@ruler-of-oz sent: 53 (birds of a feather - billie eilish)
The thing had manifested in the mirror: a glittering shape, distant and yet sensible, like a mirage. Letheia consulted her crystal ball, but it showed nothing except a flurry of strange images: fire, water, straw; an edifice of gleaming green spires both like and unlike the Emerald City; an infant, a grimoire, a storm. She'd tried to peer deeper, but the images refused to cohere, only kept rushing by in their stream, and at last she gave up. The only solution was to free the thing and see what it might be.
She sits now across from Ozma. Not Ozma of the Ozmas, of the line of Pastorius, but another, with a strange and fabulous story to tell.
"Poor creature." She's gathered the girl's hand into her own. Trapped in the mirror, had Ozma been sensible at all of her own body; had there been enough of her to feel, to think, to touch? What was it like to have mind and self subsumed into the silvery underside of the mirror image? There are questions she wants to ask, demands she wants to make. She withholds them. She gentles her voice to ask, "What do you wish to do, Ozma?"
She continues: "I am sure I could devise a way to send you back. But if, as you say, the danger was on your mother's doorstep, it may not be safe. Of course, you are welcome to stay here, if you like. Witch-daughters such as us must take care of each other."
