The World in Flower

3. Celebrations and Revelations

"Adam!" Thanoa exclaimed, looking surprised. "I am sorry. I thought Perui said there was a call for me."

"He did," Adam replied, then held up his hand when Thanoa looked ready to protest. "I'm not calling you to negotiate. I just found our conversation about thin places and the Great Song helpful. And I don't fully understand what's going on."

Thanoa sighed. "I can't provide you with any information that might compromise Rohunah's plans."

"I understand."

"Very well. How can I help you?"

"So, there was a being named Merely that was responsible for abducting first my daughter Harper, then Tim and our friend Rob. But even before they abducted anyone, they were making regular trips through a thin place portal."

"Yes, I see."

"In fact, it appears they were doing so before the crossover event, and knew Harper from before."

"That is quite interesting."

"So I have a couple questions -- one intellectual and one cultural."

"I can try to answer them."

"The first question is if these were two separate worlds, how were they both affected by the same crossover event?"

Thanoa smiled. "Excellent question. When Haruki, Ikari, and Sakura were guests with us, Rohunah and I had a wonderful opportunity to discuss much of the lore of your world -- both of their people and of other cultures. We were struck with the abundant presence of otherworldly people and creatures in your world's lore. That's usually an indication of worlds lying very close together, often easily accessible to each other."

"So all the oni and fairies and trickster gods and yeti and lake monsters..."

"May have been based on actual events, passed down through oral tradition. May have been! But it was enough to cause Rohunah to go and study the recent crossover more closely. They believe we may have transited more than one world at once."

"So Merely's world..."

"It's difficult to say what happened exactly. Their people may have been Stranded on your world. There may have been a world that lay close to ours that transited Merely's world. It would take considerably more study to know for certain."

"Okay." Adam drew in a breath. "My second question is if Merely has been breaching the thin places for weeks now, why is it a big deal that I've done it?"

"If you had just found yourself Singing a Song of Gates naturally and without study, much as you did when you manifested your motion Resonance, no one would be upset. Well, no. Some people would still be upset, but they would be quite few. But in order to learn the Song, you had to experiment, and such experimentation can be quite dangerous. And you did it knowing it was forbidden."

"So it's because I was delving into Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know."

"That is an interesting turn of phrase, but, yes, essentially. You knew it was dangerous, and you did it anyway."

"And has it caused any harm?"

Thanoa was silent for a moment, obviously picking his words. "As I said, your world lies close to many other worlds. Rohunah is among the sages who study these things and had warned that a crossover was imminent before the crossover happened. They were concerned that a second crossover might follow within a few decades."

"And?" Adam demanded anxiously.

"It may be simply that your experimentation made the situation more visible rather than that it changed it, but Rohunah is now convinced the next crossover is coming within ten years."