The Door
Her first impression of the human world was darkness.
The door opened, and she stepped through into a pitch black night. For a moment, she couldn’t see a thing, but as her eyes adjusted shapes became clearer and clearer.
The human world was…
Very grey.
The ground was all grey. She’d seen concrete before, of course, but most of the ground in the Boiling Isles was still grass or dirt. The ground in the human world seemed to be all concrete - cracked, patterned concrete divided into squares for some reason, but concrete nonetheless. The sky, too, was very grey. Not all grey - but clouds were hovering in the sky and draping over the stars in thick sheets. Even where there weren’t clouds, she still couldn’t see any stars. Were there not stars in the human world?
The only light in the place where she stepped out - which looked like a concrete hallway, with walls towering up towards the sky - was rectangles of light in the sides of the buildings.
The buildings were the oddest thing. They weren’t houses - at least, not like any Amity had ever seen. She knew windows, of course, and these buildings had plenty of those, but that was about the only thing familiar about them. They were made of something that looked like concrete, but… granier, for lack of a better word. Like knock-off concrete. There wasn’t a roof - not a triangular one. And there was no shape to the houses. They were just massive rectangular monoliths that seemed to tower up forever.
How did people live there? It looked like it was only big enough for about two rooms - though, to be fair, it would be two incredibly tall rooms. Maybe they split it up into multiple floors? But that would make a whole lot more rooms than any one family would ever need… did massive groups of people live in those buildings? Like how a lot of students went to Hexside? That would make sense.
But that was still a lot of stairs to climb. Amity winced at the idea of having to climb to the top of that building before getting to sleep every day.
She glanced to the side.
Oh. There was something not grey. A pile of garbage, next to some kind of big green bin filled with black bags stuffed with something.
She held the key up in front of her face, and peered at it.
It peered back.
She pressed the eye out of curiosity - and heard the door slam shut behind her.
She yelped, and leaped back - before glancing over, and seeing that the door was starting to fold up.
No, no, no! Don’t leave me here!
She pressed the eye of the key again in pure panic - and the door instantly began to unfold again.
She blinked.
Pressed the eye of the key one more time.
The door began to fold up. This time, she let it - hoping desperately that the door wouldn’t just vanish into nothing if she let it.
It didn’t. Instead, it folded up into what looked almost like a briefcase - except with that single, awful, bright yellow eye peering right through her.
She reached for the case, and wrapped a hand around its handle. It was warm beneath her fingers - like heated leather.
It stared through her.
She shivered again - unable to shake the feeling that the pupil was locked right onto her soul.
Okay… where am I?
The portal was obviously magical, so it could’ve transported her anywhere. But this certainly didn’t look like any place in the Boiling Isles, and it was too big to be an enclosed space, like a house or a school… where else could she be, though?
Well, I guess I could be in the human world, but that’s ridiculous. This isn’t the kind of place a group of savages would live, much less thrive - and why would Mother and Father have a portal to the human realm in their attic?
But… it did seem like the only possible option. It wasn’t the Boiling Isles, it wasn’t the inside of a building… what else could it be, but the human realm?
...There must be some way to prove it.
Well, if she could find a witch, they would probably tell her happily what realm it was. Only problem was, if it was the human realm… Amity wasn’t sure how they would react to finding a witch. After all, the human realm and the Boiling Isles had cut ties a long time ago - what perception might humans have of witches now?
...It couldn’t be the human realm. Why would there be a functioning portal to the human realm in the Boiling Isles? Much less in Blight Manor, of all places. If any family didn’t interact with humans, it was the Blights.
She glanced again to the pile of trash - and a bright page caught her eye.
She walked over, and hesitantly reached down to grab the bright roll sticking out of the pile. The corner of it was stained - but it was clearly the cover of a magazine.
On the front cover was a pretty woman in a red dress.
With round ears.
Amity blinked.
She… didn’t have gills. And her smile was wide and pearly white. She didn’t look like a savage. But there was something artificial and unsettling about her expression, and a general air of cheapness about the shot. And… she did have round ears. Amity had never seen those, outside of drawings and diagrams of humans.
So…
This was the human realm.
But this didn’t look like the realm of savages. The concrete monoliths surrounding her weren’t the result of a race desperate for shelter, without the ability to use magic - they were the work of someone… efficiency-driven. Someone who wanted to cram things into a box and not think about it too much. Someone who didn’t care what their shelter looked like, as long as it functioned efficiently and cheaply. That might be argued to be the work of savages - but the structures were too large and complex for savages. They more seemed to be the work of intelligent beings desperate for efficiency. Or intelligent beings focused on other things.
...Interesting.
She shifted the briefcase in her hand. Well, technically, the portal in her hand, but she preferred to think of it as a briefcase for now. She had other things to occupy her headspace at the moment.
Suddenly, she heard a soft rumbling noise.
It grew louder and louder as time passed - louder and louder until Amity felt she needed to shift back from it, away from it, from whatever obvious predator was going to kill her-
A blur of black and chrome flew past the alley, and vanished.
Amity blinked.
The rumbling sounds of it retreating grew softer and softer - as she gingerly stepped out of the alleyway, craning her neck to look after whatever had just flown past.
And then it was gone.
Amity blinked.
Alright, the human world was… more odd than expected.
What was that thing?
She set the briefcase back on the ground, and fished the key out of her pocket.
Her thumb jabbed into its staring eye.
The case unfolded into a door again. She wrapped a hand around the handle - it was still warm, despite the slight chill in the wind of the human world - and opened it.
When she walked out, it was back into the attic. The door hadn’t moved an inch.
...Hm.
She pressed the eye of the key again. The door folded up.
She picked up the briefcase, and moved it to the other side of the attic.
Opened it again. Walked back into the human world.
The side of the door in the human realm hadn’t moved an inch from where she left it.
Okay, so if I move the door in one world, the doorway on the other side doesn’t move with it.
That was… very good to know.
She pressed the button of the key again. The doorway folded up again.
The biting wind of the human world nipped at her nose.
She looked up again. Past the alleyway. Into the concrete pathway, through which that blur of black had flown.
And she considered.
On the one hand, I could explore a little. Find out what the human world is like.
But Skara, Boscha, Cat, and Amelia are all waiting for me. And besides, if a human was out at this time of night, they would be able to tell I’m a witch at just a glance. It would be best to come back with a hooded piece of clothing, so I could hide my ears. Other than that, humans seem to look… very similar to witches. According to that page in the trash, anyway.
And, even if Amity was curious - she was also cautious.
Her hand closed around the handle again, and she twisted.
Back into the attic. She pressed the eye on the key, and the door folded up again.
She considered the case.
After a moment, she tucked the key into her pocket, and tossed the case back into the pile of junk. Even if someone wanted to take it - which they shouldn’t, considering this place was so old and the door had looked nearly untouched when she found it - it would be useless without the key.
She walked out of the attic and back towards her little cohort.
The key burned a hole into her pocket the rest of the night.