The Transformation of Penny Wren: 2 (Patreon)
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With a gravelly twist of the brass key in her hand, the mansion breathed a year-held dusty breath onto Penny. She covered her nose a moment, but then abandoned the thought and stepped into the foyer with a squelch of growing wetness in her shoes.
Her flashlight beam darted over the contents of the room. Funiture was covered in victorian linens, some disturbed by the annual ingress of college co-eds looking for a prize, but for the most part the large entryway lay curiously undisturbed.
The collection of picture frames, canelsticks and brick-a-brack on the hall's immense fireplace seemed to be the easiest mark; it was clear that several knick knacks had been nicked from the granite mantle over the years.
Too easy, Penny thought. She kept to her plan.
But that's not to say the hall was without its delights. In particular, she spied a large gilded mirror on the south wall. Striding closer, she got a glimpse of a soggy sorority girl, cold from too much time spent in the rain. Thinking back to that fireplace, she thought what a godsend a fire would be right now.
But she peered back at herself, closing on the mirror, even reaching out a second, as if the girl was some stranger, the gilding on the surface making the girl in the mirror seem like she was trapped out-of-time. Some old soul in nineteen nineties' clothing.
But it was her, definitely. She took a moment to look at herself in the old mirror.
And what she saw was...
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Equipment: bag of tools, watch, mag-light flashlight, old brass key
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I'm going to try a poll format for this selection, though I'm basing it on those suggestions offered by you all. I won't always take suggestions for the poll, but I think when there is a list of choices that I'd like to offer, I'll take a vote on where to go next.
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