"I always thought that the animal that best represents me is a crow," Fire Tongs told Luna.
Luna wanted to hang with the blessed of Enlil not just because she had gained the power of teleportation and the Blessings of the Sky but also because she had a cool Spirit- Name; Fire Tongs.
"I sure wish I had a Spirit-Name," Luna mumbled wistfully. Her bestie Spiders just got one a few chapter back but she still didn't...
"Sure," Fire Tongs just lost track of what she was thinking about because of Luna's random response. 'I guess I'll recommend that Forest Swords song to her later then' and abandoned her attempt to work the song 'Crow' into casual conversation without it seeming forced...
'whatever.'
Spiders checked her watch. It was Zero Hour. Midnight.
""Another day has ticked by and you still haven't enacted the Gatekeeper Initiative!" Scolded an all to familiar, rasping, voice from the mirror. Spiders was in the bathroom.
She just snuck off to do Boogers, a drug that clogs up the nose and gets oxygen deprivation. Now here she is, staring down a dog-woman monstrosity in the cramped airplane-bathroom mirror, it looks exactly like the bathroom scene in the Shining where jack talks to that ghost and Spiders keeps her eyes open the whole time like Jack does in that scene because around dogMinerva even the most foolhardy dare not to blink even for a sceond!
Spiders is 7 foot tall and dogMinerva is also tall because when Minerva transfigures into a Border Collie but stops midway she becomes taller instead of shorter like you woulda thought. Spiders has to crouch but dogMinerva's relfection is only a reflection.
She lips her dogish lips and snarls at Spiders again.
"You ninny! You fucking retard! If you don't enact the Gatekeeper initiative then there will be 8 Hermiones in the land; on Christmas nonetheless!"
Spiders is the 7th Hermione... but she didn't sign up for all that, that's why she sneaks off from her bandmates just now. But dogMinerva is here to try and get her back on track and killing one of the other 7 Hermiones before it is too late!
BUT! What Spiders does know is that if she enacts the Gatekeeper Initiative and follows its arcane protocols then she'd have to kill Harmonica the eight hermione, leaving 7 Hermiones in the 'Stairway-Dimension', with Spiders still stuck as the 7th...
And as the 7th Hermione her Gatekeeper duties would remain weighing down from her neck like an albatros spectre... but! If she did something totally punx and broke the dang rules then she could kill any Hermione she choose and afterward become the 6th Hermione and Harmonica would have to tangle out the fine details of the Gatekeepers Burden instead of her,...
"I just want to make music with my friends and spiders!" Spiders wailed but there was no one to hear because she had snuck off to do more Boogers.
Boogers; Getting Oxygen Deprivation gets you super high and Boggers clogs up your nose so much... Until you can't breath and get hallucinations. Slowly your oxygen deprived cells scream out to you for sustenance, screaming out in choked wavering voices to an unknowable and uncaring god; you.
Spiders did so much boogers that she forgot to breath. She felt the ecstacy of death rushing through her air-strarved veins.
dogMinerva's reflection was still and always will be just that; a reflection. As such she must be reflecting something, she was able to begin reflecting the Gatekeeper, Hermione number 7, through sheer force of will and through her Annunanki adjacency. As Spiders's new reflection dogMinerva's reflection not only startled the fuck out of anyone who happen to pass by Spiders walking alongside a glass store front or other reflective surface as the 7 foot tall girl with spiders crawling all about her was already shocking the sight of her mirror-image as an even taller half dog- half old woman with an unwieldy fury alighting its bloodshot eyes.
Now that we have established dogMinerva's' reflections current set of predicaments (and I do suggest we sus out a better name for her - that one is just a mouthful isn't it? perhaps 'Flecty' or 'dogReflecta' or something like that...no rush...we have all Spring to decide) it is met that a further point of interest should be noted...
dogMinerva's reflection, or 'Flecty', is stuck reflecting Spiders... As Spiders' mirrorself every thing that girl eats, drinks, or insufflates makes its way also into dogMinerva's reflections system. So now she is high too!
After such great advice now the drug-dazed disembodied reflection has nothing further of value to add. "I wish Zach Braff was here," dogMinerva muses wistfully. She just loves him.
"Yeah that'd be cool," Spiders says, but! just then she had been rummaging her pockets for another phial of Boogers and accidentally alighted upon her Wishing Stone when she said that... there was a flash of light!
and
a figure
emerged