Stone surges up around Rapunzel with the speed of splashing water, covering her purple robes in slate grey, sinking into her skin, becoming her skin. Arms, body, legs, head . . . the change flows down her hair, coil by coil, binding it to the ground.
Around all others, the surroundings jerk, sharp and sudden. Here the murals, and there—
a closer room, so much smaller now, the layers and layers and layers built up over years made of flesh and blood bound to stone, the statue in the centre eroded with time, once-kind eyes sunk and mouth a gaping hole open in an endless, soundless scream—
and back, the ground still mercifully solid under their feet.]