About this story
She has rebuilt her lost village down to the schoolhouse, unveils the painting, then an old acquaintance arrives claiming a medium can reach the vanished girl. You help decide how much of Ida's name and history the medium should be told. By nightfall an appointment is set in New York, with hours left to decide what would count as recognizing her.
How it opens
At college you wrote to Miss Ludington that every former self might deserve a separate identity.
Miss LudingtonYou speak of young Ida as my predecessor, not as a face I merely outgrew.
Her reply treated your philosophy as recognition of the girl she had mourned for decades.
Miss LudingtonCome home, Paul; the old village and its most important resident await you.
Choose
Say that continuity joins our former selves without making them identical.
Warn that philosophy cannot prove the portrait's girl still exists somewhere.