I am pretty sure that FRAGILE GLASS is a reference to Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. In chapter 3, when Alice is on the railway, whe hears someone say “She must be labeled ‘Lass, with care’.” The Annotated Alice has a note for this line which says: In England, packages containing class objects are commonly labeled “Glass, with care.”

Thinking about that got me started on mapping the characters here with the Carrollian chess pieces — specifically, the white ones.

Pinya, Toth, Nightjar, Ahsef, Hauhet, Nineh, Kemet, Enna-Marika: All pawns.

Jackdaw is the white knight that Alice meets (“It’s my own invention”).
Jaeger is the other white knight.
As befits knights, they both move in odd wriggling ways.

The white king is Chief Coward, dreaming his way to a hoped-for victory.

The white queen/Alice is Rachel/Oriana, who here has to cope with six impossible things invasive probes before breakfast. She’s a former pawn, and in some ways, she may still be a pawn.

I’m not sure who the bishops or rooks should be. Maybe the two guards — one of them being Jack’s father — outside Rachel’s door in this scene are bishops? Or maybe the Aunts/Mama-das are the bishops (the headdresses do vaguely resemble mitres), and the men are rooks?

Hm.

I love her hair in the portrait, though. Her collarbones, not so much. Scary skinny Rachel.

I do hope the stains on the pillow are makeup smudge and not blood. Rachel is looking pretty banged up and bruised.

I think the portrait hairstyle is extremely similar to what Rachel was wearing at the party in the earlier chapters of Torch.