[Two days into Fridge Liminal]

[professorwolf]

Sorry to bother everyone, but I'm having a bit of a problem. Some of you may know I picked up a somewhat awkward but sometimes useful ability in the city of Melasurei-- I occasionally get flashes of the future in brief, context-less visions. And right now that ability won't leave me alone.

It's the same thing every time: standing on one side of a glass wall, with several others on the other side, unable to reach us-- there are hands pressed to it on either side, but it's impermeable.

I have never actually seen anything metaphorical before, it's always an exact representation of something that may happen. So... I'm wondering if anyone's seen a glass wall around here? Or run into one, I suppose, seeing as it may be a bit hard to see. And if we haven't... perhaps we'd best keep an eye out for one.

And before anyone asks, no, it's not the shelves in the giant refrigerator. I know what those look like.

Comments

[memoryandtheft]

Literal prophecy. Who would have thought.

[professorwolf]

Angels, apparently. That's where I got it. Along with functional wings and a somewhat embarrassing tendency to glow.

[memoryandtheft]

Angels gave you wings.

[It should be a question. It isn't, quite. The concept is just too baffling.]

[professorwolf]

As in, I infiltrated as an angel a year and a half ago, or so, and I took the form back with me should I care to use it. Along with the literal prophecy thing.

[memoryandtheft]

These...Jaunts can transform you? Permanently?

[There's a thread of bone-deep horror in her voice. She'd managed to get through January without screaming by convincing herself the forms they'd taken were nothing more than a complex illusion, grounded so that it didn't break or fray with the dawn.

Wings altogether break that necessary fiction.]

[professorwolf]

They can occasionally give us new shapes that we may take at will. Like in my own world, I'm a werewolf, so I have the shape of a man and the shape of a wolf. Though the new shapes here are actually much easier to manage than that particular change. No awful noises of bones breaking and such. But we generally control them ourselves, once the Jaunt is over, and can change back and forth as we like.

[Hopefully that's a little reassuring, because yes, permanent change is a scary idea. He's still not all that happy with some of his own permanent changes, but he's not sure he can blame the Trumps for those.]

[memoryandtheft]

[The thought of werewolves doesn't particularly bother her - her fiance is a cat, and frequently takes a shape that matches, and she's quite fond of her Queen's canine shifter seneschal. But involuntary transformation?

Nope. Nope. A thousand times no.]

But we can't during the Jaunt. It's just inflicted on us.

[professorwolf]

No. You're right, we can't. Though admittedly, that last Jaunt was the first time I remember them doing it to investigators... not that this makes it any better. I suppose after a year and then some of this, it almost starts feeling normal.

That's a bit frightening, isn't it?

[memoryandtheft]

The thought of this lasting for years, or the thought of considering it normal?

[professorwolf]

I meant the thought of it feeling normal, but you know, they both work.

[memoryandtheft]

Funny how that happens. One day, you're minding your own business, and the next you're only barely realizing just how far down the rabbit hole you've gone.

[professorwolf]

Rather. I'd give a lot for some actual normalcy, these days, but at least I've mostly gotten used to what counts as normal around here. It's better than being upset all the time.

[memoryandtheft]

I'm not convinced being buried by the weirdness is any better.

[There's something tight in her psychic voice, some bitterness born of personal experience kept ruthlessly, if perhaps only temporarily, in check.]

[professorwolf]

There's probably not a "good" involved. We just have to make do with what we can manage.

[That tension does concern him a bit, but he doesn't feel as if he knows her well enough to pry.]

Have you been here long, yourself? I don't think we've spoken before.

[memoryandtheft]

Since the rose clocks. So for one...Jaunt? And however long we've been stuck in here.

[Time seems to bleed together without any proper cycle to differentiate one hour from the next.]

[professorwolf]

It is a bit hard to tell, sometimes. I mostly just trust the people who claim to be able to tell time still, or sense it. They've said it's been about two weeks.

[memoryandtheft]

Seems like a pretty fuzzy way to measure. Hopefully, we won't all wake up at home and find out a hundred years have passed us by.

[There's an odd note to her psychic voice, something that doesn't quite translate over the network.]

[professorwolf]

I think it's more likely we'll either never go home, or we'll go home exactly as we left, without any time having gone by at all. But anything's possible.

[Now he's curious, though.]

Are you particularly worried about so much time passing?

[memoryandtheft]

The not going home part, I'll buy. Do you have any evidence to support no time passing, or is that just optimism speaking?

[There's a pause, as though she's considering and rejecting answers.]

Going home after everyone you've known and loved has either died or forgotten you isn't really going home.

[professorwolf]

That's certainly the truth. My question, I suppose, was more why you thought that might happen. I mean, there has been evidence that, if the worlds we visit are real worlds, the Trumps have control over our placement in time. We've visited the same worlds more than once, at different times, not necessarily related to the amount of time we experienced. But sending us back at the moment we were taken seems to me to be the most logical, and causing the least amount of damage to the worlds we were taken from, since they do seem to care about that to some extent in the worlds we visit.

[memoryandtheft]

It's sort of a mythological staple. Mortal gets whisked away to some mystical realm, parties for a while, joins on a few quests, and comes back home to find out the great grandchildren have great grandchildren.

[professorwolf]

So you're looking at the Trumps more like faerie creatures than, say, aliens or amorpheous beings.

[memoryandtheft]

What can I say? My preferences in outlandish fiction have always leaned more Spenser than Spielberg.