"I can't focus. There's - colors, a little."

“He can see colors but has trouble focusing.”

"Well, that'll be a great help if he was uncertain about what color I am, won't it. Ugh. I'll - just talk to him, I guess -"

Kareen produces the mirror.

“—Here she is. She—looks like you, I said that.”

"Hello. El."

"Hi," El croaks.

“She’s really cool. El, he’s been—almost entirely asking after you. And like. The remaining twenty percent was your mum.”

"She's fine last I saw her. We live in a yurt. In Wales. - Kareen can I have the dimension thing. And borrow this."

“Absolutely.” Dimension thing. Mirror. “—Let me know if, um, the situation seems improvable by trying to give him stuff. Through the mirror.”

"...do you have an up to date list."

She produces a list. In addition to a lot of mals, some of which have still-unidentified effects, there’s also a list of magic people from her home dimension, each of which has a description along with what she got from them, if she knows.

"Thanks."

The mirror and list disappear into the pocket dimension.

El, pensive, draws up her knees to her chest with her outside self.

Kareen sits down a little ways away from her. Forcing interaction would be a Terrible Fucking Idea but sometimes it can help just to perceive a friendly presence.

El at least doesn't tell her to go away.

Kareen is totally also doing stuff inside her pocket dimension but she’s totally fine to sit here quietly with El externally for quite some time.

"You don't need the mirror back, do you? You can just make a million of them, if you want more."

“Yeah, you can have that one.”

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." 

...Eventually, Kareen will have to go to dinner. 

El will too. But she's very quiet, on the way and in line, just takes some salad and salmon and a slice of cake.

Poor El. Poor Arjun.

She can't bring herself to regret creating the mirror, or giving it to El. Some connections between people are too precious. Some horrors need to be witnessed. 

She wishes she could open a line of communication to El's mum. Significantly more than she wishes she could open a line of communication to Orion's parents; that she wants only because they have information she happens to want.

She hugs her parents a lot, when she sees them during naptime. Neither of them is trapped in horrible suffering! This is so overwhelmingly preferable to the alternative!

Dad gives her the names of a handful of people he knows to have vanished into the Buried coffin, which is helpful, and a handful of other people who have vanished into one domain or another without being confirmed dead afterwards, which is...differently helpful. Papa promises that if she can confirm that Grant Walker is dead, he'll tell his brother Stephen Walker so. 

And when she goes down to the gym, that night--without Orion, this time--her internal self pulls out a new mirror, and says, "Alfred Cooper Browning."

"...you rang?"

"Hello! I'm a new and unprecedented kind of magical and I'm going to get you out of there. But I haven't figured out how yet. Right now I'm doing research."