Max takes this in steps. Things to mentally process one at a time. What is step one?
Step one follows off his most recently coherent train of thought: the door did not open, as expected, into a brick wall. From where it was positioned with respect to the building's architecture, it ought to have opened into a brick wall, or perhaps pulled a brick veneer along with it and opened into the alleyway. This expected outcome did not happen.
Okay, what's step two? Step two is a fairy is talking to him. No! Bad! That's not step two! That's step four or five, at least! Hold your horses. The second thing is that it is 5 in the morning, and yet wherever the door DID open to, it was NOT 5 in the morning, but evidently midday. So far, his assumptions with respect to door placement and time of day have been thrown into question.
What else? The forest. There is a forest. There are not forests near the coffee shop, it being in the middle of the city. This throws into question, additionally, the proximity of the coffee shop to a forest.
Step four, let's observe how this does not make sense. There are no obvious explanations to account for the anomalous door placement, or the sudden brightness, or the presence of a forest. Virtual reality, memory manipulation, hallucinogenic drugs, and such things are acknowledged as possibilities and summarily ignored due to lack of useful predictive value.
Number five, there was a door behind him, and now there is not, and the thing that throws into question is the general truism that doors do not typically disappear upon being walked through. This is catalogued as support for the "things not making sense" explanation, which has not yet been unpacked substantially. This fails to provide any useful observations about the situation.
Okay, NOW Max's brain acknowledges the fairy. There's a girl in front of him with wings. Wings are not a thing people have, okay. Wings that size do not typically support the weight of a human being, so those wings are doing a thing that is further impossible on top of the existing impossibleness of existing on a person.
How about the things that the fairy has said? Max has been standing there processing things and looking her in the eye for a good ten seconds now without responding, so that should be addressed. What words did she say? She said "mortal", implying immediately that she is NOT mortal, okay, she is a fairy, this makes the "mortal" thing less confusing than it otherwise would be. She wanted to know how he got here and how he plans to get back, neither of which he has any useful answer to. She asks if he's got his senses, which is a prompt to start speaking immediately to demonstrate his senses-having.
He is not totally ready for this. He replies "You-!" several times in a row, interspersed with several vaguely interrogative parts of speech. A coherent reply does not emerge from the panic.
no subject
Step one follows off his most recently coherent train of thought: the door did not open, as expected, into a brick wall. From where it was positioned with respect to the building's architecture, it ought to have opened into a brick wall, or perhaps pulled a brick veneer along with it and opened into the alleyway. This expected outcome did not happen.
Okay, what's step two? Step two is a fairy is talking to him. No! Bad! That's not step two! That's step four or five, at least! Hold your horses. The second thing is that it is 5 in the morning, and yet wherever the door DID open to, it was NOT 5 in the morning, but evidently midday. So far, his assumptions with respect to door placement and time of day have been thrown into question.
What else? The forest. There is a forest. There are not forests near the coffee shop, it being in the middle of the city. This throws into question, additionally, the proximity of the coffee shop to a forest.
Step four, let's observe how this does not make sense. There are no obvious explanations to account for the anomalous door placement, or the sudden brightness, or the presence of a forest. Virtual reality, memory manipulation, hallucinogenic drugs, and such things are acknowledged as possibilities and summarily ignored due to lack of useful predictive value.
Number five, there was a door behind him, and now there is not, and the thing that throws into question is the general truism that doors do not typically disappear upon being walked through. This is catalogued as support for the "things not making sense" explanation, which has not yet been unpacked substantially. This fails to provide any useful observations about the situation.
Okay, NOW Max's brain acknowledges the fairy. There's a girl in front of him with wings. Wings are not a thing people have, okay. Wings that size do not typically support the weight of a human being, so those wings are doing a thing that is further impossible on top of the existing impossibleness of existing on a person.
How about the things that the fairy has said? Max has been standing there processing things and looking her in the eye for a good ten seconds now without responding, so that should be addressed. What words did she say? She said "mortal", implying immediately that she is NOT mortal, okay, she is a fairy, this makes the "mortal" thing less confusing than it otherwise would be. She wanted to know how he got here and how he plans to get back, neither of which he has any useful answer to. She asks if he's got his senses, which is a prompt to start speaking immediately to demonstrate his senses-having.
He is not totally ready for this. He replies "You-!" several times in a row, interspersed with several vaguely interrogative parts of speech. A coherent reply does not emerge from the panic.