June 6, 1917

The first time Theodore went into the Lorien Portus, he was freshly sixteen years old and he had more or less settled into the past. He had discovered the door in his earlier explorations of the property some years prior, but today was the first day that he'd actually plucked up the courage to go inside. He told himself it was just because that today was the first time in three-ish years that he had the time to do so, but it didn't take a genius to see how out of sorts he'd been ever since Franklin—and several of the older lads in town—had joined the call to war.

But back to the door in the woods. He knew little of it, beyond the fact that there was a siren call that drew him to the woods and that the patch of forest floor beneath the door was encircled by bioluminescent cendrillon flowers. When Theodore had first explored the Vickery Meadows' property, he had explored the garden in which he had first arrived. In the sunshine, it was clear just how big the backyard was and what a playground it was! There was this ornate gazebo tucked away in one corner, though the bench inside had become warped & moldy with weather; the wood rotted away like crumbling sawdust. There was a sprawling garden filled with stunted, flyblown rosebushes that dotted the landscape. A wobbily bridge danced over the shallow cavity where the river had once run, now it was only bone dry brick.

There was the old well with its twisting stone steps that lead that way. From the looks of it, it used to be some kind of old wishing well, the kind you'd see in fairytales and cartoons. Grandaddy Edwin said that it was where the older occupants used to fetch water and drown hungry mouths inside. They wouldn't even need to hold them down, he'd said, just push them over the edge and watch them fall. If that drop alone didn't do it, the water at the bottom most certainly would. Because, he'd said, the well was so deep that if you lay down at the bottom, in the middle of the day, and looked up…well, you'd see a see a sky full of stars even as the sun shone overhead.

And then there was the Lorien Portus made of glowing cendrillon flowers that glowed brightly even in the dark of the wood. After the first day that Theodore had "returned" to them, Granny Olga made a point of telling the Garde boy to stay well away from the woods, telling him how dangerous it was and to stay away from the Devil's Footsteps that lead the way there. Said footsteps turned out to be a well-worn path that had all-but been scorched into the earth from the many times it had been tread.

So, of course, Theodore set off to explore for it. Not for any nefarious reasons, just in order to know where it was and what to properly avoid! But it was a weak excuse and he knew it; there was just something fundamental in the human brain about wanting to do what you had explicitly been told not to do. He found it eventually, in an overgrown meadow not too far from the Stellar Suites; the landscape splattered with cendrillon flowers and spotted moss. All of which were glowing brightly with bioluminescence even in the daylight.

And it's not like he was alone in his endeavour! Oh far from it! In fact, the path that he'd walked was filled with wildlife like that hedgehog doing its bestest impression of an upturned hairbrush or those toadstools that Lila said were actually homes for fairies, and that toad that looked like a very convincing rock until it had croaked, scaring the shit out of him. Straightening himself out, Theodore very determinedly did not flush red in embarrassment nor did he squeal like a pig, thank you very much. And Mr Pennycrumb most certainly didn't snicker at the whole thing; no, he did not.

There was also one of Granny Olga's cats—the haughty black one with the flat walked-into-a-wall face—who sat on the surrounding tree stumps and stalked through the tall grass, watching him with golden and judgemental eyes. But each time that he approached to stroke the kitty, the feline would hiss in annoyance and slip away as if the Garde boy had personally offended it. And, of course, there was Mr Pennycrumb who dogged at his heels and chased after the field mice. But when they'd gotten closer to the meadow, the canine had gotten especially eager and had all but torn Theodore's arm out of its socket, taking the leash with him and scarring Theodore's palm with rope burn, as a souvenir.

Unfortunately, before they had even made it past the western-most pond, they had been called back inside for dinner. They weren't particularly far from the suites, but Theodore was still surprised to note how late it had gotten and so he turned, retreating from the woods with a despondent chimaera on his heels. Although, he silently promised himself and the pup that they would come back at a later date and really explore that place. Maybe they'd even answer that call which had drawn them out there in the first place.

June 9, 1917

A couple of days had passed before Theodore even went back to the woods, intent on exploring that forbidden meadow without scrutiny. After Granny Olga had scolded him relentlessly for hanging around that area despite their warnings, and after it had rained something fierce, he found himself bored and with more time on his hands than he knew what to do with. Better yet, Granny Olga had gone into town and Lila had come down with—what Granddaddy Edwin liked to call "The Red Death"—leaving Theodore more or less on his own.

Walking back down the well-worn path—this time leaving Mr Pennycrumb to keep Lila company whilst she rested—Theodore stopped and listened for that alluring siren call. He knew that he was doing something wrong, but the anticipation welled up within him like a thousand fiery ants dancing under his skin. Granny Olga had said that the siren call sounded like different things to different people; to Theodore it was the sound of his vera—as cliché as that was—calling him home. It urged him forward through the slush that coated the ground and he went, willingly.

It was dark in the woods, in a way that it had not been so before. The trees loomed overhead; their conifers arching together to form a neverending hallway towards the ring of cendrillon flowers in the forbidden meadow. And there was this cold, musty smell that floated on the air; something which smelt rather old and slow, like the musk of the bingo hall down in town. Still, Theodore pushed on.

When he came to the ring of flowers, there was no hesitance to step inside and when the glowing doorway appeared above him, he wasted no time in taking a running leap towards it; even coated in lumen as he was, the boy was still outshone by the glow of the silvery door. But Theodore didn't even hesitate to cross the threshold. He wondered what lay one the other side of the door—what lay beyond the door that floated in the sky, surrounded by a ring of alien-blue glowing flowers?

He made easy work of floating up towards the door, his lumen coating him on instinct until he alighted down upon the threshold. What he found was…odd, to say the least. The corridor—if you could call it that—was unnaturally reflective and seemed to pulsate with, what he could only presume to be, a heartbeat. It wasn't his own, that was for sure, for it was much too loud and it rang in his ears like the ticking of a grandfather clock. For something that loud (& alluring) it had to have come from something that was much bigger than little ole Theodore Hargreeves.

Sucking in a breath of courage, the boy set off down the narrow corridor with an uneasiness in his step. There was something that was unerringly familiar about it, something that he found himself pondering as he walked, the corridor seemingly neverending. The streaky lights that illuminated the walls reminded him of the bright flashing lights of an arcade or of those shooting lights that had lit up the sky when he was younger—back when the Mogadorians had invaded Earth, for the first time—illuminating the heavens in shades of brilliant blye and blinding white.

And there was this…moistness that hung in the air; the kind of humidity that plastered condensation to windows and made your hair stand on end. It was the kind of the damp that decayed wood and reminded Theodore of ventures into Central Park in the damp heat, the kind that lingered after a summer rain. Of lifting up logs slick with moisture to reveal the crawling underbelly of worms & sludge beneath them.

There was also something about the tile beneath his feet; it was the same ones as the linoleum tiles in the kitchen of the Stellar Suites. The ones that are all diamond-shaped and slightly warped, underfoot. There was the cloying scent of smog clogging up his nostrils, like it did when he lived in New York and Theodore could swear that he could hear his vera's violin clearer now. It was that one song that she liked to play whenever she was feeling morose; the jaunty one that he could no longer remember the words to, but used to dance to when he was a baby. It drew him further in.

When Theodore eventually made out on to the other side—when the corridor finally ended—he found himself back in the woods behind the house. It was a bit of a let down, really, to find that everything was as he had left it; looping back around to the dank woods with the outline of The Stellar Suites on the horizon. The only difference was that instead of the moss on the trees climbing up the house-facing side of the trunk, it was on the side that face the forest. It was weird, but not unusual. With a disappointed sigh, Theodore made the trek back to the house and resigned himself to another day of boredom within those four walls.

And then he got to the door.

The door was fundamentally different from the one that belonged to the house—the one he knew was supposed to be there, but wasn't. This one was…strange in a way that no door had any right to be. It was seemingly carved from the same crystalline stone that surrounded the walls of the long entryway and it bore small handprints painted in a dark red that had the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. The red handprints were flaking around the edges of the spindly fingers and the shape was small enough that it had to have belonged to that of a young child.

So whomever had been here last, had to have been young—young enough that their handprint had remained glued to a portion of the strange door in front of him. It was low enough that Theodore would've had to crouch or squat down to reach it. Whomever they were, they weren't here now or, maybe they had never left in the first place.

Maybe they were still wandering the woods, where they weren't supposed to go. Or maybe they hadn't even had the gumption to leave the corridor and had fled before they had even made it halfway. In any case, it told him that this door may have of been here for quite some time, yet it was apparent that the door was also just plunked down in the frame where the real one was supposed to be.

Despite quite clearly being a door into the house, it didn't actually seem to lead anywhere. A fact that Theodore demonstrated by smushing his face up against the glass and trying to peer through to the other side. Where the moth-bitten hallways of the home were supposed to be, there was instead suffocating darkness staring back at him. Where something was supposed to be, there was nothing.

Leaning back, the Garde boy examined the door itself; it was smooth to the touch—no nicks, no notches, no crevices or scratches—there wasn't even an apparatus in which to open it with. There was no sign of a handle, a knob or anything of that calibre, even being there. There was nothing to suggest that was even a door, save for the instinctual knowledge that that is what it was.

"Strange door" Theodore murmured to himself as his fingers brushed over the cool crystalline slab in front of him. "Where's the handle?" Much like when he'd smushed his face up against it, the slab gave a little under his touch, moulding to capture his fingers like it was made of gel and creating notches around the digits that sunk in there. Its like they were made to be there, for not a moment later, a crisp click-click-clicking sound could be heard coming from the door itself; like the mechanisms of a lock. Theodore thought he might've gotten lucky; that maybe his fingers had brushed over some sort of unseen switch, but still the door didn't move.

"Why won't it open?" He grumbled as he pushed hard against the slab of a door, using both of his hands and his entire weight to do so. Immediately, the loralite stones begin to glow & buzz with the same energy as the one that illuminated the corridor. Again, his digits sunk into the gel-like surface and there was the telltale click-click-clicking of unseen mechanisms at work. Then a familiar glow spread out and down, illuminating everything within reach. The grains in the door, connected to the ones in the porch and every gap in between as it flowed down the steps and out into the woods, until it seemed like the whole house had ignited in that light.

SCHLOOP!

"Nn!" With great effort and a grunt of frustration, Theodore was eventually able to pull his hands free, leaving the gel of the door to schlop back into place as if he had never touched it at all. Considering the stickiness of the door, it made him wonder about how that little red handprinted had landed there, squarely painted upon its surface. But those thoughts were quickly washed away as he shuffled back a pace or two and took in the patterns illuminated upon the door. The twisting cursive nature of the patterns reminded him of the birthmarks that each of the Garde bore—his own lighting up in recognition & staining his peripherals, blue.

And then with this ancient grinding noise that did not belong there, the great mysterious door began to melt towards the floor, pooling in great puddles at his feet before evaporating from existence, entirely. This time—with the impudence of the door—Theodore peered again, into the house, only to find a dusty cavern lit by the dim blue glow of loralite. Honestly, it was more of the fantastical allure that seemed to encapsulate the room, that drew him in and he went willingly across the threshold once more.