We're Here To Talk About Your Car's Extended Warranty...

[Samantha McManus]

"Suppose this doesn't really change the tone of this suite all that much," Sam chuckles.

[Will Stanton]

"Well, yeah. It's me, right?" Will said, smiling up at Sam. "A different flavor of me, but me notwithstanding.

And if it turns out 'spoiled fae brat' isn't your taste, you can just reach into the cauldron and think hard about what you're looking for; pull out what you want. Mix and match attributes from the Stanton and the Wyldclay, yeah? If you want to talk boggles and fae, you can pull out pure Wyldclay. If you want to talk brownies instead.... maybe it's 50/50."

"But seriously. It's me. You guys were right. Just...more of me, and different types of me. And this amalgam, this one you're talking to now....that's no more 'real' me than any bits and pieces you want. Just different...facets of me. Maybe click your heels three times, I don't know; we can add more...ritual to it. If that's to your liking."

"Or do the stabbing. You've killed me before, for medicinal purposes," he added as a joke.

[Miriam Bell]

"Yes yes, everyone else here can laugh in the face of death." Miriam mutters. "I'm just glad it worked and didn't give you some kind of split-personality issues."

[Samantha McManus]

"I feel like reminding you that you jumped into a pit that may or may not be the afterlife."

[Miriam Bell]

"And was robbed of a dramatic act of self-sacrifice by aforementioned death-defiance." she snaps back, her mind a weird mixture of awkward pride both normal and hurt, vague shame about what could be argued to have been a suicidal act, vague anger at having been denied a possible reunion and the familiar background radiation of scabbed over grief and survivor's guilt. To anyone who doesn't know her, telepath or not, it'd sound like acerbic bitterness but the three of them are well past that point.

[Samantha McManus]

"It might not entirely be a surprise that I'd gotten a bit fond of you by then."

[Will Stanton]

"Yeah. You think the Morrigan is gonna let you get away that easily? Face it -- you're stuck with us."

[Miriam Bell]

"Right. Well. You did pull me out of a bad place." she admits begrudgingly.

"And Sam, I swear, if you go 'in more ways then one' or point out some other obvious metaphor I nearly drowned myself in I'll take a weed-whacker to the woods you call a brain." she adds but she has to fight a smile as she does.

[Samantha McManus]

"Oh, point made. My lips are sealed."

[Will Stanton]

"Look, if you can't stand an obvious metaphor or three, you gotta get out of the mythological dorm. It's part of the price you pay."

[Miriam Bell]

"I am tolerating it." she huffs, though her haughtiness is obviously put on to a large extent.

[Will Stanton]

"I'm glad we meet your lofty expectations, m'lady."

[Miriam Bell]

"I went to a world full of insane people and a personified razor's edge singing rock ballads to some kind of exalting siren, just to retrieve not one but two of you. I've earned being a little pompous."

[Samantha McManus]

"To be honest, it's attractive," she smirks.

[Will Stanton]

"Always good to know one's place," Will smirked, a twinkle in his eye.

[Miriam Bell]

"Brats, the lot of you."

[Will Stanton]

"Says the woman so eager to add the Wyldclay to the pot."

[Miriam Bell]

"Just take the compliment." she shoots back and puts her hand in Will's hair, pushing him back down into the clay.

[Samantha McManus]

"Ah, done with visiting time?"

[Will Stanton]

"Just take the compliment." she shoots back and puts her hand in Will's hair, pushing him back down into the clay.

Miriam's hand sunk into the clay as she pushed Will down....and got stuck, as if some force was grabbing on to her wrist.

[Miriam Bell]

"It's not like they can't..." she starts, tugging on her hand. "Can't just... Bloody hell? Are you holding on to me, you cheeky little bugger?"

[Will Stanton]

If Miriam tugged with enough force, she'd probably be able to get her arm out. Probably. But there was, indeed something tugging on her the other way -- the aforementioned cheeky bugger, presumably.

[Miriam Bell]

"Okay, yes, fine, I like you too." she says and tries to nonchalantly lean on the hand stuck in the clay. "Maybe it added too much sass. Check the recipaaah." she tries to dryly joke but then finds the clay less solid than anticipated and topples, sinking shoulder-first into the cauldron.

[Samantha McManus]

"Okay now they're just fucking with you," Sam shakes her head and goes to try and pull Miriam back out.

[Narrator]

Miriam knows where the cauldron is, and knows where the floor is, and knows the relationship between those two things. Though, thinking back on it calmly and logically, she can't specifically remember ever finding the bottom of the cauldron, even when she was relaxing inside of it. It was more just a gradation of density that kept her buoyant in it before. Maybe she had thought that was just Will keeping her from touching the metal of the cauldron that would either be very cold (being metal) or very hot (being metal on top of an eternal flame) in sort of that stupid, selfless, 'perfect comfort' kick he gets on occasionally. But maybe it was more than that.

In better news, she wasn't drowning in clay! That's a pretty good thing. Despite sinking into the clay itself, she wasn't suffocating. Oh, to be sure, there was a sense of warmth and pressure as she sank, and the sort of earthy, salty smell that Will had in his natural form, and a little bit of the tingling sensation that she'd get when she was lounging in her makeshift spa, so it wasn't like she was in open air or anything. But after perhaps a moment of panic, she would note that there wasn't a particular need to breathe. That, in and of itself, might be interesting. As would the fact that, as she sunk deeper, a light seemed to be coming from further below. Far below where the 'floor' of the cauldron was, or should have been.

Sam would feel a gentle but continuous pull on Miriam -- not a violent tug, but a firm one, matching Sam's pull. And then increasing...

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam's not a particularly claustrophobic person but this is disorienting and she finally understands how it can be possible to lose track of which way is 'up'. Even in something as floaty and ephemeral as telepathy she's always relied on visualizing a physical space and considering the things her power has been doing lately there's probably a deeper need for reliable foundations and solidity to her psychology. All that is to say, she finds herself blindsided by the panic creeping up her spine at feeling unmoored and for a moment she starts flailing. Until the continued pull makes her aware of Sam's hand holding on to her leg and she's not even embarrassed (much) by the feeling of relief, followed by the realization that whatever else is going on, she's literally surrounded by Will.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam barely avoids getting kicked in the head by Miriam.

"Oh come on, Will. Point taken, let her out."

She scrambles to get a better grip, putting her arms around her girlfriend's waist.

[Narrator]

Sam pulled, trying to get Miriam to come out of the pot. Whatever force was keeping her in, however, seemed to ramp up to match Sam's efforts, tugging back with ever-increasing force.

Sam tried to anchor herself, gripping tighter around Miriam's waist to try to get a firm hold on her girlfriend. As she did so, however, she'd see Miriam's body seeming to stretch out, thinning and elongating as the force from within the cauldron matched, and then exceeded, the force of Sam's grip.

Perhaps it was the surprise of that, more than the growing force, that caused Sam to lose her own footing and fall into the cauldron herself.

Absent Sam anchoring them, the two women would sink into the clay. Anyone observing from the room would see them vanish, the cauldron bubbling for a moment, and then returning to a still state. Peace, calm and tranquility.


Anyone observing from inside the cauldron -- say, two mutants suddenly finding themselves out of their own element -- would not, in fact, observe peace, calm or tranquility. Now with nothing keeping them buoyant, they started sinking towards the light. Faster, and faster still, the resistance of the clay around them gradually fading out until it was less sinking and more falling, tumbling, spiraling out of control. In between the tumbling they could see, fairly far down below, something vaguely taking shape. A city of some sort? Buildings poking up at jaunty angles? Puffs of smoke, wide expanses of green? It was honestly hard to make due to the scale of it, the fact that they were falling, and the fact that it was quite rapidly approaching them.

Sam, presumably, had some idea of what to do when falling uncontrollably, being a shifter that specialized into turning into a whole flock o' birds. But if she tried to do that here, she would feel that something was wrong, her body not quite doing what she asked it to do. Something she could probably figure out if she wasn't in the process of plummeting, but a problem not withstanding.

A short-lived problem, though, as the two women hit the ground with a wet *splat*. And the oddest sensation, as they flattened and mushed, like a block of clay that had just been trod upon, before snapping back into their normal forms, lying on the pavement of a somewhat abandoned street.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam groans. It didn't hurt but getting pancaked into the ground is still a wholly awkward sensation in that it makes her entire body not behave like she expects it to. Oddly enough, it's not entirely unfamiliar but she's never been an active participant in molding her body. It pops back into her normal shape, Miriam has nothing if not a strong image and sense of self, but it feels... wobbly. Like being too drunk to properly form words with her mouth but extending to her entire body.

"The hell?" she manages some slurred words.

[Samantha McManus]

Sam also manages to bounce back into shape fairly quickly, but she looks more than a little disturbed as she turns her hands over, looking at them.

"Something's wrong..."

[Miriam Bell]

"You think? For starters, where the bloody hell are we?" she says as she looks around to try and figure out their surroundings. "It's like a jumbled up mindscape except... not?"

[Narrator]

The street that Sam and Miriam found themselves on was almost a contradiction in terms -- a quaint urban street? A quiet, quaint town wouldn't have nearly as many buildings as this, and a city would have at least some sort of rhyme and reason to how the buildings were built -- they'd be made out of the same basic materials, at least.

Instead, this...we'll call it an urban village, for the sake of defining things -- had quaint little shops and sidewalk cafes (much like Kneadful Creations) butted up against ancient stone structures connected to gleaming glass facades that looked more futuristic than anything London had to offer, next to a house made of gingerbread, and on and on we went. It all sort of flowed together -- it wasn't like these were out of place or selected randomly, as everything sort of connected and locked together, but no designer would put these things together in, like, a plan. The streets were lined with greenery -- both fairly standard trees and flowers, and some more bizarre things; stalks of flowers with large bulbs in a variety of unnatural colors. The city stretched out, with a larger, more official looking downtown area down one end, though it was hard to get the scale of the place here. Both from being on ground level and, well, the sort of random size and shape of the buildings making measuring difficult.

The light here came from above, which was fairly normal. But it wasn't the sun -- there was some light emanating from straight up, where they had fallen from, providing kind of a warm, pleasant glow into the city. If they stared long enough directly into the light, in the way you're very much not supposed to, they could make out what might have been the vague patterns of the ceiling of their dorm? Maybe?

Miriam was right, though -- this wasn't a mindscape. When in someone's mind, there was a floaty, almost aetherial sense; the telepathic portions of their brains interpreting thoughts and images and essences into sensory input they could comprehend and digest. This was more rooted, rock-solid. They had weight and mass. The world around them could be touched and heard and smelt. This was an actual, physical place; somewhere they actually were rather than were projecting themselves into.

Beyond that, it also just didn't fit right to be Will's mindscape. It was hard to put their finger on just what was different, looking around from where they were still picking themselves up, but a mindscape -- especially for a non-telepath -- was more of a holistic interpretation of one's psyche, filled with metaphor and symbolism. Where acting, or interacting, with the world around them would affect the person's mind and personality in some sort of fundamental way. This...this place wasn't that. One got the impression here, though, that if they went into that smoke shop, the cigars would just be cigars. That's not to say that whatever this was wasn't connected to Will -- I mean, they fell into the cauldron, didn't they? -- but this wasn't some kind of psychological soup.

Logic would dictate this is where the Wills went when they were re-absorbed into the cauldron, but Will had never described anything like this to them. His normal response, if anything, was that it was an indescribable sensation of remerging with himself; absorbing the memories and experiences of whichever aspect of himself went out into the world and integrating them into his whole self. Certainly, nothing as solid and tangible as all of this. I mean, there was a bus stop! Surely, Will would have mentioned some kind of mass transit system.

"Something's wrong" also was a fairly accurate statement. First of all, there was themselves. Both Sam and Miriam would find their telepathic senses significantly muted in here. Not entirely gone; they weren't de-powered or anything, but blunted, as if trying to listen to the radio playing three doors down through several closed doors. Sam, in particular, would also feel a little strange as she looked at her hands. As a shapeshifter, she had a more intuitive connection to her body that Miriam did, and that connection was just slightly off.

"Something's wrong". The buildings on the street were mostly empty and shut down. A number of "for sale!" and "great deal!" signs were in the windows. It wasn't abandoned -- here and there, some activity was going on. People of different shapes and sizes -- a nine-foot tall woman, clearing great strides with every step; an 18-inch tall man cleaning the windows to his shop, some sort of...faun? Satyr?... reading the paper at the bus stop-- were around, but not nearly as many as you would expect from something this size. The city was far too big for it's populace.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam actually kneels down and presses her hand against the ground. At least to her there's always a bit of... drift in the details of a mindscape. Unimportant little things where her mind fills in the blanks of the metaphors, but without any real consistency. Dream-like. It actually helps identify the things where the little details are important, but right now it only reinforces the fact that they are - somehow - in a real physical space. And not one manifested by her power because the ground steadfastly refuses to respond to her trying to coax it into something else. Instead she finds her hand taking on the consistency and texture of the road.

"The hell is going on? We didn't put this in and there's certainly not enough room in the cauldron for all this."

[Narrator]

The road is hard and resilient to Miriam's attempts to change it. Much like a road should be, if one thinks about it.

As for her own hand, it stopped shifting and altering when Miriam stopped trying to force the road to change, though it didn't automatically snap back to normal.

[Samantha McManus]

"There's not enough room in the cauldron for all of them, either. Not as if you're any stranger to stepping off the map."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam feels like that isn't quite the same, but at the same time is struggling to define how exactly. "Well yeah, the Cauldron just holds the mental patterns and then it... makes more stuff when they climb out. Okay fine, Will's mass never made any sense to begin with."

"Still, it feels different than the--" she briefly clears her throat as if she still has to make a point out of not singing the words. "Spaces inbetween. Those were more ephemeral, fickle and changing in response to us. This is weirdly solid in comparison. Or... maybe not solid but more real? There's a definition to it, like the road is being descriptive towards my hand?"

"Which, by the way, what the hell is up with that?"

[Samantha McManus]

"We're in the mix now, though. Maybe not mixed in, but if they're tapped into you, what's stopping this from becoming a whole funhouse?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Like Will needs any help with that. Would explain all the seemingly empty houses though. I'm not much for populated mindscapes."

[Narrator]

Now that the two of them had stood up and weren't plummeting from an unexplained height, they could be a little more in tune with the weirdness around them.

When Miriam would clear her throat, it was an act born out of habit alone; she didn't need her airways cleared. Because, now that she thought about it, she wasn't breathing. At all. Nor was Sam, for that matter. The physical sensations were just... off. The feel of gravity pulling them down, the feel of moving through space, the perspective in the distance. Whatever and wherever this was didn't feel physically correct.

[Miriam Bell]

Not having to breathe was disturbingly easy to miss and she's reminded of her stint as a blood-drinking creature of the night.

"This feels off. And not in the usual Will way. Come on, let's see if the natives have anything to tell us about this place."