Bargain Bin

[kaolinandbone]

Isabella Katarina Markova almost drops her teacup when the door appears in her garden.

A long moment passes: then Isabella settles her teacup into its saucer with a tiny clink. Her skirts rustle as she stands, a frown settling on her youthful face as she steps towards the door. She recognizes the wood: gnarled hawthorn, full of knots and imperfections. Someone has carved the doorknob into a stylized rose, anchored by thorned vines of black iron.

Her lips pressed together into a hard line, she wrenches open the door.

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[antiprojectionist]

Dr. Realist walks in a shifting landscape, a thousand ideas crashing against his body. Some scorch like sunlight: others sting like salt. His footing shifts: now a tree-root, now palatial tiles, now the surface of an ocean. He stumbles onwards, nonetheless, the beads in his purple braids clacking and clattering, his tattered labcoat snapping out behind him in a nonexistent wind.

And then the door appears, an island of solidity. He zig-zags towards it, fighting the rolling landscape, fingers reaching for the brass knob. It seems so far away- and yet it slaps into his palm with unfamiliar solidity, the cold metal chilling his fingers. He grins like a madman as he throws the door open and falls into the space beyond.

[voidsextant]

The goddess floats in a space between worlds, a void empty even of emptiness. Absence fills her senses, a thousand nonexistences vying for her attention.

Then, as it always does, reality intrudes on her. This time, it intrudes in the form of a door.

Her body forms with one hand on the rusted iron doorknob, a sigh already escaping from its new-woven lips.

[all_the_worlds_have]

The room beyond is filled with tightly-crammed shelving, racks of clothing, and various displays of assorted knickknacks, arrayed haphazardly in rough groupings. It smells vaguely of mothballs and dust.

[kaolinandbone]

Isabella stalks through the dusty aisles, her slightness and practiced stride compensating for the volume of her dresses and petticoats.

[antiprojectionist]

A lanky man turns a corner into her, slouching slightly, beads in his hair clicking as his gaze flicks back and forth across the shelves.