Nat was surprised at the effort required, as he strained to pull Moira through the aetheric vortex hanging in space in front of him. At least he hoped it was Moira, as he couldn't exactly see more than the arm past his own. At least he thought it was an arm. He was, admittedly, operating under a lot of assumptions at the moment.

  His nerves were entirely confused, and out of the conflicting sensations, the only thing he could be sure of was the pressure of a hand. Everything else alternated between hot and cold, metallic and wet — and even the pressure was without consistent substance — more like extending a hand into a gusty wind. Nat had no idea what he was even straining against, and no time to speculate further, as a second hand tried to grasp his own, slipped, then found purchase where his forearm angled to meet his wrist.

  He was making no real progress that he could discern — the hands remained on the other side of the vortex, while the muscles of his arm began to burn with the effort. Bracing his feet to engage his legs did not seem to help him pull. Though it did cause him to look beneath the portal — and there he saw nothing where he expected to see legs or a body. Only when he looked into the shimmering torus, past the obstruction of his arms, could he see fragments of the glowing figure he was holding fast to.

  That implied that the portal, as he had thought of it, was the critical thing at play — not himself. If that was true, then perhaps the way to proceed was to strengthen it — rather than continue his stalemated game of tug of war. But to do that required time, and he and the portal were already both within his Talent.

  The strength in his arms was rapidly giving out — he was no athlete, and this contest made no sense to him. Or wait… no, his prior assumption about time was wrong. There was a way to buy additional time, but only when it came to aether — which this was. A moment's focus, and faster he went. No slow start ramping up in speed this, he focused his intent on going as fast as he had ever gone before, and the tugging from the portal lessened. Not enough to become easy, but he began to make progress — up until the moment when the opposing hand approached the skin of the vortex. His arm was no longer wrapped in aether, so there was no aether coated surface for the hand to keep hold of.

  The aethereal fingers began to slip out of his own — their grip upon his weakening and the fingers uncurling. Forgoing the useless bracing of his legs, he plunged both arms through the portal — barely wide enough to accommodate them, and clamped down on the hand and forearm before they retreated beyond his reach. The thin skin of aether wrapped around his arms dimmed to almost nothing with both of his hands coated — and he had to direct his focus to lengthen the virtual fabric on the vortex spools.

  Luckily, that seemed to work — his shining second skin thickened, and his grasp solidified. Though the time spent took its toll and one arm was screaming with acidic agony. His other was still fresh, but he was unwilling to attempt switching arms when his intuition told him not to let go even for a moment.

  He needed help.

  Tessan was still unconscious, and could not be woken easily. During the five minutes of hand holding it had taken to activate, Lyn had gone over the technique that worked upon almost every Ber race to allow them to be placed into restorative comas without drugs. Tessan had calmly dozed off, and barring drastic steps, would only wake eight hours later — like an alarm had been set.

  Lyn was outside his Talent. Would the aether stay in place on his arms if he left it? He was accelerated at the moment far beyond his normal speed, which was reducing the strain. Would he be able to hold on for even a second, outside his Talent in real time? How would he even let them know what he wanted, with his hands busy and no air to speak? The other concern was that Lyn was over near Tessan — not the wall. He couldn't reach them without letting go — or could he?

  The portal was portable — he'd brought it near the wall and then moved it back once already, but could he move it back while elbow deep in it? One way to find out, he supposed — so he decided to risk it. Fortunately, the answer was yes. But he had to move backwards carefully a step at a time, as if he went too fast, the portal did not keep up and the strain increased. He had also hoped that repositioning it might also reduce the constant pulling on his arm, but no such luck.

  Twenty agonizing seconds later he was as close as he was going to get before he would be forced to let go — his foot back as far as he could reach, barely touching Lyn's. Gritting his teeth, he hooked his arm to provide a surface to grip, screamed silently into the vacuum with the pain, hoped it would be enough, and exited the Talent.

  [Slip]

  Lyn was startled at the sudden appearance of Nat next to them — and even more surprised the strange pose — his shadowed statue form was reaching with both hands into an excruciatingly bright halo of light. Lyn recoiled and slammed their eyelids closed, and would have fallen as they attempted to take a step back — except their foot was pinned in place by Nat's own.

  [Slip]

  And then they were within Nat's Talent — and the boy was nothing if not polite, so what was so wrong that he could not…

  The clenched teeth and frantic eye motions told a story of pain and desperation. Was the halo hurting him? Pulling him in? No. His posture was wrong. Nat was staring at Lyn, repeating a rolling of his eyes at his arms… no, beyond his arms. But Lyn could not see what they felt he wanted them to see — tall people, never taking others into consideration.

  It seemed urgent, so Lyn did the only thing that made sense, and climbed mount Nat, placing their head next to his so they could see… hands? What in AMA's name — Moira?

  Lyn allowed themselves two seconds to consider the situation — and then scrambled down Nat's arms and slammed their tail through the narrow gap available. Their senses went mad, but they could feel something with their tail that felt like an arm and hand. So they took hold of the ghostly arms with their prehensile tail and held on to it.

  Nat's face immediately showed relief, and he relaxed one arm, making Lyn's perch somewhat precarious. Their hands, however, were not necessary for stability, and they signed at him — awkwardly close to be easily understood. ‘What's going on? Plan?’

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  Both of his arms were unavailable, but he mouthed two obvious words. ‘Help’ and ‘Moira’. Okay — that confirmed that Lyn hadn't gone and stuck their tail somewhere horrifically unwise on a hunch. Well… probably — time would tell.

  Bending slightly to get a better view of the ring of light they had their backside pressed up against, Lyn could see that it was a complicated working. Helical braided pattern — like Nat's other work earlier. So what had he done that was different? Why was Moira visible — and more importantly, palpable — through it, but not from any other angle? And why was it so horrifically bright?

  First things first — the brightness. Why was that? He'd clearly pumped as much theronic energy as he could muster — the quantity of which Lyn could not begin to calculate — at the ring for some reason. Why? Well, Moira, of course. Why the death-grip — couldn't she just step through… no. She must have been prevented. He's trying to energize a doorway, but he's gone about it all wrong.

  Lyn turned back to Nat, ‘If you're trying to power a pattern like this, don't empower the braid itself. Push the energy through the core of the torus to induce the braid to twist, which will cause the center pattern to rotate.’

  He looked at Lyn for a moment, then his eyes went unfocused. A few seconds later and Lyn could feel the ring behind them change. They looked back, and the ring ceased to be a halo and was now more obviously a portal. Time to solve the second issue — the awkward positioning.

  Lyn signed again, ‘Can you move this down so you're not holding me in space? Or would that be too difficult?’ He shook his head — so, negative. ‘Okay, then how about enlarging it — like a full length mirror, or doorway?’ This was met by a moment of consideration and a nod. The feeling that went through Lyn's nethers at that moment would never make it into their journal, not even for posterity.

  A few moments of recovery time later, and Lyn was looking into a doorway, where they could see something that looked somewhat like Moira's puppet form, but somehow entirely unlike it in a way that could not be expressed. Most notably, was the look of utter despair and anguish on her face as she stared through the swirling vortex at the two of them. Moira was clutching Nat's arm, and Lyn's tail like a shipwrecked sailor to flotsam.

  No. No that would not do. Why did she not move forward and through? It had to be that she could not. Why, then? Nat's door was, by all indications, a better version than the one Nat had crafted before. So the issue wasn't the door, then. It was Moira. What had changed?

  Oh.

  Moira. Moira had changed.

  Lyn reached to the sides of the portal and inspected the patterns. They were the same as before — Nat had tried what he knew, but he did not understand that Moira wasn't just a static pattern — she was a living being. She could change. And after whatever had gone wrong, for whatever reason, she was unable — or perhaps unwilling — to show her pattern, the very truth of her being, off.

  The invitation could not be accepted, because it wasn't valid for the being in front of them. And for whatever reason, Moira could not, or would not show the distillation of their new self. Okay then, they'd have to meet Moira where she was.

  Lyn looked back at Nat and explained their thoughts in brief, with Nat mostly nodding along, then continued on, ‘I'm going to show you an electromagnetic principle that translates to aether — watch.’

  A moment later Lyn's hands went right through the edges of the ring, and they caught themselves just before they fell on their face. Right — the aether on this side wasn't tangible. Instead, they circled their hands around each side and began to cycle the positive flow of aether, alternating hands. This caused the theromagnetic core of the pattern to alternate — reversing direction with each cycle. Then Lyn sped it up, cycling faster and faster, until the swirl at the center of the pattern became almost opaque with energy.

  Nat looked on with a raised eyebrow at Lyn. He was either impressed or worried.

  Lyn considered that the correct response. Then ensuring their tail was securely locked in place — Silverpaw musculature rested closed — they gestured to Nat, ‘Go get her. Tell her… tell her you need her just as she is.’

  To Nat's credit, he only stared incredulous for half a minute. Then he slowly let go, making sure that Lyn's tail was secure, and he walked into the portal, letting the aetheric film wrap around him fully as he did so — purple sparks outlining where he pressed forward through the boundary of the portal. And then he was no longer visible, except as momentary flashes where he stood still for a time, in a discussion that lasted only seconds, or possibly days. Lyn wasn't sure anymore.

  And then Moira took Nat's hand, and stepped forward, into an embrace. And Lyn wondered if they imagined that Moira was sobbing into Nat's shoulder. Because why would she make a puppet cry?

  Oh. Unless that wasn't a puppet on the other side of the torus. Perhaps it truly was a door, of sorts.

  At some point, Moira had let go of Lyn's tail — the pressure had relented suddenly, as if it had never been. She was holding Nat's hand, now, and walking towards the portal. Lyn turned and stood, facing it — unsure of what exactly they were witness to.

  Nat walked through first, keeping one tightly in contact with Moira's, and she stood before the doorway — trepidation apparent in her posture.

  She reached towards the boundary of the portal and pressed, but it stopped — the film began to wrap but then almost rebounded back. Moira ceased to try to push forward, and began to back away from the portal, ever so subtly.

  Lyn beckoned Moira with a wait gesture, considered a moment, then turned to Nat, ‘Her pattern must be adjusted, first. Replace one at a time.’

  Nat held out his other hand to Moira — and summoned a copy of her pattern, hovering above it. Moira stepped forward and instantly evoked a similar copy — except this one had a misshapen purple scar running down the lower portion of it. Lyn carefully kept their expression neutral. Nat didn't hesitate, and had mirrored the new copy of her pattern. Then one of the three strands that formed the helix of the portal peeled out of the braid as it spun. The new pattern followed immediately behind it, wrapping itself around the portal, as the old one boiled away in a cloud of fading sparks.

  Lyn put their hand up before anyone moved to press forward, ‘One moment. Your film is clever, but if I'm understanding things correctly, a thin coating for us is insufficient as containment for her. Can you spin the film into strings, like your pattern braid, or Silverpaw bones? Weave a skin out of your strands — slowly — as she steps through.’

  Nat took a few moments to get the torus-portal to behave, but tested the weave on his own arm — still through the boundary — first. The single strand wove up and down his arm, until it was covered from elbow to fingertips — topology was clearly not a problem for a massless material.

  Moira was still hesitant, but this time looked towards Lyn, and put her hand out.

  Lyn reached up through the portal, the thin string wrapping her hand like Nat's had been, and took hold of Moira's proffered hand.

  And then Moira stepped forward — pressing into the boundary. The strands wrapped around her in slow motion, and she moved forward — white-blue sparks joined the purple that had marked Nat's transition through the boundary — only these were brighter. Far brighter.

  A flash of brilliant purple energy erased everything, and memory became a jumbled, incoherent mess.

  [Rip]

  Lyn looked around, trying to understand where they were, and what they'd been doing. For the fourth or fifth time, they thought, but maybe this time it would stick.

  They were sitting outside Nat's Talent, on the floor of the vacuum chamber. Nat was laid out on the ground, facing upward with eyes open. Tessan was still dozing. Nezzar and the entire wing of Clackaw were a cluster of statues, eyes wide as they stared at Lyn. No — the angles were wrong, they were looking just behind and to the side of Lyn.

  A small turn of their head, and a softly glowing hand entered the side of Lyn's vision. It was outstretched, obviously offered to help Lyn stand.

  Reflexively, Lyn reached out and took it — and was pulled to their feet. Howdy strangers! Miss me?