Mirror, Mirror

2.20 Apology Suit

I dug up some old journals from when I was a child, and I cried. I barely remember being the girl who wrote those journal entries, but that was me. I would write about the dreams I had. I had such a beautiful imagination. I don't even remember the last time I've had a dream. Was I 13? 14? Definitely by 15 they'd stopped.

My journals stop around age 10. They get sparser. I feel so devastated. All those years, gone.

And what will people remember about me, except for the girl with blonde hair and a perfect smile singing them a song about a girlhood I never got to experience?

Whoever I really was will be lost when I die.

❖

Starla was agitated. So, after dinner, she quietly slipped away to the sewing room. She had a lot of thinking to do, and the best way she felt she could think was when she had fabric in one hand and a needle in the other. She wasn't going to let her bruised shoulders stop her either.

It had finally hit her that Rayvin was leaving next week for the great Winter Mission. Whatever had happened between them, whatever had happened to their friendship, he would leave, and she would just have to be OK with it.

Could she be OK with leaving things the way they were now?

Her eyes fell on the white corner of a project she'd abandoned kicked to the corner of the room after her fight with Rayvin. In a moment, she made her decision.

The rest of that night up until the wee hours of the morning, she worked in a frenzy. She nearly had Rayvin's measurements memorized at this point after making so many clothes for him. This was her most ambitious project yet though.

❖

Starla woke up with a start to a quiet knock on her door. Was it morning already? It was hard to tell with the dark moody clouds outside and how late the sun rose now. Blearily, she got out of bed, biting down curses as her shoulders stung. She threw on a robe and made her way to the door.

There was Rayvin, standing awkwardly outside the door. He was halfway turned away from her, as if he had been debating leaving right before she opened the door. He was already in his training gear, with his training bag slung over his shoulder. OK, she had definitely overslept then. Her anxiety spiked as she tried to calculate just how late she was and how much trouble she'd be in. The King was already pretty mad at her.

"Good morning," she said, confused. He hadn't knocked on her door for nearly a month, since their big fight. Did that mean he wasn't mad at her anymore, even though he'd ignored her at dinner last night? Or was it just because she had overslept? She normally wasn't late like this.

"Good morning," Rayvin said. The look on his face was almost as surprised as Starla felt. He kept his eyes trained on her face. "You missed morning classes, and the teachers were going to send someone to check on you, but then I told them I'd go check on you myself. Do you um. Do you need time to get changed, or...?"

"I missed morning classes?" Starla said weakly. Oops. Her head was pounding.

"Are you OK? I can go tell the teachers you're still recovering from yesterday," Rayvin said, glancing at her shoulders where she'd been scratched. He turned to leave.

"Wait!" Starla said, reaching for him. She didn't want to wait any longer to show him what she'd made him. "I'm fine but— I need to show you something first."

"If it's quick," Rayvin said, turning back toward her and casting a quick look over his shoulder. "The teachers are impatient." She held the door open for him, and he stepped cautiously into her room, for the first time in weeks. His eyes flickered to the walls, but he didn't make any comments on the lack of mirrors. He would've already heard by now the story of the mad false princess pushing her mirror out of the window. He could probably piece together the rest of what happened. By now, Starla had already cleaned up most of the glass shards. The rest were swept under her bed.