It was a little odd, reaching into an empty bag was such an ordinary thing to do, and yet, it was also the first step to trying something rather extraordinary. Once my hand was touching the bottom of the bag, I closed my eyes, blocking out everything but the sensations coming from that hand, pulling it back a little so I wasn’t touching any part of the bag, letting it just sit there, in the emptiness. In the darkness, as the bag was made from thick, dark cloth, blocking what little light could get into the building we were in. Shadows, that I was accustomed to, that I could step into.

Remembering those sensations I let a bit of Astral Power seep out, infusing the darkness within the bag with my own power, making it something more. Something deeper.

There was a slightly chill sensation around my fingers and with a grin on my face, I pushed my hand in further, feeling for the bottom of the bag. Only to come up empty, my arm going in deeper and deeper until my arm was almost completely in the bag that would normally barely get to my elbow. Looking down, my grin became even wider, if that was possible.

I had my first proof of concept, the most trivial but also the most important one. My idea had basic merit, I could reach into the shadows, just like I could step into the shadows. But now, the more difficult things had to be tested. What could I do with the shadows I reached into, what happened to stuff I put inside them and so on? Were the shadows within the bag connected to all the other shadows, so would I have to make sure that things didn’t get lost? Did I need to anchor the shadow space within the bag to the bag, so I didn’t lose track of it? There were many, many experiments I had to perform before I could do anything productive with my idea and yet, I didn’t care in the least. I was already ecstatic that my idea seemed to be panning out, to say nothing about a few interesting traps I could imagine.

“Mum, your arm?!” Sabrina must have seen that my arm was somehow vanishing in a bag, while I was grinning like a loon.

“Everything’s fine, just trying a few things out,” I told her, pulling most of my arm back out, before gently pushing and prodding against the bag in an attempt to get a better idea of how the separation between normal space and shadow space worked. It was fairly fascinating, to feel the shift between having the fabric push against my arm only for the sensation to be replaced by the strangely cool smoothness of the shadows. It was somewhat similar to feeling the empty air but at the same time, the difference was distinct, the shadows felt thinner, for lack of a better word, as if moving in air was like moving in water, while the shadows were normal air. It was both fascinating but also a little discombobulation, sensations I was accustomed to feeling were suddenly cut off.

Having attracted the notice of Sabrina and Lia, I explained to my daughter what I was doing and what the idea behind it was, causing both to look at me with wide eyes. When I began to elaborate on what could be done if the experiments panned out like I wanted them to, they started to stare at me in wonder, especially when I began to theorise that it might be possible to put an entire habitat into the shadows, allowing us to play snail and carry our homes with us, wherever we went. I doubted pushing things that far would work but it was a fairly amusing idea.

Shaking off the idea, I decided to start with the simplest experiment, putting something simple into the shadows. Picking up a piece of trash left behind by the survivors, I reached back into the bag, holding the piece while pushing my hand into the Shadows. The piece went with my hand, I remained able to feel it and it was clearly no longer within the bag, when I let go and pulled my hand back out. The piece of trash didn’t come with my hand, it stayed gone, while I made sure to keep the bag in the same place it had been before.

After waiting for a few seconds, I reached back into the bag, feeling around for the piece I had put into the shadows just moments before, only to come up empty. The thing was gone, making me wonder if it was destroyed or somehow lost in the shadows.

My next test was to repeat the previous one, only this time I conjured a piece of Ice to use. It was still made up from my Astral Power, so I’d hopefully be able to feel its existence, even if it drifted off or something like that.

Just like the trash, it easily vanished into the bag and when I put my hand back in, just a few seconds later, I could faintly feel it in the distance. It was utterly mindbending, to feel the item in the distance, while, at the same time, knowing that it was nearby. My mind tried to process two different spaces at the same time, spaces that only partially overlapped, and it was not made for the task. Only by pushing the magical perception I received from inside the Shadows into my secondary thought-stream, I could prevent what could rapidly become a killer headache, but once I did that, things were a lot easier.

Reaching out with my Magic, I pulled the shard of Ice I had conjured back, easily catching it with my hand and pulling it back out. A cursory inspection didn’t show any damage, giving me hope that the Shadows weren’t inherently destructive to material objects but that piece of trash had simply drifted off, just like my Ice had. Only, without a connection to the trash, I couldn’t call it back to my hand, not that I really wanted to.

But it gave me something to work with, an initial problem I had to overcome before I could make the bags I wanted to have. Namely, how could I fix something in a space that seemed to be shifting at a fast pace, if the distance my Ice had to travel back to my hand was any indication?

Before trying to fix anything in the Shadows, I decided to test something else. After putting the Ice back into the shadows and letting go, I let my hand drift to the side without leaving the Shadows, while I kept a close, mental lock on my Ice, trying to get a feel of the shifting within the Shadows. Only, there wasn’t any movement. The Ice just hung there, without any movement I could detect until I gave it a small push with my magic, making it drift away.

Even with my push, it didn’t speed up, nor did it slow down, it just kept moving at an even speed for a few seconds until suddenly, it moved with a far greater speed as if it had moved past some barrier. Or maybe as if there were currents within the shadows and the Ice had moved from the tranquillity around my hand into a quickly moving current, getting pushed away from my hand. It felt somewhat right, though when I tried to pull the Ice back, it worked without issue, with nothing indicating that there was something trying to move it in the other direction. It didn’t make a lot of sense but it gave me some more data in regards to the strange space within the shadows.

Whistling to myself, I came up with a simple solution. Pulling out a piece of string, I wrapped it around the Ice, manipulating the Ice a little to encompass the string so it couldn’t unravel, no matter what, before putting the Ice back into the Shadows, the string trailing behind it. Only that the string didn’t enter the shadows completely, part of it remained outside, even outside the bag.

Pulling my hand back out, I waited for a couple of seconds again, before reaching back into the shadows, curious what I’d find. To my gleeful joy, I found the Ice pretty much in the same spot I had previously put it in, making me think that my idea had merit. But more experiments were needed.

Next, I pulled my hand back out, leaving the Ice and the string as they were, only now I deliberately moved the bag around, taking it into the next room, before reaching back in. I wasn’t sure if the string had been stressed but I thought that the Ice might have moved a little, I wasn’t sure. But it was still there, still hanging on the string, without any observable issues.

This meant my idea had merit. Weight wasn’t a problem, the bag hadn’t weighed anymore with the Ice and the string than it had without them, meaning the weight within the shadows wasn’t transmitted to the bag itself, which was a good thing.

Struck by a moment of curiosity, I looked into the bag, interested in how the string’s transition between shadow-space and normal-space and normal space would look. Only, the moment I opened the bag wide, letting a little too much light into the opening, the string was suddenly loose, flopping around as if cut off.

Obviously, even more experiments were needed.