang out and meet everybody, I doubt they really need to see the apartment or the store today."
"I get to meet magic me's!"