She was an extraordinary child. With a fascination with mirrors. She could manipulate them, you see. And she believed they were hiding something. That the mirror was hiding a secret, a horribly dark one. Just like her features. She had hair as black as pitch and eyes as dark as coal. She had lines on her face that were hard and cold." He puffed his cigar, sneaking a glance at the figure in front of him.
"She wasn't particularly ugly, though her suitors were chased away by her...sinister obsessions."
"Obsessions?" He cocked his head to the side, confused.
"Did I not tell you about the mirror?"
The figure nodded. "I wasn't aware it became an obsession."
The storyteller continued, "Yes, it became one, in my eyes. She sought out her mirror each day, and tinkered with it, trying to unlock its secrets."
"So it had secrets."
The man with the cigar answered,
"Yes, one big one, at least."
"She became a subject of mine, for my writings." The figure grinned.
"I heard you are very acclaimed."
He chuckled, "Depends on who you ask, to my audience, perhaps, my judges, not so much. There's one thing they need to learn, though, my poetry is not to heal others, but to heal myself." The figure stopped smiling. His right hand twitched.
"You need to be healed then?"
He nodded. "I shall, but that will come in time; first you need to prepare yourself. This is not a secret to be taken lightly. Also a warning, this story has not passed my lips to be spoken of in quite sometime, neither has it creeped through someone's ears in many a decade. Forgive me if I seem clouded.
"Ah, where to start, I guess the beginning is the best place as any." He cleared his throat. "She was young, sixteen years I suppose, that was when she entered the world behind the mirror. By the means, I do not know." After what seemed like years, his mind had finally cleared.
"It's quite a dreadful place, or so I've heard. Great holes in the earth and fires in the streets. Fires that burn the secrets of man. The holes bury the dreams. Life on earth is nearly extinct for it can no longer sustain life. But for those who still live, they have a doppelganger, a duplicate of oneself, a reflection. As all doppelgangers do, they wish to unravel the lives of their shadow self. They want their life. They are charming, oh so charming, they could persuade the clothes off your back with a whisper. They are also liars, and that's what makes their offer appealing."
"Their offer?" The figure was silent before they asked this.
The ancient man, not by any means old, but ancient in the ways and secrets of the world, spoke softly. "Yes, their offer, of a wonderful place in which you could stay. They told of the masterminded, wonderful architects that built awesome structures. Geniuses created projects full of wonder, and musicians wrote songs of the world."
He stared at the figure then. "Would you not take this offer?"
"Matters the price, or the catch as you Americans say."
The man smiled. "Ah, I knew I liked you. You asked what many do not. The price of this so called 'amazing' world, or catch, is that the world has to have balance. If you leave you have to be replaced."
"I'm guessing I know what this girl's choice was."
The man with the cigar in his hand sighed. "I suppose you do, but what would you have done, in exchange for what you thought was an amazing world for your boring one?"
"I wouldn't have fallen into the trap in the first place."
"That's what you say until you are." He puffed his cigar once more. The unknown person was silent. "The price, you could also say, was that the opposite side of the mirror, the one with the disastrous world, was one sided. You can enter the world, but you cannot leave."
"That means she could leave."
"I apologize if that's what my description proclaimed, but the rules for our side are similar, you may enter theirs but you cannot leave it."
"So she's gone."
"Yes, I'm afraid I'm the only one who remembers her."
"Where exactly did she go? Inside the mirror I mean."
The older person shook his head.
"I do not know, all I do, is that she is replaced, and she became someone else.8"
"Who did she become?"
"The reflection."
