Another journal

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They ended up staying a little over a week at what Emily insisted on calling “the monastery.” Unlike Dry-Eyes’ village—which was a pretty normal place once you disregarded the scale and everybody’s wings—the monastery reeked of magic and wonder. The percentage of human-shaped Folk was about equal to the chimeras, monsters and full-blooded animals, Emily quickly lost the last of her uneasiness about talking people who weren’t bipedal. After getting spectacularly lost one afternoon, she begged a ball of string from a horrifying but sweet spider with a woman’s face who lived down the hall.

Emily never got direct answers to anything she asked, she was still in the dark on who her parents were and if being in the Sidhe did anything for her beyond removing the necessity of eating and using the bathroom. She was getting good at weasling out information obliquely—her working theory was that it wasn’t so much that fairies wanted to confuse people, they were just locked by habit into an eternal cycle of being total dicks to each other.

The Polaroid camera was a general hit. While talking with the siren, who’d introduced herself as Devora by writing on a slate, Emily had shown her the photograph she’d taken of her room. At Devora’s insistence she took a picture of her that developed with a faint blue aura shining around the siren’s silent mouth. The two women decided that, obviously, the photos showed the true nature of things; the runes in Emily’s room were the protective spells built into the walls of the monastery, the aura was Devora’s muted siren song.

Emily showed her how to use the camera and waited outside the sound-proofed room while the siren took a picture of herself singing. The resulting image was beautiful, Devora’s eyes closed in bliss, a blue and green spectrum spilled from her open mouth.

They brought the photographs to a room Emily decided was some sort of scrying lab. A motley assortment of Folk demanded the camera and would have shot all of her film if Emily hadn’t more or less thrown a tantrum. Limiting them to the last six shots left in the loaded pack, she watched as they surprisingly scientifically tested the camera’s abilities.

“This is so much more modern than a mirror.” The hare blinked thoughtfully. “Though being limited by the film is a notable drawback.” He talked over his shoulder, trying to keep the current test subjects properly centered in an inky, ornate hand mirror. An assistant floated over, gingerly holding a freshly shot photo by the edges. Emily peered between them, comparing the picture to the reflected image. In both a seven-tailed fox perched on a stool, paws cradling a porcelain jar. In the photograph the fox was surrounded by sparks of purple and the jar had an angry red shimmer that reflected on itself into apparent infinity, like two mirrors facing each other.

The hare shivered with excitement, ears twitching. “These photographs give you so much more information though! A person’s specific abilities displayed as coloured auras—I really wish you’d give us enough film to properly attempt cataloguing what the colours and forms indicate—you can even see hints of the infinite space folded within the djinn’s jar!” The hare shook his head and lowered the mirror. “Thank you Kitty, make sure you sign that thing back in at Archives.”

The slim woman on the stool rolled her eyes. “You think I want to haul this jerk around more than I have to? She walked over to look at the photograph. “Not a bad likeness.”

The hare nodded, handing the photo to his assistant to file. He sighed, “Yes, and the last one for now. When you get more tails your increased perceptive abilities should show on there too. I wonder what colour and form they’ll take?” He looked at Emily. “Are you sure you can’t spare us more film?”

“No. And it wouldn’t do you any good without the camera and I’m keeping that.” She waved goodbye to Kitty, who was having a one-sided conversation with the bottle as she left. “Maybe when I’m done with this quest I’ll bring you back a camera and film of your own.”

“That would be nice.” The hare’s face grew serious. “Of course, that’s if you finish this quest of yours in a shape to do so.”

“It’s not my quest, it’s a quest I’m doing.” She leaned down to pat the hare’s shoulder. “And I was made for it, practically literally, so stop worrying.” Emily had been glad to find that the majority of the monastery had been in support of her plans, though she had the feeling that a good part of their interest was in how the laws and herself had been manipulated. They were all scientists and scholars first. “Seriously though, it’ll work out. Anyway, what do you make of this?” She handed him the snapshot she’d taken in the grasshopper field.

The hare nibbled at his lip. “This doesn’t fall in with anything we’ve encountered yet. Why didn’t you show me this earlier?”

“I forgot, I guess.” Emily shrugged. “Point being, how about I put in a fresh pack of film and let you use the first shot on me to see if you can make sense of it.”

She loaded the camera and sat patiently on the stool in front of a dark sheet the hare had hung so the monastery’s protective spells wouldn’t influence the photographs. “Do I need to smile?”

He shook his head no, so Emily let her face relax into the neutral expression she’d used when getting her driver’s license. The camera click-whirred out the film and the hare looked at Emily through the mirror while it developed.

“I’m not picking up anything here.” He handed the mirror to his assistant and looked at the photograph. “You should come look at this.”

Emily slid off the stool and peered at the photo, comparing it with the earlier shot. There was the same obscuring, undeveloped blur, but now it was cluttered with rainbow flecks.

“It looks like a TV tuned between stations.”

“What?”

Emily shook her head. “It’s not worth explaining. Anyway, weird.” She took the camera and returned to her room, thinking.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.