00. Prologue
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It was meant to be a safe space – The Safe Space – a name bestowed on it with pride. Yet in the darkness, the single sliver of light from between its double doors met a challenge.
As a mote-speckled breeze whispered through the air, an invading smolder rippled across the ground. Sizzling lines of gold sliced through the floor in a crackling web, cutting a rough, almost rectangular slab that levitated on a bed of coiling, peach-hued mist. A pulse of light pushed it higher, a granite crown atop a rising arch.
The archway was thick and translucent and bore the imperfectly cut floor skyward, and as it reached its full height, a shallow plinth dammed the hole it had emerged from with uncanny precision, sealing itself seamlessly into the world.
Its glass frame shimmered. Arcane carvings and rear-etched bas-reliefs glowed beneath its smooth, transparent skin, forming icons in shaped bubbles and negative space. They dimmed as The Safe Space fell still once more, their slow glimmer barely highlighting the edges of seats and booths and tables. Rainbow banners hung from the walls between playful bunting flags strung across a well-stocked bar.
And peering through from beyond that frame, two shadows stared out at the empty club, not from the bar, but from a strange and vast vista. They stood silhouetted against an alien sky, a sky not of cloud and stars but of perfectly formed spheres, each a transparent bubble cradling a world of its own within.
As the gateway’s glimmer dimmed to a simmer, the taller shadow leaned out to take in their surroundings.
“Nice going,” he said, a pair oh-so human eyes breaking through the shade to cast around. “You opened the portal in the middle of a dancefloor.”
“Relax,” the smaller one said. “Mortals never notice when something’s off. It’s when everything’s alright they start questioning it.”
The taller man glanced back at their world, then around at the empty room. “There’s no door except the front ones. Use the mirror disguise.”
He stepped back inside to let his colleague work his magic, and with the wave of a hand, the land beneath their feet shivered, squelching and burping as it reshaped itself around them. When it settled, the sky was gone, replaced by the same ceiling and walls of The Safe Space. When he inspected the tables and booths that popped up around them, satisfied everything was copied perfectly, he folded his arms with smug relish.
“Good,” the taller one said. “Not bad for your first try.”
“Not bad? Come on, it’s perfectly perfect! Look, I even copied the dust motes.”
“Too perfect. Mirrors flip images.”
He scowled as the taller man flapped a hand that flipped the world around them, then gave it a cursory inspection by reading an unlit neon sign declaring Everyone Welcome in backwards font above the stairs. When he was satisfied, he turned his scrutiny on his companion.
“So what’s with the bulging muscles? I don’t know a single human who actually looks like that.”
“There were loads like this last time I was in the mortal coil. Every star at the movies had this look. I was going to use that thick Austrian accent they all had, too, but apparently it might attract too much attention in, uh…”
He stepped out and waved a hand around at the world they’d arrived at. His companion stayed inside.
“They call it Ireland. And you know, those were probably the same guy in all those movies.”
“Really? Wow. If he went through all that, no wonder he needed several films to tell it.”
The shadowed man reached through the gate to hand him a small, leathery tube capped with amber orbs. “Make sure you look after this. It’s worth far more than you.”
“No offense taken. And I take it that means you’re not coming?”
“You won’t see me, but I’ll be watching. Frankly, you’ll be hard to miss in that costume. Aren’t you going to change it?”
Stubby fingers held up a flyer and the taller man read its reversed scrawl with practiced ease. A pinup of a cute leprechaun lady skipping down a rainbow path winked back at him.
“Forget luck. Forget the crock. Our rainbow leads to real treasure?”
“Look at the picture. It’s what humans expect us to look like. Speaking of which…”
He pulled the tube apart lengthways and it stretched into a scroll. After mumbling a few lines from it, the dark glass of his gateway shimmered into glowing, flowing hues of a prism.
“What are you doing to the gate?”
“I’m supposed to be a leprechaun. Leprechauns live on the other side of the rainbow.”
“I said look after it. ”
“I will. Relax,” the leprechaun said, carefully placing the scroll into his hat. He wedged the hat settled neatly on his head.
“That beard throws off the look. You might want to change it.”
The shorter man tugged his beard down and it slid off his face, morphing into an orange cravat adorning a waistcoat. “There, all fixed.”
“Yeah. All… fixed.”
“Good, then I’ll be going.”
The taller man gave him a wry smirk. “Good luck, old timer. You’ll need it.”
“Hah. Forget luck. I’m a natural performer.”
“Yeah, well you forget the crock.”
The leprechaun spun on an emerald heel and blew the man behind him a kiss over green-polished nails, letting go of his single reflected flyer. It landed as a right-way reading stack in a pewter crock crooked on his elbow and he skipped up the stairs to the club’s double doors. They swung outward at his touch, flooding the room with sunlight, while across the archway its reflection did the same.
The darkened man shook his head and headed out as well, up the reflected stairs and out to the twinkle of a billion little worlds as his garish, miniature counterpart stepped out to the harsh brightness of Earth’s sun and adjusted his tight miniskirt over a pair of white and green striped stockings.