TITLE: 'All Mimsy were the Borogoves.' 3/12
AUTHOR: Pythia
FEEDBACK: Always appreciated
DISCLAIMER: The Slayer and her Watcher are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Sandollar Productions, Kuzui Enterprises, 20th Century Fox Television and the UPN Television Network. 'Jabberwocky' and 'Alice' were written by Lewis Carroll. Geoffrey wandered by and took up residence when the story demanded it, and Ari has been delightfully mine for the past two and a bit years. The story is written for the pleasure of the author and readers, and has no lucrative purpose whatsoever. Please do not reproduce this story anywhere without the author's consent.

Posting Notes: *-* indicates emphasis. {-} indicates thought. [_] identifies thought-speech

Days passed.

They were days in which Giles began to learn some of the tricks and twists that were to help him survive in this inverse, flipsided world. He discovered that only fully reflected food had any taste or substance, and that even that was a pale reflection of the real thing. He found that water seemed to be the only thing safe to drink, and that mirrored plumbing was something of a joke. He worked out how to shave using 'borrowed' safety razors, how to retrace the routes he was taking if he needed to and how to hunt for safe places in which to spend the night. Hotel rooms seemed to be the best option, although he slept once or twice in far stranger locations; inside a health club on one occasion, and in a display gallery in a museum on another. He lingered rather a long time in the museum, replacing his purloined weaponry with far better examples of the swordsmith's art and sighing regretfully over books that - once pulled from their shelves - proved themselves to be nothing but empty pages, just like all the others he'd taken a moment to peruse.

There'd been a piece of him hoping that the books might somehow trigger the rest of those elusive memories that lay buried somewhere in his mind. They didn't - but he took one anyway, searching among any number of desks until he found a pen that would write, using it to record what little did come back to him as he wandered the maze that filled the mirrored world. Rooms opened into other rooms, doors lead him into passageways and they led him down flights of stairs and along galleries, each reflected space spilling into the next seemingly without pattern or purpose.

Seemingly.

It took a while, but he eventually began to figure out that the rooms were not connected in a completely random manner. The mirror world appeared to follow a very precise set of rules, partially linked to the nature of the reflections which shaped it, and partly determined by a subtle congruence between each reflection and the next. It wasn't an easy correlation to spot, but once he had it, he could start to decipher the complex geography that shaped the world around him. It varied from room to room and from mirror to mirror; there were connections seemingly determined by colour, by common texture, or by style of design. There were sequences and patterns, whole areas of internal consistence and others where discordant architecture jostled for dominance amidst poorly defined and only partially reflected spaces. The external landscape defied definition; one room might offer glimpses of a city street, the next an enticing garden, and the one after that an ocean view. Sometimes there were doors that led out into sunlit exteriors, but - after one wary venture into an enticing vista - he made himself hurry past all and every temptation to venture outside the safety of reflected walls.

The sunlight, it seemed, only ever reached as far as the mirrors defined it. Beyond that lay shadows and shapes and soft whispering noises. The menace that stalked the rooms at night lurked out in the darkness of the day - along with other unpleasant and decidedly disturbing things. Things that scuttled and things that crawled. Hunters and the hunted, predators and prey. They were the things that you occasionally glimpsed in the depths of a mirror, late at night; the half seen flicker of movement at the very edge of your vision, the shadows that crept behind the glass.

Instinct suggested he stay well away from them.

Half remembered legends and lore agreed; there were creatures that dwelt behind the mirrors which threatened a man's sanity along with his soul - and he had no desire to lose either, given a choice in the matter. He fought for himself instead, using the hours he walked to delve into the foggy recesses of his mind and emerge with nuggets of memory, with names and faces and snippets of knowledge that reinforced his sense of who and what he was. Direct and immediate memory was hard; he struggled to recall recent events and achieved little more than fuzzy half hints and furiously strong emotions. He knew that the people that went with those emotions were important to him - as important as that determined label he'd found for himself that first day - but it was exhausting trying to focus on the how and the why that lay around them. As soon as he felt a headache threaten he'd retreat to easier ground, snatching at a line of poetry or prose and letting it roll out of him with lyrical exposition, using it to reinforce his mental frames of reference.

He found he could quote Homer in the original Greek, and recite Ovid and Virgil in structured Latin; English poets kept him company over lunch, and obscure singer- songwriters added music to his afternoons. He didn't judge his eclectic store of knowledge, just revelled in it, happy to declaim classic poetry, sing light opera, or serenade the silences with acapello rock ballads as the mood took him. Each remembered line or lyric triggered a thousand thoughts and associations; bit by bit he rebuilt pieces of himself, treasuring each echo of his past that the puzzle revealed.

Rupert Giles, he decided with a slightly smug sense of pride, was a very educated man.

But then - as less the less certain parts of his memory recalled - that was something a Watcher had to be. His knowledge and his wisdom were important weapons in the war he'd been trained to fight. Every bit as important as the other skills he'd acquired; the mastery of archaic weaponry, the self-discipline of the martial arts - and, he suspected, a level of ability in the use of magic, although he couldn't be entirely sure. Thinking about it gave him even more of a headache than recalling the names and faces that meant so much to him.

He went seeking his answers in safer memories - in recollections lifted from the written page, from the histories of his predecessors. While the history of his own life remained a jumbled, fragmented mystery, the words of the Watchers' diaries that had once helped shaped that life began to do so again; in between snatches of song and the declamations of great literature, he sought sparks of enlightenment among his memories of dry, dusty words and the meticulous records of life - and death - serving the Slayer.

It turned out to be a somewhat unsettling way to occupy his thoughts, but it certainly served to distract him from the eeriness of his surroundings and the oppressive weight of silence that occupied them.

He's been exploring his new world for some time before he began to suspect that he wasn't the only living thing wandering within the maze during the day. He'd caught the odd glimpse of movement, hints of half seen figures that vanished into nothingness as soon as he turned his attention towards them, but usually they were nothing more than the echo of movements on the other side of the mirrors, those ghosts without substance that were reflections of the outer world. Once or twice though, he'd had the feeling that he'd disturbed something else in the course of his explorations, something that had raced away at his approach. At first he'd turned and hastened away from all and any such encounters, only too mindful of the thing that seemed to be hunting for him in the night. But as time went on he started to realise that these elusive day time encounters lacked the bone chilling, soul shivering presence that stirred him from unsettled dreams and warned him of encroaching danger. Emboldened by that - and driven by an insatiable curiosity to discover as much about this world as he safely could - he started to hunt down his previously unseen company, cautiously trying to follow rather than fleeing from them.

In the end, he found an answer to the riddle.

Although it might be more accurate to say that it found *him*.

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The room was large and somewhat imposing; a picture gallery in some stately home, perhaps, with a row of windows running down the full length of it on one side, and a series of decorated mirrors on the other. Old paintings hung between each pair of windows, with spindly chairs and the occasional over stuffed chaise longue sitting beneath them. A long, threadbare carpet protected the highly polished wooden floor and ornate chandeliers hung from an equally ornate ceiling above it. There were people in the gallery, milling on the other side of the mirror; attending some kind of semi-formal buffet luncheon by the look of their clothes and the obsequious presence of white-coated waiters. Giles strolled down the length of the hall, feeling a disconcerted sense of isolation in the midst of so much activity. The sense of occasion felt strangely familiar and, at the same time, uncomfortably uninviting. This was the kind of event where everyone was on display, where politics and pointless diplomacy generated endless games of one-upmanship and arrogant assessments of wealth and standing. He found himself wondering what this august and decidedly pretentious gathering would make of the sword carrying, dishevelled phantom that haunted their mirrors - and laughed out loud at the thought, only too aware of how disreputable he looked by now. He'd been living in the same outfit since his arrival. His casual jacket was creased and rumpled, as was the equally casual shirt beneath it. If he'd had a tie when he'd arrived, it had become misplaced somewhere along the way - along with a lot of other personal property, like his wallet and his driving license. He had the book he was using as a diary stuffed in one jacket pocket, a couple of tasteless apples in the other, and there were several long bladed knives thrust through his belt. Not to mention the sword which had barely left his hand since he'd acquired it. He had at least shaved that morning - courtesy of a rather portly gentleman in a less than swank hotel which had boasted both mice and cockroaches out in the real world - but for all that he looked less like a respectable librarian and a lot more like a bespectacled vagabond.

{Librarian …}

He paused as the thought came to him, mentally filing it away with the other memories that he was starting to get into some kind of order. It didn't add much - but it sat rather comfortably beside those images of earnest young faces, sitting round a table piled high with books. He'd known all along that 'Watcher' was a calling rather than a profession, and it was nice to know that his obvious depth of education served him in practical as well as esoteric applications. No wonder he'd been drawn to examine the books that he'd encountered on his travels.

Or was that the Watcher's instinct, eager for knowledge, continuously seeking to observe, deduct and learn?

It was a question worth considering, but one he needed to save for a safer place and a more certain time. The streams of sunlight cascading through the windows were a perilous deception; he was walking too close to the outside world to allow himself the luxury of philosophic contemplation. He turned away from the milling crowd and started to make his way along the rest of the gallery, hoping - as he'd been hoping every time he crossed a new threshold - that when he left it, he'd find himself in the reflection of a room he recognised.

It hadn't happened yet, but he went on hoping. Went on believing that somewhere - somehow - he would find a way home.

{Of course,} he told himself wryly, {what I really need is a guide.}

That was when he spotted the cat.

It was just an ordinary, black and white cat, one with short, sleek fur and a proud tail which it was holding up like a question mark as it stalked imperiously along the carpet.

Except that it was *his* side of the mirrors - and it, like him, appeared as nothing more than the faintest ghostly image in among the swirling company that occupied their silvered surfaces.

"Good Lord," he exclaimed, coming to an abrupt halt and staring at the creature in amazement. It too stopped in its tracks, considering him with wary suspicion. For a long moment the two of them stood there, one poised as if the slightest movement would precipitate flight, the other wide eyed and totally speechless. Giles had imagined a lot of things, hearing the soft noises, catching the hints of something leaving just he entered a room, but he'd never considered that he might encounter something quite so - ordinary - stalking through this impossible labyrinth.

The fact that it was *there*, of course, suggested that it was far from ordinary. Perhaps it, like him, had somehow been brought to this place by some unseen power. Perhaps it was an enchanted animal, something other than it seemed. Or perhaps the entire species 'felis domesticus' concealed skills and talents that the average human being would never have suspected.

There were, he recalled somewhat fuzzily, a lot of superstitions concerning the nature of cats …

This particular one apparently decided that he was no threat to it, because it stretched rather languidly, yawned - and then rolled over, exposing its stomach and waving its paws lazily in the air.

"Well," Giles considered, not entirely sure how to interpret this reaction. "Hello to you, too." He crouch down slowly, so as not to startle the animal too much, carefully laid his sword down on the carpet - its hilt angled so that he could snatch it up again if he needed it - and gingerly reached out his hand. There was a vague expectation, lurking at the back of his mind, of the creature transforming into something large, savage and decidedly ravenous - but the only thing that his hand found was soft warm fur and, while there were claws, they were simply a light reflexive flexing as the cat squirmed and purred under his touch.

His smile was equally reflexive - a moment of quiet delight and unexpected pleasure. He'd been lost, alone, and on edge for so long that this chance encounter, this sudden sense of companionship, was almost giddying. It was also utterly mystifying.

"Forgive my curiosity," he asked with a quiet smile, stroking the sleek fur and feeling its warm reality under his fingers, "but what's a handsome fellow like you doing in a place like this?"

[Hunting.]

Giles leapt back as if he'd been bitten, somehow managing to snatch up the sword as he regained his feet; he hefted it warily, putting defensive steel between himself and the animal as he tried to assess what had just happened. The cat rolled onto its stomach and looked up at him with what looked suspiciously like a frown of puzzlement.

"D-did - you just - ?"

No, surely not. Cats didn't talk. But then, Watchers - or librarians - didn't usually hear voices, either.

Did they?

The cat blinked, climbed to its feet and began to walk away.

[Follow me.]

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