The Bardo

A few yards from the end of the string, you both see a landing and an open door. From this angle, you and Felina can't see where the doorway leads, but you can see strange, silvery light playing across the wall and the top of the stairs, apparently coming from something within the doorway.

"So..." you muse aloud. "We're out of string. Do we stay here, or do we go up?"

Felina stands there for a few seconds, apparently thinking. Presently, she pulls at the bottom of her shirt, and eventually pulls a string free. She tugs and tugs until she's unravelled several yards of thread, which she then proceeds to tie to the end of the length of twine. "This is the first thing we've seen that's at all different," she says. "So up we go."

The two of you climb up until you reach the landing and come face to face with the open door.

Utter impossibility looks right back.

The door opens onto a vast, rolling landscape apparently sculpted out of pure liquid mirror, under a sky of mottled lavender. Here and there grow patches of small, purplish flowers, sprouting directly from the unearthly terrain. The air is filled with pale silvery light and a faint sound of distant wind.

The two of you stare in astonishment.

Before she can stop you, you step through the doorway and into the new world, marveling at how the mirrored surface ripples slightly as you tread on it. You step a few feet away from the door and look back--it seems to be floating in open air.

"What the hell are we seeing?" Felina says.

You see a flash of movement at your feet, and a dozen softball-sized jeweled spheres leap forth from the mirrored ground like salmon, darting and whirling around each other and both of you. They bob up and down and bounce from the ground, finally coming to rest a couple of feet from you.

You get the strangest feeling that they're looking the two of you over.

1. You ask the spheres a question.
2. You turn and leave.
3. Something else.

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