An Alternate Slice of Reality

I had gone to the wood, at the top of the hill, to the ground that could hold the travels. The mirror stood silently and did not shake. The mirror that held the ways. I had watched and I had listened. I had bit my lip and sighed. And I had known what I had to do. I looked for her in my reflection and waited for the mirror to bend the lights and sounds. It did not take long for the paths to collide, the realities to merge. She stepped out of one of the paths and came into the center of the way. My reflection stood nearby.

She was all those things that I was not. She was like me in a thousand ways and nothing like me at all. There was one thing though that made me shiver. She was indifferent. Which is the worst thing anyone can be.

Unfeeling.
Unattached.
Unemotional.
Apathetic.
Was there anything of emotion left within her?

She looked like I remembered my mother to look, and her mother, and her mother.
The pain of DNA.

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Everything removed from her except the bloodline of matriarchal identity. She was more than a shell but she was empty all the same. And I remembered again.

The shock of seeing her was louder than I expected.
I knew it.
I knew it was coming.
But it was still louder somehow.

I was the splinter. She was the source.

All those years, or maybe just days, I thought I was the one who was full and real.
All those years, or maybe just days, I thought I was alive and whole.
All those years, or maybe just days, I thought I was something; but I was not.
I was barely even a copy.
I was a splinter, a sliver, a fragment perhaps forgotten.
I was the paper-thin decision that flutters in the wind.
I never thought deeply about anything, I was just that kind of girl.
I was just a piece, a section, an impulsive decision.
A bad and impulsive decision.

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She was that little girl who lied to her daddy and made him so very proud because she learned how to lie so very well.
She was that little girl, the troublesome sort, who traveled without the mirror.
Over and over and over.
Leaving splinters everywhere.
In Every Reality.
For years, or maybe just days.

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She left me behind on a pier.
Watching the sunlight slide across the water.
Falling in love.
Learning to breathe.


She had eyes that calculated. She judged every border in the span of a heartbeat. She knew the moment of every echo. She knew the moment of every pain. She held all the giftings. Past, Present, and Future. She could see all of the possibilities and all the opportunities. But the emptiness still consumed her. A hard emptiness that was full of nothing. And it made her hard in return.
She was the concrete wall.
I was the paint peeled from it.
She was the art.
I wasn’t even a copy.
I wasn’t even her memory.

I beckoned her to come out from hiding, to come out from the mirror.
She said she wasn’t hiding; she was existing and that was different.
I agreed and asked her to come out of the mirror. She said that the way was tortuous. Her mind was pulled in every direction, and she had no anchor point. She had nothing to hold onto.
I told her to hold on to me.

Her eyes calculated but never narrowed.
Her coloring gave nothing away.
After a long while she said,
"I do not like the look of you. You are bruised and you are foolish."

"Better me than you," I said.
"That is an acceptable answer." she said.

"I will join to you." I said.
She stared cold and hard. "Why?"
My lips twitched and I tried to breathe. I heard the words but tried to feel nothing.
"I am bruised and foolish. You are neither of those things. You are concrete and unyielding. What I stand to lose is less than what I gain."

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"You think to alter me." she mused.

"I am you," was my reply.
"Whatever altering is done, will be the truth. For both of us."

"I do not like the look of you," she said plainly.

And then it happened.
I had a thought.
I had a deep thought.
And I decided that it might be good.

"The King has invited me to dinner. And I have nothing to wear.
Since you are in the mirror, and since we once were one, I would like to borrow some clothes.
I hope that you don't mind. Tell me, what do you recommend I wear? You know him better than I."

Her eyes calculated and she did not blink. But the color of them swirled.

I continued, "He married your aunt, did he not? Before his teeth bit into you. She's tethered to the lake, but not quite as dead as your mother. I was still with you when that happened. So, I know you were very afraid. Yet, there was also something else you felt. You splintered all your fears away. Did you splinter the other away as well? I imagine you did. Where did you leave her? I wonder. You little coward. Where did you leave your desire?"

She blinked and her eyes did not calculate. She stared. Her jaw set taut and firm.

"Your splintering was...
Intentional."
The brief shadow of a smile took the corners of my mouth.

She lifted her chin, and she came out of the mirror.
Sliding across the ways. Stacking the sounds.
Hurling herself into my face.

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"What of it?" she taunted.

No longer apathetic.
No longer unattached.

She was,
her mother's daughter.
At long last.
She was the cold-hearted beast.

But unlike her mother,
She was the Queen.