sphere of the sacred worm

"one of the biggest problems in my life is the way beautiful and dangerous women are constantly grabbing my chin, sensual-style"
-liza voronina, apparently

"liza's perceiving absence—of RESPECT for her"

• Play opens with Ovida visiting Cora at her internship; Cora does not recognize her due to her curse/test from the Warmain Ildrasteia Rinn. Ovida brings up a number of people in Cora's life, of whom Cora expresses ignorance of. Eventually, Cora gets Ovida to leave and promptly forgets about her. Understandably, Ovida is deeply troubled by this
• Liza calls ahead to Opal and Klyatva and lets them know she's going to visit. Opal indicates that everything is fine and great and Liza understands that this probably means something terrible is going on. She arrives and Opal lets her in, where they talk a bit and Opal continues to play up how fine things are. Klyatva eventually announces herself from the other room and comes in, and Liza sees that she's started styling her hair over one eye now, indicating that she may just be Pitohui at this point. They start talking about the labyrinth, and Liza surprises Pitohui by asking for help getting rid of the "bitch in her house". After several steps clarifying precisely which bitch¹, Pitohui enthusiastically agrees to help Liza murder the Architect. As they start to plan out the murder, Ovida intrudes and begins telling Liza about her encounter with Cora, up to the point where Pitohui stops cupping Liza's face with her hand and instead pinches it because she's trying to have a weird homoerotic moment with her², and eventually she's sent away again. The scene closes with Pitohui/Klyatva notably counting themselves as one person.
• Cora attends another Chancery meeting, and things immediately get awkward as they start asking after her wife she can't remember and about the lasagna she brought last time that she also can't remember. After further confusion on the part of everyone there, Aysu examines the bit of Yulia's fears that Cora is wearing on her wrist, and points out that this is probably Ildrasteia's doing. Everyone else agrees she's that kind of freak. They ask where Cora's been staying, anyways, and she shows them the crossroads and how she's redesigned it. They attempt to locate a door to Cora's old apartment before they fail and she sends them away to process/immediately forget portions of what happened
• Ovida broods on her moon and for the first time meets Cixilind's human-self. She's uncomfortable at being on the opposite end of vielface syndrome and freaked out at how she doesn't have a pulse when she holds Cixilind's hand for the first time. Cixilind is generally enthusiastic as Ovida looks out over the auroras and landscapes of dream that engulf the moon, and upon seeing the brambles in its shadow, they observe how beautiful the presence of the bleak there is
• The Architect pays Cora a visit. Much of their conversation is the Architect filling Cora in on details of her relationships³ and other goings-ons in her life. She also sets up betrayal in explaining her own situation re: resurrection from the dead and all these Lizas running around by asking Cora to help her kill her past self. She stays the night.
• Ovida visits Yulia in the midst of a nightmare of her time at the Academy mixed with her loneliness without Cora fears of Ildrasteia Rinn. Ovida asks her what happened and mentioned that she'd spoken with Cora, at which point Yulia demands to be taken to her dreams while also revealing that Cora was treating with a Warmain in an attempt to arrange a coup over the Headmaster of the Bleak Academy⁴. Ovida eventually accomplishes this with some difficulty due to her being in a weird side dimension, but reaches the boundary of Cora's dream of a blizzard and knocks. Cora tells her to show herself and she enters; she asks who they are, and Yulia tells her that she's her wife and they embrace and collapse in the snow. In the dreams, the effects of Rinn's curse appeared to be lessened and Yulia described more of their memories, and the details she had of Rinn's curse that she had from being present. Yulia asked if Cora still had the wire spun from her fear, and indicates that she's still keeping Cora's wedding ring safe⁵. They speak some more, and Ovida invokes a wish to bind them together, taking snowdrops blossoming from Yulia's heart and lotuses blossoming from Cora's heart, and planting them in each other⁶ to bind them in a way that could transcend aspects of Rinn's test on Cora.

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1. at any given time, Liza's house and outlying metaphysical landscape contain anywhere from 2 to 5+ bitches of varying levels of evil and terrible beauty

2. at one point ovida realizes she may have interrupted them kissing or something? notably, none of them denied anything

3. the Architect notably includes Aspechka and excludes Basilisk in the list of people Cora knows

4. "ovida's voice dropping a whole octave for the flat 'what'"

5. "you were with me this whole time..."

6. wedding... 2!