I’ve lost Ishak.

In this strange place, it was altogether too easy – the landscape is disorienting, jagged, wholly unnatural. I have not been to the island before, and I did not come because I particularly wanted to. No, I didn’t want to come at all; but I’d heard of the nature of the island, and I’d come here primarily in search of medical knowledge, to find new herbs and plants and potential remedies. I thought that it was worth the potential danger. Ishak did not agree, but he followed me regardless. I told him that it is likely no more deadly than the Mors, and he looked like he wanted to argue with me, but, in the end, he didn’t. Unfortunately, he seems to have been right.

I’ve lost Ishak, and I don’t even know where to begin looking for him.

Everywhere I look, there are jagged, reflective crystals, like shards of glass; they don’t shatter beneath my hooves, and I am grateful for it, but the sound that they make is unnerving, like they might, they just might, at any moment. I am careful to avoid each knife-edge shard – I am sure that the cut would be nasty – but it is difficult to see where they are. No matter where I look, I see a kaleidoscope of my own image, refracted out across the landscape, like the world has become some troubled mirror. I struggle to differentiate it from the sky, though I am sure that I shouldn’t.

My own face is stretched, or my body is made too short – with a too-long neck. There is another me, vaguely recognizable as a child, running in the opposite direction from the way that I am walking. I stare at my face reflected in the mirror across from me, and the Ruth-in-the-mirror smiles in a way that I envy – it is a smile that goes all the way through and reaches her eyes, but it is sick, and it is twisted, and her teeth are as sharp as the mirror shards. There is another me that I only catch a fleeting glance of as I turn a corner, and, when I look back at her, she is changed, wholly normal; but, for a brief second, I thought that I saw her with scales that were dark bronze and copper, like Pilate. I can barely imagine what it would mean to be so special.

There are other Ruths. Ruths with flowers braided into her mane, Ruths with sweet eyes that are so wholly unlike mine. I can barely stand to look at all of them, but there is nowhere else to look-

Until my eyes finally find a reprieve. There is someone else in this desolate, glimmering landscape. Someone else. I almost mistake them for a part of the landscape, at first, with their delicate and pale and fragile physique – but those gold scales are cutting, those gold horns a sharp aberration.  (They look more godlike than any of my siblings; Pilate, I am sure, would be green with envy, but he does have his snakes.) My stare lingers on the orb between their horns, or is it there? In the sea of reflections, I can barely determine which figure of the stranger is real.

I keep my distance. Ishak is gone. I am not sure that I am wary by nature – but he urges caution, always caution, and I know (though I hate to admit it) that he has good reason for it. Why, I hear the stranger say, and I tilt my head, slowly, not sure who they are talking to. Surely, they haven’t noticed me already.

There is a certain – intellectual – curiosity (and desire for directions) that presses me a few, careful centimetres forward and opens my mouth. “Why?” I repeat, my gaze on the figure.

Our reflections cast out, cut and angled and sharp enough to cut; they mingle.

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@Orias || <3 || katherine maurer, "thylacine"