The woman sat in the corner booth, nursing a drink she hadn't ordered and couldn't identify. She'd stumbled into Jack's three hours ago—or what felt like three hours—fleeing something with too many eyes that had emerged from her bathroom mirror. The bartender with the kind smile had given her a seat, a glass, and a gentle suggestion to "wait until morning, love, when the ways are clearer."
She'd been trying very hard not to look at the other patrons.
The thing at the bar that was mostly shadow. The group of identical women in blue pantsuits who occasionally finished each other's sentences. The tall figure in the corner whose face she couldn't quite focus on no matter how hard she tried.
She focused on her drink instead. It tasted like honey and regret.
At the table next to her, two beings were deep in conversation. One looked almost human—a man with silver-gray hair and eyes that caught the light wrong. The other was... she wasn't sure. Something that wore a human shape the way a child wears a parent's coat.
"The Wilted Lotus Gate has been unstable for—" the silver-haired one paused, seeming to calculate. "Forty-seven years, mortal time. Perhaps longer. The boundary between Nirvana and Nyxaloth was never meant to be permanent."
"Forty-seven years means nothing," the other replied. "In Nirvana's framework, the Gate has existed for one breath. In Nyxaloth's..." A sound like laughter, if laughter could curdle. "Who can say? The Gate may have been unstable before it was built. Time folds strangely there."
The woman's glass paused halfway to her lips.
Mortal time.
She set the drink down carefully.
"The Psyche has been monitoring the situation," the silver-haired one continued. "Ruskenn's assessment, conveyed through appropriate cytes, suggests intervention within the next three centuries. Mortal time," he added, almost as an afterthought. "I understand the Hive operates on different rhythms."
"Three centuries is seventeen circulation cycles," the other said. "Or perhaps seventeen thousand. Ruskenn's internal framework does not map cleanly onto linear progression."
"Nothing maps cleanly onto linear progression except the mortal Realm itself." The silver-haired one smiled thinly. "Hence why we use it as the standard. Implacable, that clock. Doesn't care what we think of it."
The woman turned in her seat. She knew she shouldn't. She knew that drawing attention to herself in this place was probably unwise. But the words had burrowed into her brain and wouldn't leave.
"Excuse me," she said. Her voice came out smaller than she'd intended.
Both beings turned to look at her. The silver-haired one's expression shifted to something like polite curiosity. The other's face did something she couldn't track.
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but—" She swallowed. "What do you mean, mortal time?"
The silver-haired one blinked. "Ah. You're new. No need for apology, all tales in Jack's are open to anyone who wishes to listen, even after they're done."
"I'm—yes. I'm—something came out of my mirror and I ran and I ended up here and I don't—" She stopped herself. Took a breath. "What other kind of time is there?"
The two beings exchanged a glance that contained an entire conversation she wasn't privy to.
"May I?" the silver-haired one asked his companion.
"By all means. I find these moments educational. Observing how mortals process displacement is valuable data."
The silver-haired one turned back to the woman. His expression had softened into something almost grandfatherly.
"What's your name, dear?"
"Rachel."
"Rachel. I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to understand that I'm not being metaphorical or poetic. I'm being quite literal. Can you do that for me?"
Rachel nodded, though she wasn't sure she could.
"Time—the way you experience it, the ticking of seconds, the progression from past to present to future—is not a universal constant. It is a feature of your Realm. The mortal Realm operates on what you might call physics-time. Entropy increases. Causes precede effects. A minute passes whether anyone measures it or not." He paused. "Other Realms have other rules."
"Other... rules about time?"
"Consider Arcadia," the silver-haired one said. "The realm of the fey. There, time is a matter of Contract. A year and a day lasts precisely a year and a day because someone agreed that it would. Duration is negotiated, not observed."
Rachel's drink was doing nothing to settle her stomach.
"Or consider the Hive," the other being interjected. "Ruskenn experiences time as circulation—rhythmic, cyclical, metabolic. A cyte does not age in the mortal sense. It processes. One circulation might map onto a mortal second or a mortal century, depending on what is being processed."
"And then there is Nyxaloth," the silver-haired one said, with a slight grimace. "Where time may run backward, or sideways, or contradict itself, or not exist at all. Best not to think too hard about that one."
Rachel thought about it anyway. She couldn't help it. Her mind kept reaching for the concept and sliding off, like trying to grip wet glass.
"So when you said forty-seven years, mortal time—"
"I was specifying which framework I was using." The silver-haired one nodded approvingly. "You understand. The mortal Realm's clock is implacable—it doesn't care about observation or agreement or paradox. It simply runs. That makes it useful as a common standard. When beings from different Realms need to coordinate, we often translate into mortal time. It's the cosmic equivalent of—what do your merchants use? Greenwich Mean Time?"
"UTC," Rachel said faintly. "We use UTC now."
"UTC then. Mortal time is the UTC of the cosmos. Not because it's better, but because it's consistent. As is all mortal physics. You are the odds ones out, in a way."
Rachel looked down at her drink. The honey-and-regret flavor suddenly seemed more regret than honey.
"How long have I been here?" she asked.
The silver-haired one glanced at a very ordinary clock behind the bar, beautiful but very mundane. "Three hours and seventeen minutes. Mortal time. Jack's sits in a Liminal space, but it keeps mortal hours for the comfort of mortal guests."
"Oh." Rachel wasn't sure if that was comforting or not. "And the thing that came out of my mirror—"
"Umbral, most likely. A manifestation of some kind. They're drawn to reflective surfaces." He studied her for a moment. "You'll be safe here until morning. Jack's Contract forbids violence under his roof. And when you leave, the ways will be clearer. You'll find your way home."
"Will it still be there? The thing?"
"Unlikely. Umbral manifestations rarely persist without sustained belief to anchor them. By morning, you'll probably have convinced yourself it was a hallucination or a dream." He smiled gently. "Most mortals do. It's a survival mechanism."
Rachel thought about her bathroom mirror. About brushing her teeth tomorrow morning, staring at her own reflection, wondering if something was staring back.
"What if I don't want to convince myself it was a dream?"
The two beings exchanged another glance.
"Then," the silver-haired one said slowly, "you might find yourself back here again someday. Asking more questions. Learning more things you cannot unlearn." He gestured at the tavern around them—the shadow-thing at the bar, the identical women, the patrons she couldn't quite focus on. "This is where such questions lead, Rachel. To places like this. To conversations like this one."
"Is that bad?"
"That depends entirely on what you want from your life." He picked up his own drink—something that shimmered with colors she didn't have names for. "Some mortals learn about the Realms and retreat into comfortable ignorance. Some learn and are broken by the knowledge. And some..." He took a sip. "Some find that they prefer a larger world, even if that world is more dangerous."
Rachel looked at her drink. At the beings around her. At the door that had appeared in an alley that shouldn't have existed, leading to a tavern that sat between worlds.
"Three hours and seventeen minutes," she said quietly.
"Mortal time," the other being confirmed. "In Ruskenn's framework, you have been here for approximately one-eighteenth of a circulation cycle. In Arcadian terms, you have been here for as long as the Contract specifies—which is to say, until morning or until you choose to leave. In Nyxaloth—"
"I don't think I'm ready for Nyxaloth," Rachel said.
The silver-haired one laughed. It was a kind sound.
"No one ever is, dear. No one ever is."
Rachel picked up her drink and took a long sip. It still tasted like honey and regret—but perhaps, she thought, a little more honey than before.
She had questions. So many questions.
She suspected she'd be back.