You Broke the Looking Glass

Prologue - 3

Grim and I work together to haul around a heavy, rotted plank to chuck out onto the lawn. It'll have to stay there until we've decided what else to do with it. Once we've added it to the pile of other logs on the lawn, I wipe at my hands and look around to see what everyone else helping out is up to. Keeping watch nearby is one of Grim's temporary tutors, a tall and fiercely intimidating man named Divus Crewel.

When I asked Grim about what kind of guy he was, they said this is the person they were trying to avoid running into at the Club Fair, and they emphasized the professor having a penchant for things relating to dogs.

I can see that now that I've been officially introduced to the professor. With a strange chained pointer dangling from his outstretched hand, the stern teacher has been pointing every which way, barking orders at the two of us and our ghostly friends, telling us what to grab and where to take it next.

Although I'd been doing fine renovating the Ramshackle house all on my own, Sir Crowley assigned Professor Crewel to be our overseer when Grim made a formal—and in my opinion, completely unfair—complaint about my interior decorating skills. I wanted a retro y2k-vibe attached to the new dorm. Grim wanted everything to be expensive and plated in gold, with their signature attached to all the furniture. We obviously can't afford to live that richly.

Not that we could afford my idea either, but I still wanted to go with it.

So this teacher, Mr. Crewel, and another staff member have taken time out of their next couple of afternoons to come by and help us whittle down our ideas. Professor Crewel suggested we work one room at a time, so we're starting with the parlor. With how close it is to the front door, it's where Grim and I have taken to sleeping after our long days at work and schooling.

I'm glad it was one of the first places I tackled in my renovation project. Over the past three days, I've managed to fix most of the parlor's biggest walking hazards. The floorboards have been replaced and smoothed out, and I've managed to seal a majority of the cracks and holes in the walls, keeping out the draft of the empty lawn outside from leaking in.

Feeling the burn in my arms from helping Grim carry old planks, I take a break to hang back, and ask Grim to go out and fetch their new bedding in the meantime. Once they're out of sight, I wander to the side to bother Grim's panda-colored professor for a while.

"Evening professor," I greet while sliding to sit on the grass next to him.

"If it isn't the yippy one. What brings you here?"

"I thought I'd make some small talk." The professor rolls his hand in the air to indicate for me to continue on, and so I do, asking, "This isn't a particularly pressing question, but there's something I've been wondering: is that your natural hair color? Having one side black and one side white?"

Before answering, Professor Crewel drags out a vape pod kept snug in his slacks and hits it, blowing out a sweet vanilla scent to the open air. It wraps around the hollows of my mask and momentarily envelopes me in a vivid memory of buying cakes, and sweet breads, and all manner of sweets for everyone back at the group home.

I wonder how everyone back in my world is doing...?

"You know little mutt, I haven't a clue what your world is like, but in this world it's considered quite rude to question someone's appearance." I shake my head a little as Mr. Crewel's curt reply unceremoniously snaps me out of my reverie.

"Is it? I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to ask it in a rude way. It's just, where I'm from, people aren't born with green and blue and white hair. It's usually either black, brown, blond, or very rarely, red."

"Hah! Is that so? What a drab land you hail from."

"I wouldn't call it drab. Besides, plenty of people dye their hair in my world."