Queen Avalon dreams of mirrors. Her mind regales her with them each way she turns in her sleep, and with each twist of her body she is surrounded, surrounded by them. Thousands of endless reflections multiply in front of her—oh, how she drinks in the sight of her own beautiful flesh. The gemstones in her eyes, she reaches out for them and plucks them out of the mirrors as if pulling from a pool of jewels. There, in her long, slender fingers, she scrutinizes them carefully, examining the flawless cut of her iris, a deepened sapphire whose color was drawn from the very depths of the mighty sea. Unsatisfied, she carefully dislodges the second iris in her reflection and holds them in her palms. They glint in the light, hard and cold. Her lithe hands curl over them, and when she reopens her hands two sapphire rings lay. They fit perfectly around her fingers, but she is still longing. The thousand replicas’ eyebrows twitch, and knit together. One seeks; the rest wait patiently, confusedly, curiously, as to see what Queen Avalon will do next.
Hair dark as a raven’s wing falls next to her fingers. She dips them into the mirror, reveling in the way the hard glass turns to cool liquid under the slightest touch, and combs through the soft strands. It is black silk, only the finest imported from exotic lands, and it grows atop of her own head. With gentle, sweeping motions, she gathers the silk in both hands and yanks. The hair rips from the reflection’s scalp, and yet the reflection does not scream. When the hair is drawn out of the mirror, it weaves itself into an exquisite cloak the color of midnight. It drapes itself upon her shoulders. She gazes into the mirror, noting how it compliments her pale skin. The thousand reflections around her blink once, indifferent.
She is unsatisfied. Her reflections are waiting, but they are no longer patient.
Aggressively, she thrusts her hand into the mirror, the coldness of the liquid glass shocking her warm, smooth skin. The reflection, now iris-less and hairless, jerks away, startled—but she does not allow it escape. With ringëd fingers, she clutches the reflection’s wrist and tugs it closer to her, despite the reflection twisting in an attempt to wrench itself out of her vice-like grasp. It opens its mouth, and she seizes this opportunity to tear its very lips from its face. Blood waterfalls and pools on the ground.
She takes no notice. Queen Avalon is too entranced by the pale, pink rose petals that rest gently in her palm. They multiply and fall to her feet. She is unsatisfied. Wet tear trails stripe the reflection’s cheeks.
No more, no more! it pleads, but Queen Avalon needs more. Plunging her blood-stained fingers into the mirror again, she does not register the icy coldness of the liquid glass as she extracts a tooth from the reflection’s mouth. Blood spurts like a spring from the wound, and the reflection’s knees shake, threatening to collapse. But Queen Avalon needs more, and so she does not notice. Her eyes now rest on a necklace made of perfectly rounded, symmetrical pearls. It clasps behind her neck and adorns her chest. The infinite reflections fiddle with it curiously.
Queen Avalon is not satisfied.
This continues for eternity when she dreams of mirrors. Surrounded by mirrors, by unblemished glass that buckles at her touch. She has mastered the mirror. And she is enveloped in all manner of extravagance, forever enraptured by infinite reflections of her beautiful self. The one singular reflection directly in front of her, however, is in a crumpled heap. Crimson streaks its dilapidated corpse, eyes plucked out by raven’s beaks, hair snatched by unforgiving hands, lips sliced off by knives. It rests as merely a forgotten pile of desecrated skin and bone in a puddle of its own blood.
When Queen Avalon awakens blinded by the darkness of night, she scrambles down hallways blanketed by shadow to the Mirror. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” she breathes, mind blooming with the aftershocks of the dream, of flower petals falling in her path, of sapphire rings and silken black robes and necklaces of pearl, “who is the fairest of them all?”
And the Mirror replies, voice low and deep, the faintest of smiles on its cold lips, “My queen, it is you that is the fairest of all.”
YOU ARE READING
Fairest
FantasyON HOLD. Queen Avalon was not always this vain, and yet vanity is all she knows. She is the fairest in the land. She aches to be told so. Selfishly, she runs her slender fingers down the frame that encases her precious mirror and commands it to tell...
