[ witch barriers are filled with such things. aren't they the manifestation of a magical girl's heart writ large? all their sullied hopes and dreams, their desires, each and every anxiety and neurosis that might have haunted them to the point of their untimely falling. they lurk and wait in the scenery, attend to the witch as her familiars, fragments of her own shattered psyche.

Homura has learned not to pay them more attention than necessary, those reflections in broken glass of the girls each witch once was, because humanizing the fallen is actively detrimental to accomplishing what needs to be done. but even so ...

even so, it is hard not to notice at times, and even harder not to wonder. ]

If that is the case, I think who or what the warning is coming from might be the thing in question. Who it is meant for might be just as important.

[ an eternal separation. you will never see her again.

the banks of the sanzu, the far shore. there the dead go, crossing on to spaces you won't be able to follow.

time, implacably marching on, saying that none of this is meant to last, imposing its will despite the witch's best efforts otherwise.

which of these might it be? any and all of them, or something else? ]