I’ve wanted to share this story for a long time.
So there I was, standing at the top of the stairs, gazing down at a girl standing just beyond the mirror pane, on the middle landing of the stairs, it looked like she was trying a door handle that wasn’t there.
This was one of those nights, where I had been sent to bed without dinner, for being my usual intolerable self. I had waited until the house had grown dark and quiet before beginning my descent to the kitchen.. I would never make it that far through.
I was frozen in place, unsure how to process what I was looking at, then she looked up at me. I bolted, flying back to my room, and diving under my covers. It was too late.
“What are you doing here?” I’ll never forget her first words. I arose to see not my room, or my bed, but a misty grove, I was hiding in the roots of a large tree. The girl from the mirror was kneeling over me, with a look of concern.
“I-I was thirsty” I replied.
The girl in the mirror looked me head to toe and stated, “are you sure? You don’t seem so thirsty.”
“Yes, my mouth and throat are very dry.”
“Oh!” She examined “you let your mouth fill up with spit, and swallow that!”
I tried, and found this worked. I thanked her.
“So, what are you doing here?” She asked again.
I looked down “I was scared..”
“Scared?!” She exclaimed, “how could you be scared?!”
I looked at her with confusion.
She relaxed, “I guess you don’t remember who you are, tell you what, lay here awhile, and I’ll tell you of your story. It all begun when you rose from this very spot, for when you arose, you arose conquering..”
The story she told me began with me being sent into exile from a major kingdom, cast out due to fear of a prophecy that I was to take part in. I was left abandoned on a sacrificial table, after some sort of intervention during the procedure. In the ground nearby lay a golden sword with my name carved into it, forged especially to kill me. So I descended into the wild, with no place to call home.
I wandered all day, numb to what was going on, getting more and more lost every step I took, until I finally collapsed, my fate becoming apparent: I was going to expire in those woods. But in the silence of woods, finally unbroken by my footfalls, I began to hear a nearby stream splashing, and, someone giggling?
I snuck to the nearby ridge overlooking the stream, and there she was, the girl in the mirror, she was bathing and playing in the stream. I watched her for a moment, appreciating her carefree nature in the dire woods, when suddenly, she turned her gaze up towards me. I panicked, and ran away, diving beneath some roots of a giant tree, it was too late..
“What are you doing here?” She asked, already over me.
“I-I was thirsty…” I replied.
This would be the codex for the entirety of the story, how it paralleled my own life here. I would realize that more and more as time moved on.
The story stretched across kingdoms and dimensions, showcasing my rise to power and the utilization of and ancient blood technology that connects us all to the rhythm of the universe.
I’ll continue this if it gains any traction..
by the way, it turned out that there used to be a secondary staircase that led from that middle landing to the back door, the previous owners had it walled off, and put a bathroom by the back door instead. The thing was, their daughter went missing while the renovations were underway, and she used to love playing on that secondary staircase!