[Heliotrope] On The Care and Feeding of Magic Doors

Magic and Fairy are filled with magic doors.  But how do you make them? Well, now I know on some level you might ask, "What's the point?"  But how often are you told that fairy tales are cautionary lessons in life and in some very very rare circumstances might need them when dealing with actual fairies or actual magic.  Granted, this is far more useful to someone on Terra than on Earth (or god forbid Wonderbread land which has about as much magic as that North Korean hotel looming over the city (which does have magic but its the awful kind that is wild unpredictable and generically yucky)).

I mean, to someone raised in a culture with nothing but magic, if you said to use a cellphone you had to turn it on by pressing this button, they might get it.  But if you said you had to make sure it had a sim card, that the carrier had a signal or that at least you had to have wifi, you might be at a bit of a loss, right? But a cell phone is such a useful tool that you can hardly not imagine having one; it can do SO many things.

So can a magic door.

And yes, I did say care and feeding, because like most things, things imbued with magic are alive.  Technically everything has some life to it (ergo why even Wonderbreadland has magic) but there is magic and then there is Magic.  And the more magical it is, the more alive it is.  That's why vampires seem filled with life and have such amazing senses and stir the passions of so many is because they are magically imbued corpses.  Take away the magic and what have you got?

A dead body dressed in fine fashion.  Much cooler than what your typical undertaker will dress them in.


What does a door eat? Well, it isn't eat so much as "consume" anyone or anything that goes through it, only to put it on the other side.  IE, a door is space from point  A to point B.  That's what a door does.  Hell, to many a door is just a hole in the wall.  And yet.

That hole in the wall still has two sides (at least), the side you came from and the side you are going.  So to make a magic door (unless we're talking about a door imbued with magic that is strengthen or somehow restricted with spells so that it hides and only lets people through it, which is technically a magic door but not the COOL kind that lets you skip all the boring space in the middle like the INTERESTING magic doors that are no doubt what you were thinking of when I said this instead of that sunsetting thrush knocking 'say friend' nonsense....) you need to find a way to keep it a door whilst separating point a from point b.

Needless to say, wormholes and police boxes aside, this is no easy technique with technology.  But with magic its 'easy.' I say 'easy' in the sense of making a sword is easy compared to say...making a Coleco Pac Man game.  Speaking of swords, it is actually a knife that is your first step.  You need a knife so sharp it can cut space.  Note, you don't need to go over board and make it able to cut time as well, much less your shadow, but it does need to be able to at least cut a door in two parts.  That's really just a matter of making it really really sharp, not insanely sharp.

Then you carefully split the door in two, roll up one half like you might a stolen painting and go to wherever you want the other door to be.  Now, making a door go to anywhere WITHOUT traveling there is a neat trick indeed and that's why wizards are wizards, but anyone with a bit of cunning and a magically sharp knife can make a magic door.

If you know the trick.

The first trick is that you can't take too long about it.  Sunsets are powerful things and you generally have about three to do the job of getting the other half set in a nice frame.  Now the first part is the frame.

A door pretty much considers itself a door based on its size, shape, construction and what is a door from and too.  It can do OK having a DIFFERENT to and from than it originally did, after all when that dry cleaner across the street turns into a deli, the door between it and the habadasherie didn't suddenly stop working just because you changed the stores; but the size and shape? That's really hard on a door.  It's like moving a redwood and replanting it in your yard; its roots are going to have PROBLEMS.  So you have to KEEP the first half in the original frame and then set the other side in a frame that makes sense.  You can use staples if you have to, but you have to use them on the side the cut came from because (rookie mistake) otherwise you're just stapling wood in a door frame.  HELLO?

The feeding part is important because for a door to think its a door, especially when its not just a garden variety hole, it has to be USED.  People have to use the door at least once a century or so or the door might get...forgetful.  It might still work but unless it is a very very specific door meant for very very forgetful people well then...well almost anything could happen.

And that's how adventures happen.

Which sound nice, but trust me, its better most of the time reading about them from other people. Most of the time.