#mirrorhands

[mirrorhands]

Photograph - 10

A gust of stagnant air tousled Tamer's hair and threatened to aggravate his already impressive headache. His eyes were closed but the neon lights above him still easily pierced his eyelids, no matter how hard he pressed them shut. With a groan he raised his head that had rested against the window behind him and slumped forward, his elbows resting on his thighs. That was better. But not by much. "So grossly incandecent...", he mumbled. "Hm? What?", asked Madeleine, who sat across from him. He raised his head again and wrenched his eyelids open. Madeleine was looking at him from behind the screen of Lyra's laptop balanced on her crossed legs, the subway tunnels rushing past behind her. He rubbed his right eye with another groan and answered, "Forget it. Was nothing." She nodded and returned her attention to the screen with an absent-minded frown. Tamer's head felt like it was full of cotton-candy and his eyes felt like they were made of lead, but he pushed himself up on his feet anyway and stumbled over to Madeleine. She winced, uselessly stretching out one Hand towards Tamer. "Hey, careful! Don't fall!", she yelled and it stung in Tamer's ears. When he dropped his behind on the bench next to her, he noted how she scooted away from him a bit, but she was blocked by the huge bag of curiosities. Tamer leaned over a bit to look at the laptop screen. Madeleine was scrolling through what looked like a chatlog. Tamer could feel how his cheeks flushed and his entire body tensed up. "Hey, what the hell! You can't go reading Lyra's private messages!", he stammered forth and tried to close the laptop before she could see something embarrassing. Madeleine was too quick, though. She laid her hand on his face and then pushed him away, holding him at arm's length as he tried desperately to reach the computer. "Stop that! Hey STOP that, Tamer! You're gonna break it!", she shrieked, shortly elevating Tamer's headache to even more unbearable heights. He gave up, clutching his head with one hand and swatting away Madeleine's arm with the other. "Geez, you're such a fucking child," she said, glaring at him, "This is important, damnit. If we don't figure out what that thing that attacked her is soon, we can kiss her goodbye, you understand?!" That hit hard. He really felt like a child now with his silly fear of being laughed at. Madeleine wasn't looking for dirty laundry, she was on the case. Lyra was still in danger. "But, didn't you do those ritual-thingies?", he asked in a hushed voice, hoping desperately that she would retract the statement. Madeleine had turned back to the computer screen. "I did. But they won't protect her forever. We have to find out what's going on and take care of it." So this whole affair wasn't over after all. Despite the horrible fatigue, Tamer removed a Binder and a pen from his backpack and asked: "What are our leads?" Madeleine shot him a glance and began to count off her fingers, "One, we're dealing with a creature. Two, it's incredibly strong. Three, it may or may not be invisible." Tamer listed everything, but hesitated upon that last remark. "What do you mean? It's pretty obviously invisible," he argued. Madeleine shook her head. "When you saw Kat getting launched through the window, you were experiencing your initiation. Prior to that, your weirdness censor was still in full force. On the one hand, it's odd that you remember the levitation part, but on the other: We don't really know how the censor works and it might just fail in bizarre ways during the initiation. So I'm gonna stick with 'may or may not be'." Tamer nodded and wrote that down, as well. Weirdness censor. She had mentioned it before and that now that it was gone his life was bound to get more 'interesting'. Not a comforting thought, but in his current state he was oddly calm and fear didn't register as much more than a slight stomach ache that was neatly overshadowed by the cramps and bruises that resulted from his spectacular 'distraction'. "So that's it?", he asked incredulously, "How does that help us?" Madeleine shrugged. "Doesn't help a lot, no. Which is why I'm looking through her chatlogs. Probably the best course of action and I'd better do it now, before the laptop explodes." This, again, took Tamer aback a bit. "Why would it explode?", he asked. Madeleine's sigh sounded more exhausted than annoyed. "It's called the Sympathetic Redirection Ritual. Basically, if something attacks her despite the other safeguards, the laptop will take the brunt of it. It was the only thing I had that I was sure was of great sentimental value to her." "Rrrriiiight", Tamer sighed and fell back into the seat. He felt useless and helpless. Even Madeleine didn't have the answers, so what could he possibly do? Then he remembered something. There's a hard drive. Give it to Madeleine. And a plastic bag. "Madeleine! What about the bag? Did you open that, yet?", he asked. Madeleine raised her head and stared straight ahead for a few seconds before she said: "Oh right." She set the laptop down on Tamer's lap and hurriedly dug the plastic bag out of her humongous luggage. She fiddled with the rubber bands a bit and then handed it to Tamer with a frustrated sigh: "I have no fingernails." He took it and while Madeleine was taking back the laptop began removing the bands. He could feel that the object inside the bag was about ten to twelve centimetres long, straight and heavy enough to be made of metal. His mind went wild trying to guess what it could be. Another memory device? A remote control of some sort? A small taser? With the final rubber band removed, he took a deep breath and as Madeleine, with the laptop back on her lap, scooted closer, he opened the bag. The object was stuck to the bag in places, so he had to pull the plastic apart to reveal the folded up butterfly knife that was covered over and over in a crust of brown, dried blood. "Oh god", Tamer breathed. Madeleine stared into the bag for a few moments then into Tamer's face, saying nothing, her jaw clenched and her eyes bulging. He could tell what she was thinking. He was thinking it, too. "Let's... not jump to conclusions here, okay? Maybe she found it like this.", he stammered while wrapping the grisly thing back up. Madeleine shook her head. She put her hand on her forehead and took a moment to catch her breath. "No... No this is her knife. I recognise it," she whispered, "She always carried it on her in case of danger. Looks like she found exactly that." Tamer was shocked. Could Lyra actually have killed someone? Images flashed past his eyes: Lyra ramming a knife into somebody's throat. Lyra stabbing someone until she was bloody all over. Lyra in a pool of blood, broken, pleading. He shook it off. "It must have been self-defense, right?! She wouldn't...", he gasped. Madeleine put her hand on his shoulder. "Yeah... Yeah it must have been self-defense." The remainder of the trip passed in a tense silence. Madeleine kept her eyes glued to the laptop screen, but Tamer could tell from the way her eyes didn't move that she wasn't reading or anything, just staring at nothing. "Hey, Tamer," Madeleine said after a few minutes of silence, "Don't worry too much about it, okay? Just..." She gave a non-committal shrug. "Just try to calm down and get some sleep, okay?" Tamer didn't have an answer to this. He didn't think he'd sleep a lot after tonight. Or ever again. Then something occurred to him. "Wait... Didn't we pass your stop like fifteen minutes ago?", he said. Madeleine looked at him and give hima strained smirk. "Just making sure you get home okay."

---

13:56 LyraNorthbound: heya how're you doing? 14:11 Huskarl: I'm okay. Thanks for asking. 14:12 LyraNorthbound: i was hoping to find you online 14:12 LyraNorthbound: i have news 14:12 LyraNorthbound: i checked out the photos you gave me 14:12 LyraNorthbound: and i realised that between all the occult crap and the boxes there are a blackboard and desks and those aluminum and plastic chairs that can be stacked 14:14 Huskarl: So. A school? 14:14 LyraNorthbound: bingo!! 14:15 LyraNorthbound: then i justsearched and asked around for elementary schools (those chairs are tiny) with underground pools and as you can imagine, there are not too many of those 14:15 LyraNorthbound: do you have time for an excursion tomorrow? i don't wanna go there alone 14:16 Huskarl: Good, because that would be insane. I'm off work at 19 tomorrow. Where do we meet? 14:16 LyraNorthbound: it's Ginko-tree elementary. let's meet at S Schöneweide. 20 stat 14:18 Huskarl: No way. Try 20:30. 14:19 LyraNorthbound: fine 14:19 LyraNorthbound: bring gloves

[mirrorhands]

Photograph - 9

"So... Why didn't you go to the hospital with her in the first place?", Madeleine asked as they walked along the greenery that stretched from the subway station to the hospital. Tamer had to give this some thought. Had Lyra told him not to? Not really. It had been more of an implication. She didn't tell him to get the plastic bag and the hard drive to Madeleine right away. But somehow that's what he'd taken away from it. It was incredibly late by now. After making his way to the meeting point, he had waited quite some time for Madeleine, who had returned home 'to get some stuff', in her words. Now she was lugging around a pretty impressive sports bag full of what seemed like pretty heavy things. She had explained a lot to him on the way here, about normally imperceptible things and rituals and symbolism. He hadn't really understood any of it, as the events had left him in an unprecedentedly fatigued state. She had been very very clear about one thing, though: She needed to perform some kind of protection ritual at the hospital, or Lyra would likely die. Every one of her steps caused the humongous bag to jingle and clunk. Tamer was very much on edge, not only because of the emotionally taxing last week and the terrifying revelation that had come to him only hours ago, but also because he was sure that Madeleine with her bag and he with the two backpacks looked like burglars or troublemakers of some sort. He snapped out of his line of thought and remembered that he was having a conversation. "I... don't really know. The police wanted to talk to me and she had told me to take her things and... Well it seemed like the right thing to do somehow. I was kinda confused," he answered honestly. Madeleine shrugged. "It doesn't really matter. I mean I was just curious.", she muttered. Tamer found this odd, but paid it no particular mind. Looking over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure there was nobody around to arrest them, he stepped into the bright light of the hospital's emergency ward. Madeleine noticed, grabbed his arm tightly. She hissed at him, "Stay cool, you're making us look like criminals!" before she briskly approached the receptionist's counter. Hanging back at the door for now, Tamer looked around the room. Several people were seated along the walls and all of them were in some state of agitation. There was a woman pressing a blood-soaked kitchen towel to her hand and a man who kept gripping his pants, his head and his (probably) wife's hand in quick succession as if he was in terrible pain. The general sense of urgency made Tamer's heart beat faster and he felt like his feet might buckle under his weight. He just wanted to go home, lie down and maybe chat with Lyra. God, Lyra. Broken, bloody, twisted Lyra. He had trouble picturing her any other way. Better not to picture her at all, he decided. And there was something else. Something that made him shiver just thinking about it, so he aborted the train of thought and focused on the present. Madeleine waved him over to the counter after she made it to the front of the queue, prompting him to awkwardly wobble to her side, trying as hard as he could to breathe calmly. When he made it there, the receptionist's sceptical glare moved from Madeleine's huge bag to Tamer. "Look, Linda here has her stuff. She was there when the accident happened.", Madeleine said in answer to a question that had drowned in the sea of worried conversation in the room. Tamer felt like he might burst into tears. He was so sick of this day and of Madeleine and he felt so guilty for letting his thoughts trail from Lyra's condition for even a moment. He felt like he had betrayed her with his whining, entirely internal though it might have been. The receptionist looked at Tamer with an intensity that made him want to sink into the ground so nobody could see his piercings, his short hair, the very slight bulge on his chest. "Fine.", the receptionist finally said, "Room 038, ground floor. That way. Just drop the bag off with a nurse." Immediately, Madeleine grabbed Tamer's shoulder and dragged him off to the right. "We might need a distraction in a bit", she whispered, "can you faint on command?" "Probably", Tamer uttered more deadpan than he thought he could muster. Suddenly, Madeleine shoved him back and took a quick glance around a corner. "Shoot.", she hissed, "Tamer, give me the hard drive and the plastic bag!" Tamer was confused but he obeyed, slipping the backpack off his left shoulder and opening the zipper. "Hist! Don't make so much noise, come on, faster!", she snapped. Tamer opened it slightly more slowly to reduce the noise, then hurriedly rummaged through the bag until he found what he was looking for. The items quickly disappeared into Madeleine's bag. She flattened her hair and then turned the corner. "Mister Arens! Oh my god, I heard what happened!" When Tamer followed, he saw her running toward an unfamiliar old man with tousled, grey hair and a face full of worry lines. Lyra's father, he concluded. "How is she?", Madeleine finished as she stopped in front of the man and put her hand on his shoulder. He put his hand on hers in turn and showed a short, sad smile, the corners of his mouth twitching. "She'll live. The doctor said she even has good chances for a full recovery.", he answered with a strained voice as tears streamed down his cheeks. "Her left eye is ruined, though. They couldn't save it." Madeleine set down the bag and pulled the man into a warm hug. "But she's alive.", she said, her voice cracking, too. "Thank god!" Tamer breathed a sigh of relief and leaned against the wall next to the door to room 038. She was safe. Or was she? According to Madeleine, there was still a threat but now, under the bright white neon lights of the hospital, all this ritual junk sounded a lot less believable again. What if Madeleine and Lyra were caught up in some kind of weird delusion? What if they were just crazy, crazy people? What if Lyra just threw herself through that window? He didn't remember it clearly. It could have happened. Right? No. Reality set in again. Glass is not that fragile. He had felt how hard she hit that pane. There was no way she could have summoned that much strength off the cuff. Perhaps she actually was lifted. "How long have you been here, Mister Arens?", Madeleine asked after breaking the embrace. Mister Arens wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. "Two hours.", he said glumly. Madeleine nodded with a sad, compassionate smile. "You need a walk. Why don't you take Li-" "Tamer!", Tamer interjected and earned an annoyed look from Madeleine. "Tamer... and calm your nerves a bit." Mister Arens raised his eyebrows and finally looked at Tamer. "Oh you're Tamer, then! And you have her backpack.", he said. So he'd heard about him. Tamer couldn't even answer now, as all the fear and sadness of the past hours welled up again. He just wordlessly shook Mister Arens' hand and set the backpack down next to the wall. "He was there when it happened.", Madeleine added, "You should both take a calming walk. I'll hold the fort here." Tamer knew exactly, what Madeleine was doing there and couldn't help but be impressed. Lyra's father nodded and started walking slowly down the corridor. She had played him like a fiddle. Tamer scuffled after him and as he passed Madeleine, he could hear her whisper: "I need that distraction." Tamer felt incredibly uncomfortable walking with Lyra's father. They had never met and she had never talked about him much, so the only connection Tamer had was pity. How could he not have pitied this devastated, tired, old man? He was a stranger, but under the circumstances, he acted like they had known each other forever. "You must have been through a lot.", he said in a soft, deep voice. Tamer nodded. Of course he had been. Obviously. "Yeah, it... it was horrible." They walked in silence for a minute. "So you know each other from university?", he asked. Easy questions. Good. Tamer didn't feel like he could handle much more. "N-no. Actually, I only enroled because she did. We met online." "Ah." Another minute of silence passed. "Lucky that you're living in the same city, eh?" He tried to be jocular, but his heart wasn't behind it. He was building up to something Tamer sincerely hoped he could avoid. "Yeah...", he held his breath. In his mind he was screaming, pleading for him not to ask. "How did it happen?" Blood, glass shards, Lyra's mangled body, Lyra being lifted into the air, the crashing noise, the tremor in his legs, the figure, the phantom, the face, the FACE! He buckled, fell on his hands and knees and threw up on the shiny blue hospital floor. With his last ounce of strength, he pushed himself sideways a bit. Just enough to avoid falling into his own lunch. As he lay there twitching, thankfully losing consciousness, he could hear Mister Arens calling for help.

[mirrorhands]

Photograph - 8

The subway towards Nollendorfplatz was rather full, which felt paradoxical after the almost preternatural emptiness of the campus only minutes before. Despite being uncomfortably surrounded by warm, swaying, human bodies under the yellow train car light, Tamer felt very alone. He felt like he had been set apart from regular humankind and even more so than he already had before. He got momentarily startled, when an electronic rock song started playing from somewhere close. He knew the song. Lyra had sent it to him one cozy friday night, when she hadn't been able to sleep. For a moment he saw her in his mind's eye: a bloody, broken body on the concrete. He bit his lip and shook off the image. He wiped his eyes with a sleeve and took a deep breath. He tilted his head and turned it to the sides, trying to find the source of the music. From the annoyed glances of the other passengers he quickly concluded that it came from Lyra's backpack. Hastily, he unzipped the bag and started to rummage through it. There was a dark plastic box, which he decided must be an external hard drive, a plastic bag wrapped around some unknown object and tightly closed with rubber bands, Lyra's laptop, several charging cables... He finally found the smart phone neatly tucked into a side pocket inside the main compartment. Upon pulling it out, he found the screen displaying a familiar name: "Madeleine". With a swipe of his finger he picked up the call. "Damnit, Kat! We agreed to met twenty minutes ago! Where the hell are you?!", Madeleine's voice shrieked right into his ear. "Sorry, Madeleine. It's not Kat.", he replied hastily. "What? Who is- Linda? Is that you?!" Tamer closed his eyes and sighed. "Yeah. Listen, something horrible happened. There was...", Tamer felt the tears welling up in his eyes again. He gritted his teeth. No crying. Be a man, man! "... there was an accident. Kat's pretty badly hurt.", he managed. He wasn't quite sure what to tell her. He wasn't even sure what had happened, really. There was no rational explanation readily available. Whatever he could say would sound unbelievable. The very thought of what he had seen sent shivers down his spine and sheer terror through his brain. Thankfully there was a moment of silence on the other end, which allowed him to compose himself. "... What happened?", Madeleine finally asked in an unusually high-pitched tone. Tamer took a deep breath: "I don't- I don't know... something really weird she was...", his voice broke. He just couldn't keep calm. "She was thrown through a windowpane. I don't know how it happened! I'm freaking out!", he cried. Madeleine's voice was oddly calm, when she replied: "All right, Linda, listen. You need to tell me what happened. Step. By. Step. I want details. No matter how weird they sound. Do you understand?" This did nothing to calm Tamer down at all. This assurance of weirdness suggested horrid and impossible things. He pinned the phone between his ear and his shoulder and grabbed the backpack at his feet, as he felt the train coming to a stop. When he broke free of the overly warm, noisy crowd inside the subway and stepped into the green-tiled subway station, he took a few desperate gulps of relatively fresh air. "Linda?", Madeleine asked. Tamer stumbled over to the bench in the centre of the station platform, sat down and dropped the backpack between his legs. With shivering fingers he removed the phone from his shoulder and placed his head on his hand, resting his elbow on his knee. "Linda!" Tamer raised the phone to his ear.

[drugtripglasses]

i dunno man, my bathroom is starting to behave like it's possessed or something. two days in a row did the shower curtain behind me noisily shift for no reason when i stood in front of the mirror to brush my teeth; and just now, a towel slipped off the rack and fell to the floor noisily when i'd been out of the bathroom for fifteen minutes (and hadn't even used that towel).

[chenisthebestkitty]

sunnyradianttenacity replied to your post “sunnyradianttenacity replied to your post:drugtripglasses replied to...”

Way cool! Glad to see that something came of what was a super awesome idea!

Yeah! You should read Nichtschwerts fics, too they are awesome (Photograph and Corruption)!

[chenisthebestkitty]

drugtripglasses replied to your post “drugtripglasses replied to your post: drugtripglasses replied to your...”

pfehhhh i think it's quite obvious shutter just wasn't creative enough! it's wasted on him! he should give it to noah. it'll be in good company with all the other artefacts hehehehh (ah yes, putting stuff onto the blog sounds excellent!)

Come ON Shutter, a LITTLE effort!

(Also no, Noah, you don't even use any security measures, you get jack shit until you've brought that stuff into the cellar or something and installed some lullaby lights to keep them dormant!)

I'll write a thing about the thing asap :D

[chenisthebestkitty]

drugtripglasses replied to your post: drugtripglasses replied to your post:T...

all i can see now is shutter showing that thing to noah and noah reacting with hysterical laughter. “i can’t BELIEVE you didn’t use this entity to flirt with me! all that potential for bad pick-up lines! WASTED!!”

Well sorry Noah obviously Shutter prefers to give his blue bottles to the Red Queen. *eyebrow wiggle*

I'm gonna make this shit a Mirrorhands entity now nothing can stop me.

Hey, we should transfer the ritual and entity entries to the blog, too!

[mirrorhands]

Guess whooooo