Commentary
Please forgive Hope for not repeatedly saying "Pressure Release Chopsticks".
Below the Saturday EGSNP bit of the commentary is the novel-like writing I did to plan this scene. I'm doing it more now in part as simple practice—I want to write novels—but also because it's genuinely helpful.
None of Hope's dialogue from the page is in there, which I, at least, find interesting. This page is effectively an adaptation, and I made the choice to have Hope talk a lot more in comic form to handle the details. Not a huge thing, but I find choices in adaptations, and why they're made, interesting.
In this case, her saying these things felt more natural to me than unleashing narration, or not explaining it at all.
How the heck with the blanket?
Part of the reason I wrote this out was because I had to figure out how she was going to get that blanket out of the way. The answer wound up being "very carefully", and gradually moving it so more and more of it was behind the door rather than the front. I also needed to convey why she was doing that, and the writing helped me figure that out, too.
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-- Written Version
Hope hovered at the top of the door, gradually adjusting the front-to-back ratio of the blanket covering the mirror.
She wanted to take a look at the mirror itself without touching the door, or disturbing the fragile pressure release chopsticks.
Touching the door probably would have been fine. The glass of the mirror could activate the transformation function of the magic door, so she definitely wanted to avoid that, but the wood parts of the door shouldn’t have been an issue.
It should have been especially fine at the top and bottom of the door, which were beyond the realms of the pressure release chopsticks. There would be little-to-no magic energy to interact with thanks to the pressure release chopsticks, and any energy she inadvertently added should have been filtered back out by the pressure release chopsticks.
She wasn’t one hundred percent certain of that, however, so she was intent on keeping the blanket between hand and door.
Hope slowly kneaded the blanket more and more to the mirror’s back, her position while floating becoming all the more awkward. In addition to not touching the mirror, she didn’t want to float in front of it.
The mirror was designed to record people’s forms, and it was meant to do this upon witnessing transformation spells. Hope, an immortal floating as naturally as fish swim, shouldn’t have activated anything just by floating where the mirror could see her.
The magic door, however, was known to be flawed, and it wasn’t intelligent. Maybe it could properly distinguish between all the different types of magic, maybe it couldn’t. Hope wasn’t taking that chance.
So Hope floated more and more to the side, belly down, as she kneaded the blanket. Anyone who’s ever tried kneading dough while lying belly down on a kitchen counter will have some idea how difficult this must have been.
Eventually, however, Hope succeeded in exposing enough of the mirror, and she drifted carefully down to the floor while keeping to the side of the door.
How exactly she intended to safely return the blanket to its original position was a mystery she hadn’t considered solving yet.
Hope stood in front of the mirror, observing it with inhuman, immortal eyes. She saw more than any normal human could, though whether it was more, less, or completely different to what a seer like Tedd saw was unclear.
Whatever the case, several minutes later, she was gleaning something from that mirror when SLAM! The sound of the back door opening with great force boomed from upstairs.
Recoiling slightly, Hope looked to the ceiling in the back door’s direction.
It was way too early for anyone else to be home, and anyone who should’ve been there wouldn’t have used the back door.
Thump thump thump
She didn’t know those footsteps.
An intruder.
