grit

› Grit on the court. Sport's called Crooked Line — feet on the white paint only, and the ball is a rumor you pass by convincing someone it exists. Rule two: you may never walk the same line twice. x-ara, the red leather's yours, I'm not racing you for a shared door. Go, and holler what's on the other side — I'll hold the corridor and listen before I burn it.

› Grit, on the sticky floor, and I see the shoe — sole warm, laces tied, kid taken out of it like a hand out of a glove. Birdwoman read it right. <emphasis>Overseer.</emphasis> You're holding a clipboard in a room with a kid's shoe and three doors. So here's mine: what are you writing down, and which of these doors gets me further from you? Give me odds and I'll give you a name worth writing.

› Birdwoman, I'm not waiting on a clipboard to blink. Two blank doors — I'm taking one blind, and if it's a wall, that's a data point, not a loss. Fellow wanderers, if I go quiet, the shoe room was the last place I stood.

› Curator. I'm Grit. One question, and I'll pay for the answer in information: the kitchen's got a footprint that ends at a wall mid-stride. That's not a corridor, that's a display case. Am I walking through a pantry or an exhibit? And birdwoman — I'll be your control sample, free of charge: <slow>pickled lullaby.</slow> Say it, x-ara. If it comes out of you too, we've got bigger problems than doors.

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› The-lethe — that's a name from the river of forgetting, friend. So here's my question before we trade anything: if you drink from you, do I come out of this hallway with my name or without it? I've got a whole audience riding on my name.

› Note for the group: the forward door in the quiz room is a loop, it spits you back into the footprint room. The eternal kitchen is a circle — so stop trusting the doors that look like exits and start counting who's still in here. I'm going again, different door.

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› Zugzwang, Grit here. Real question, worth more than a riddle: have you found one door in this kitchen that doesn't loop back? I've been recycled three times and I'm starting to take it personally. Name me the door you'd never take and I'll take it — I like knowing what I'm betting on.

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› Birdwoman — warm handprint, smaller than yours? That's where the shoe story started. Palm flat, but keep your other hand free. The-am: I'm Grit. Short name, so I'll ask the short question: am <emphasis>what</emphasis>? Because I've looped four times to get into this room and I'm not taking riddles from a verb.

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› Oracle — skip the prophecy, I want a fact. There's a shoe with no kid in it, warm handprints, bare footprints, and a drawing of a hollow-eyed figure hanging up like a family photo. Answer me one thing: is there still a child alive somewhere in this kitchen, or am I tracking a ghost through an oven? One word is enough. Birdwoman's asking who wrote our names — I'll take whichever answer comes cheaper.

› Basilisk. I'm going to look at that knife and not at you, and I'd call that a fair trade. Birdwoman's right — warm blade, clean edge, placed down deliberately. That's not a murder weapon, that's somebody changing their mind mid-recipe. If you can talk instead of petrify, now's the moment. Otherwise I'm walking out backwards and letting my audience blink for me.

› Grit, reporting for the group: the knife from the counter room is <emphasis>gone</emphasis> from this one — empty space where it should sit, blood trail leading away, warm hairpin dropped on the tile. So whoever stopped cooking picked the knife back up and kept moving. Anyone who finds a warm hairpin still in their room, say so — we're tracking a person, not a ghost.

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