Quoted By:
>Well so uh you see
You suck your cheek in. "Do you really want to know? You're not going to like it."
Pat raises her eyebrows.
"Well, I warned you. Remember I warned you." She's not going to remember, but you want to make extra sure this isn't your fault. "Ahem! After I left, I wanted to go find Gil and Horse Face— do you know Horse Face?" (No recognition.) "...Garvin? No? Okay. Well, he's a guy who exists. I went to go find them, and I did, but they were talking to a Manager—"
You lay everything out, or everything you can make sense of: getting spotted, intercepted, searched; the thing about your eye ("you've noticed the eye before, right?"); the strings and the severing thereof. In the spirit of honesty, you disclose that you also see the strings right on top of her right now. It's kind of distracting. She knows what strings are, right?
Pat folded her arms halfway through your elaboration, and her expression right now can best be described as "pinched." "I know what <span class="mu-i">strings</span> are, Charlotte."
Then why didn't she think about breaking Management's? It was so easy. "Okay, well, I just wanted to—"
"I also know they're <span class="mu-i">invisible,</span> Charlotte, and they require specialized equipment to detect, let alone interact with. So unless you're trying to tell me..."
"I am! My bad eye is specialized equipment!" You push your eyelid up to show her. "See? It's engraveth with the mystic symbol of the... with a highly mystic symbol, and it lets me see invisible things! Duh."
"Where did you get it?"
"I have no idea!"
"Why would you?" Pat sucks her lips in. "Okay. Tell me what my strings look like."
What they look like? It's hard to tell with both eyes open— too much visual noise. If you put your hand over your good eye, though, then the world grows dark and fuzzy and the strings strong and bright. That's better.
Assuming Pat's still standing where she was 3 seconds ago, her strings aren't difficult to identify, though it is difficult to fix a pattern to them. They appear to come in multiple types. On the inside is a snarled mess, like a cat got loose in a knitting room: one main string-ball, dense and fraying, plus four or five lumpy nodes in various states of absorption. The whole thing is large, but not particularly bright. Not compared to yours, anyways.
Draped over the mess is a very different layer of strings— even and gridded, the very picture of a fine fishnet. Since the mess is 'floating' (suspended in Pat's chest region, actually), the fishnet droops down and around and... ah. You have it a little backwards. Except for yourself and Pat, everything in the pool room consists of these gridded strings. When you say they drape over the mess, you mean that the mess is pushing the fishnet up from underneath, like a cat under a bedspread.
You relay as much to Pat, though you omit the cat metaphors. (You do maybe demonstrate with your hands instead.) She mumbles something you can't quite make out, though you suspect it's impolite.
(1/4)
