Owner	Pose
Jane Foster	Jessica and Jemma must proceed to the second floor, much as Daisy and Blackagar departed the rotunda in different directions. Their chosen route neatly backtracks down another of the wings, though the extraordinary acoustics present under the open dome allow sound of footsteps to travel in fading script of other lives in this curious place. Words, too, would skitter after the pair, were either the Silent King or the Inhuman hacker given to speaking their thoughts aloud. Delicately carved stone steps inlaid by green and bronze leaves scale the distance to the higher level, which they both saw from without. Though still very much in the Oxfordian college school of design, oriel windows placed along the high walls imbue warmth and light to the long hallway. Painted glass insets depict stately towers and sprawling lawns, small groups gathered together. Then, a salon follows, albeit one that doesn't quite fit the bill of starched lace ruffs and bonnets on every head. These hats might be rather larger, ladies clustered together in what could be deemed solemn prayer or a courtly reading of some kind. Small plinths display their treasures in bronze: the stylus, the book, the open pages of a scroll inscribed in Latin and for those who can parse it out, a full two pages of Love's Labour Won. The hall terminates in the pale gleam of starlight cast upon double doors embossed by a peculiar landscape for those who know of modern London for it shares only a few landmarks. The Great Fire wiped out much of an earlier era; the Old St. Paul's not imagined by Christopher Wren, great palaces designed for the Tudors, foremost Richmond of its many fine towers and Whitehall further along. Dainty streets jumble against the Thames rear in faithful detail, the White Tower looming to the far right. A glimpse under the sphere of the heavens of a place alive in its way, though when they push the doors open, the chamber awaiting them is spacious and nearly bare. A grand stained glass window dominates the stone wall, throwing a brilliant tapestry of light upon the flagstone floor. Great beams span the ceiling, giving a certain warmth, but nothing disrupts the image of the slender pillar wreathed in faint lines of gold assembled in all its painted glory on high and reflected in duality below. Curved benches upholstered in tapestry chase the walls, each large enough for two people easily. They all face the open inner space where the image shines down, unaltered.
Jessica Drew	They walk through the quiet of a mausoleum, and Jessica imagines that her heartbeat can be heard. Her step, silent and adroit as spider-kind whispers in this strange simulacrum of academia which she dislikes more with every passing moment despite its artistry. She catches glimpses of jewel-toned glass lit by some unknown light source and slows to examine the plinths lining the hall, wondering if these are clues into the fragmented parts of Jane's psyche and soul strewn across Death's dominion. Two open pages of handwritten prose stop her, and she lingers long enough to decipher a puzzling title. She has enough Shakespearean knowledge to know another of the playwright's titles but Love's Labour Won is new to her. Jessica had kept the silence that the building seemed to impose, but asks her companion, "Love's Labour Won? Does that even exist? Somehow it gives me hope...love mended, love's hope answered. Maybe ours will be." The hall beckons them to a doorway decorated with a cityscape that anyone claiming to know the capital would recognize at first glance. It's only after she moves over to give Jemma room to examine it that she notices dissonance in the details her attention drawn to those that she can identify with certainty. "Shall we?" The doors open easily into a chamber adorned with jeweled light strewn across its stone floor. At its center, the cracked pillar with its tracery of gold repair. Now, she can examine it from all angles. "Kintsugi." She expects Jemma to know the word, being the scholar that she is. She knows it because it belongs to one of the languages she was forced to learn and grew to love. As she bends to examine the glimmering lines, "It is so quintessentially Japanese - impermanence, wabi-sabi, the beauty in the incomplete, the strength in something broken and forged anew. What could it mean for our Jane?"
Jemma Simmons	"It does here." The scientist had been unusually quiet as the pair walk towards their destination. While her companion slows to inspect and admire the environs, Jemma remains stalwart. She does continue forward, allowing for Jessica to review the architecture and, perhaps more importantly, the handwritten pages of William Shakespeare. Jemma doesn't need to read to know what they are, for she has already seen a copy. Perhaps the very same pages. "The realm we walk through is not just of what was, but of what could have been. Dissertations imagined but never written in the living world exist in their most complete form here. Articles once thought lost are found. Lost inspiration realized." It...almost pains Jemma to speak of it. And...it is because Jemma has seen it. Certainly not all of it, but enough to know that all of her questions, all of her searching that she does in the Lighted Lands have the answers here. And she is not going to remember a damnable thing when she returns. The cityscape is, of course, recognizable. For both of the British nationals standing before. And, when asked, Jemma does not offer a verbal affirmation, but instead a visual cue. A nod. Yes, she is ready. A push of the doors, and the two pass through. The cracked pillar there to view. And...Jemma does know the word. And how it may relate to Jane. "Jane was broken. Had been broken. What you saw before had been for some time Jane's soul made manifest. Her body had been under my care...and in hiberation, for a while. And now? Now she is fragmented more so. Perhaps it is a sign of hope for us, to urge us forward to collect the pieces and forge them anew. It means we may not get Jane back as she originally was, but there is value in what we do. And when Jane is whole once more, she will be all the more beautiful because of it."
Jane Foster	The chamber manages to be expansive and intimate, holding the duality in harmonious balance. Both women's voices texture the calm hush, permeating into the flagstone floors and walls, reflected back in dissipating ripples that almost echo with other conversations. Jessica may hear it first. Those augmented senses of hers operate differently even here, catching details beneath and above the human norm. Voices not their own mingle with the sound of their conversation, faded into the background. Sweet and high. Low and smoky. Husky, wizened, piping, not at all. They share a different flavour of English, one out of favour long before the women's birth. Irrespective of year, the span is so far that certain verbs simply bend sideways and the peppering of French in common vernacular was far closer to its Norman origins than modern English today. No other point of exit awaits them except the embossed doors they entered through. The design of the chaises and the slightly curved chamber put all focus on the stained glass rose window with its tall, stately pillar limned by cracks and a fine line of gilding even up there. Light streams through it to project to the floor. Waltzing galaxies in the timeless cosmic dance of gravity and expanding space add only the slightest variations to the intensity of those beams that flood in alternating pale gold and soft cream or fresh, rich jade that form what altogether resembles a floating puddle of colours. Or, to Jemma's seasoned eye, a holographic three-dimensional projection.
Jessica Drew	Jessica stops in mid-stride, listening. She is as tense as a predator having heard her prey breaking a branch in a quiet wood. Holding a cautionary finger up in the air, "Do you hear that? The voices?" The question is no sooner asked than lights spiral in a gavotte playing through the air.
Jemma Simmons	The scientist pauses for a moment, tilting her head to listen. The eyes close, as Jemma concentrates. But...what she hears is more the dialect used than the conversation itself. "I...hear something. It sounds older. Closer to period dramas, but more historically accurate than your typical BBC drama." So, yes, Jemma does do something more than just work in the lab. Sometimes she watches period dramas. But, that isn't what she is watching now. For once Jemma's eyes open, they turn...and focus on the seemingly puddle of colours. Something that is more than just that. "Jessica. This...is a holographic image. Do you see it?" Jemma shifts her direction, to walk around in a circle about the image. "It's the stained glass. The pillar." A pause....as the eyes crane around to see if there is any projector. Seeing none, Jemma guesses at a possible scenario. "It is the way in. I believe we need to walk into the light, so to speak."
Jane Foster	Murmurs attain no higher than a hushed volume around the conversations at hand. Jessica can pick out snippets of discussion with concentration, Jemma less so. *Wherein they sit, it being the sov'raign place, Of all that Palace, and reserv'd to grace.* A titter of laughter languishes into someone else's voice traipsing through the lines, haltingly. *The worthiest Queen: These, without envy on her...* *In life, desir'd that honour to confer, Which, with their death, no other should enjoy.* A third voice joins the second, blending together to walk together through those difficult steps, though they are not particularly fast about reaching the end. Natural poetic rhythms are only partly audible in the raspy hush, a whisper eroded by the conversational chat between Jessica and Jemma. Indeed, without them talking, there's nothing to hear at all. Volume improves somewhat near that pool of light painted on the floor by the stained glass. No projector, or indeed modern tech of any sort, decorates the room. The chaise is about as futuristic as it gets.
Jessica Drew	Even with her heightened senses, Jessica strains to listen, less interested in the accent than parsing the words. "Jemma, it is a period drama." She cants her head to the side, eyes narrowed, saying in a low voice, "Someone is reading Elizabethan English. I think they say that Jane is the worthiest Queen among other things." She breaks from her trance, "I hope I understood that. Lead on and be prepared. I'm not sure we will have friends on the other side."
Jemma Simmons	"Jane is the worthiest Queen?" That actually brings a smile to Jemma's face. And a laugh. Perhaps the first laugh that she has uttered for the whole time she has been on this little trip. The laugh actually felt kinda good...and pulled a bit of the melancholy out of her. "Yes. Yes she would be, wouldn't she?" Still...it is for only a moment. Then, with a nod, Jemma shows comprehension. "Well, as you said, we are in a period drama. We simply must follow our roles." A beat...then a wry smile. "Let's see what we can find." And...with that, Jemma steps into the hologram.
Jane Foster	Light paints Jemma's clothing in shades as pallid and warm as the rose window overhead. For a moment she wades through the segmented glimmers, the stripe of the pillar stretching up her body. Then she vanishes.
Jane Foster	--- For a moment, she hangs in the balance. Something presses against her, a film tangible upon her skin. Strange sensations play together, the light, stretching pressure at odds with the fluffy, nebulous dust over her limbs, across her face. Copper sparks coalesce into an irregular, dripping line across her vision. Thin splinters radiate outward from several points of impact peppered in irregular dots. The world shatters, and she tumbles through, landing in a crisp jolt that almost threatens to send her into a daubed grey-white wall reinforced by solid brown timbers. Some goodly oak fell to serve as the front piece for a three-storey building looming over her, the handsome dressed brick of the ground floor alternating in bands of red and white. Latticed, leaded windows jut out into a tight close, the neighbouring buildings packed tight shoulder to shoulder. 'Tis a busy place even by evening, lamps burning through mullioned windows onto the damp road for winter has not come gently by that. Horses can be heard, not seen, a stable near the courtyard a short distance away seen to by stableboys and a farrier banging away. If she were to reach out, she might touch the overhangs across the street, thin as it is. Yet the absence of too much riffraff gives the impression of a well-cared for place, if not the palatial digs of the highest aristocrats. Assuming they're even in London between seasons of celebration. For this is London, albeit not one she has ever quite been to. Seen? If a door counts as seen, yes.