Hecate's Mirror/Answers

Dora's steps echo around an empty hall as they make their way to the old HaZe club room, where the members sometimes still gathered for LAN activities. This visit, unlike those LAN gatherings, was unprompted, as hinted at by the emptiness of her surroundings. Shamefully she had forgotten her controller in the room and found themselves requiring it for some planned quality time.

Reaching the door to the clubroom, Dora couldn't help but notice the door wasn't locked, it wasn't even shut, but instead it lay ever so slightly open. Not giving it much thought she swings the door open...

GASP OH HELLO— COUGH COUGH COUGH WHEEZE COUGH

... to find a weirdly alarmed Nurse Cap sitting at a desk, staring at a computer before pivoting towards Dora.

Whoa, are you okay...?

COUGH ... COUGH ... FUCK, Y, YEAH, SORry about that, ummm... I just. was not, um, expecting anyone to uhh, walk... in...

Dora looks past Nurse Cap, peering into the monitor to see a strange wiki page about a mirror open.

Sorry for intruding; I didn't know you were going to be here. I was just swinging by to get my controller. What are you still doing here?

Nurse Cap looks back and forth between Dora and the monitor, clearly nervous to give an answer.

...uh, I was just curious, but it's okay if——

I just, umm, like being here more than home...

... Um... I can spend downtime here without feeling depressed and like I'm wasting time, or, whatever... And...

Nurse Cap looks to the side, feeling as if she had said something wrong.

Um, n, nevermind. I just, uh, like being here. That's all, sorry...

...it's okay, I kinda understand what you mean...though, um...I was asking more about specifically what you were doing right now...

They gesture to the computer screen.

Oh! Ummm...

Just looking at some, uh, scary stuff, I guess... I sometimes, um, get kind of invested in, uhh, o, occult stuff, you could s, say...

Dora walks towards Nurse Cap and leans forward towards the monitor, reading the contents of the wiki page a bit closer than what they had managed to glance at from a distance.

Oh, I think I've heard about this. That ancient mirror that disappeared...

Um, right... I was just thinking about, uhh, the logistics of it a bit...

Hmmm. What do you think happened? My first thought is that it was probably an orchestrated heist with workers on the inside, but I guess I don't know enough about the circumstances to say for sure.

Oh, um...

Actually, I was mostly ummm, thinking about the original, uhh, story... Though that does make me think...

Like, the journal? What do you mean?

Ah, well... How do I explain this... Ummm, I have, uhhh, m, my reasons to believe, ummmmm, the original w, writings weren't 100% f, fictional...

Wait, really? Why?

Ummmmm... A... Anyway...

I thought that, umm... An interesting, uh, possibility was... if the original writer wasn't suffering from, ummm, long-term delusions and, uhhhh, was writing about something from reality then... I think "Melia" might've been a person in the author's ummm, life, but uhhh, not the same person as the a, author, unlike what the, ummmm, writing implies...

Oh, that's interesting...honestly, I'm not really sure how that's really relevant...but, um, it seems like an intriguing conclusion...?

Um, sorry, I guess I'm just, ummmm, trying to solve some kind of, ummm, i, internal conflict...

Confused silence... And then, to break through it, Dora playfully asks a rhetorical, tongue-in-cheek question, to which Nurse Cap weirdly replies in a way that sounds surprisingly serious, and even meaningful.

You don't think the mirror is actually magical, right? Pfft.

... No, it's magic...

It's definitely magic...

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