Amaretto grasped her aunt's hand and stepped onto the small glass enclosure. La sorcière smiled at them and motioned for them to follow her to the direct center of the dome and as they did so, the area that they were not on began to dissolve into water.
"This large lake that we are standing on is known as the Water Mirror," began La sorcière. "It is one of two mirrors that are known to produce visions that are truthful."
Amaretto cut in at this moment. "Truthful? You mean that there are others that can lie?"
La sorcière shook her head. "Not in the way that you are thinking no. What I mean to say is that these two mirrors are the only way that someone can see a possible future that is truthful. Not only that, but this is one of two mirrors that one can see the Possibilities in, the other being the Sand Mirror."
"Possibilities?" Amaretto had cut in again and Katherine shook her head.
"Perhaps we should start at a different place Ama darling," her aunt said. "Your hourglass runs on something called 'Possibility'. It is that small thing that allows anything in the known universe to actually work. It is how your Hourglass actually allows you to transfer from place to another without any consequences. It is the possibility of the fact that the action could happen and therefor, the hourglass permits it. Does that make more sense in the first place?"
Amaretto nodded at her Aunt's explanation and then frowned. "Are you trying to say that this glass doesn't actually travel? It's only the possibility of that travel that makes it happen?"
La sorcière nodded her head. "That is correct. It is in that thinking that you are able to do it. It is also these possibilities that the Mirrors are able to watch. Nothing more and nothing less." Amaretto nodded and then motioned for La sorcière to continue. The girl nodded.
"It is here that we discovered what had happened. I have one person to whom I must answer to, and we call her the Lady. I work in service to her and she is known to be more powerful than I, though most do not known it. She is the one who allows the Hourglasses to work. She is the one who works the other mirror, almost like my twin. We often talk to each other in order to correlate what it is that we see, and make changes accordingly. However, it has always been known that one cannot change what is written in stone."
"You are babbling on," Katherine said.
La sorcière paused for a moment and then blushed. "You are right. I digress. To put it simply, the Lady has not been in contact with me for quite some time. I later discovered that she had been," La sorcière covered her mouth for a moment as if she was choking on something and then said, "kidnapped."
Amaretto scoffed. "Kidnapped? You called us here because of a simple kidnapping?"
Katherine frowned. "Amaretto, this is unfortunately a rather big deal. This is bigger than I initially thought."
"No, this is a simple thing of there being nothing to think of at this moment," said Amaretto. "If she says anything more, then we will be obliged to help."
"We are already obliged," said Katherine in a small voice.
"What? NO! I refuse!" Amaretto stomped her foot down and the glass rang out with crystal clarity. La sorcière simply shook her head.
"It is not that simple. She was not only kidnapped, but imprisoned. Beneath the Sand mirror."
"Beneath the, I don't know where you are getting your script from but this is it, I am done, I don't want to hear any more." Amaretto began to try to stalk off of the glass, but was surprised when she realized that it was all water. The water itself shimmered for a moment and then a picture began to form. A young blond girl was sitting in a large cavern and all around her was stone, much like the cavern that they stood in now, only this one was centered around what looked to be a large writhing mass of sand rather than a glass dome. The sands seemed to writhe and above it, the ledge on which the girl sat. She looked down at the sand and seemed to move her lips, no words issuing forth from them, but as she did so, the sand reacted and upwards surging from the swirling mass, a woman's form. the form grew until it was a large shape, taking over half of the cavern.
The girl spoke out loud and then the sand form placed its hands in front of it, almost as if it was forming another mirror when the picture seemed as if it was accruing static. Then, quite suddenly, they watched as the girl was pulled downwards into the sand pit and spewing froth from it, the shape of another woman made of sand, this one solidified until it became an almost exact duplicate of the first girl. The second one, looked down beneath her feet and smiled maliciously as she looked down. Below her, the original blond, whom Amaretto assumed to be the Lady, seemed to be shackled in a room far below the surface.
"I need your help to free her." La sorcière's voice was quiet, but Amaretto knew what it was that the woman was thinking.
"I said no the first time and I'll say it again now. No." Amaretto crossed her arms and looked at her Aunt. "Why does it have to be us anyway? Why couldn't it have been someone else?"
The small sorceress looked at Amaretto straight in the eyes and then frowned. Amaretto stared back at her and they both said nothing as they stood there. Katherine reached into her purse and pulled out her palm pilot and then with her stylus, began to rapidly began to work on it. The silence seemed to stretch on and then the small girl said, "Why ever not you?"
This took Amaretto by surprise and she put her hands on her hips. "I can think of several reasons, the foremost that this is not my problem at all."
"However it is your problem," Katherine said absentmindedly.
Amaretto turned to her aunt, the frown still on her lips, making a slight pout. "what do you mean that it is my problem."
"Well, you see it's like this," her aunt replied, pulling a pair of glasses from her purse to put them on. She then began to then read from her palm pilot, holding it aloft. "It says here, 'When one is given an Hourglass, hereafter referred to as a Glass," her aunt made a small quotation mark with her free hand. "They are entered into a legal and binding contract in this and any other reality, hereafter referred to as the domains." Another set of air-quotes were made. Amaretto waved her hands in front of her aunt to make her stop. Katherine paused. "If you want to read it, it's all right here." She lifted the palm pilot.
"So you are saying that because you gave me this hourglass, that I am no accountable to the whims of this little girl?"
"Correction," La sorcière said, "I am the one who says that you must listen. The law is clear on this and has already been laid out since the beginning o the possibility of such." The words were clear and the harshness of them made Amaretto shiver.
La sorcière moved forward slowly from where she was standing away from where Katherine and Amaretto were standing. As she walked away, Amaretto noticed a distant quality in her eyes as she spoke. "A single possibility from the universe that signifies what can, will, and should happen. Though even with this sand, one can never say that a 'one-grain possibility' is impossible." La sorcière continued to walk across her watery mirror where it would form solid underneath her feet as she walked.
She waved her hand in front of her and the water slid upwards underneath almost as if in an effort to be caressed by her hand. The water formed a small shape and then expanded into something that looked like an hourglass and then began to pour sand from the top to the bottom one grain at a time. "If one grain of sand holds the future of a single posibility, then it is enough to suppose and assume that multiple grains hold multiple posibilities." At this moment, the faux hourglass began to pass more grains. "When bringing these grains together, one can act on these seperate realities. In doing so, one must have a catalyst; for example, an hourglass..."
La sorcière trailed off and Amaretto screamed at her. "I don't care what you say! I am not going to do this!"
Katherine placed her hand on her god-daughter's shoulder and then said, "There is no choice in this matter."
"Everyone has a choice," replied amaretto bitterly. She stared as the mirror once again replayed the images of what happened at what La sorcière called the Sand Mirror. As she watched it, she felt something stirring inside of her. It was a stark sense of pity. She looked over to La sorcière and then felt the pity raise in her as she watched the small girl watch as the one person she could talk to always vanished beneath a sea of sand.
"In this case, it is the one thing that you must do." Katherine stared hard through her glasses at the small palm pilot in her hand. "Think of it as your first time trial and then you are free to do what you want?"
Amaretto nodded her head once. "All right then. If this is a trial run, that means if I don't like it, I can return it."
Her aunt nodded her understanding.
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