[P] like constellations

[Nicnevin]

IN A STORY, 
a girl is a tree / is a bird / is a wilderness

I am beginning to think that I might be lost.

These passages all look the same, or else unrecognizable, and I can no longer hear the lash of the sea against the coast. I think that I am standing in an impact wound; the shards of mirror-like substance stretch up and arch over my head like a ribcage, each jagged and precarious edge like a cut-out against the darkening blue of the sky. They reflect the image of branches, a canopy of leaves that is nearly familiar – I can almost place where it is in the Gold, or where it was, lifetimes ago. They are like fire above my head, a pattern of reds and yellows and oranges of an impossible, burning richness; I only spent half of the autumn season in this land of “Novus,” but I am sure that none of the trees could display such beautiful, vibrant colors. I used to think that they were normal, but now-

I suppose they were more special than I thought. I’ve felt that way about a lot of things, lately, and with each life and death. I don’t really miss most of them, though. Not yet.

(I think that I probably will; but it isn’t as though I’ve left forever. I’ve only left long enough to find the heir – and surely I will miss this place, too, once I return. What I have come to realize, after life after life after life, is that life is a slow-growing composition of things that you’ll come to miss, whether you know it at the time or not.)

I keep walking. There are fantastical images scrawled on the mirror-like walls of shard; the further I am from them, the less that they seem to reflect anything I know, and the more that they seem to reflect things that I can barely put words to. Great balls of fire and ice against a void of black. A deer with wings in the place of eyes, bounding alongside me at a distance, each movement like my reflection. A fish upside-down in the water, with a mouth full of wolf’s teeth. I don’t know much, in this labyrinthian expanse of unfamiliar images, but what I do know is that it is growing colder, and darker, and more bizarre with each passing moment. I wonder what this place will be like when night falls. (I wonder if I really want to know.)

During the day, it was easy to distinguish the shards from reality. When night falls, it becomes much, much harder. I am forced to learn this by experience – when the sky grows black and starless, I can no longer tell if the lights I see in the distance are some strange reflections or people with lanterns or will'o'wisps or the gleaming eyes of large, unseen monsters, or if the trees I see are real or only the image of trees, or if the splash of blood on the ground only a few feet away from me is on the mirror or beneath its surface. Worst of all, the images begin to seem depthless, less like reflections than doorways, and, so, when I reach the reflection of a bridge, I keep walking, but it’s not a bridge at all, and the reflection was-

Below. I’m falling, suddenly, down into a narrow abyss, and I only barely catch myself, wings snapping out to support me at the last moment. I don’t think that I would have stayed down there, but, beneath my hooves, I find myself looking at my first face – and directly across from me, staring out from another mirror and lit low by lights I recognize as fireflies and the lanterns that they hung in the trees during New Year’s festivals, I see someone that I can no longer put a name to.

It’s cold, and dark, and I don’t know where else to go, so, after a moment of hesitation, the familiar sight of him sends me trotting up to the mirror, hooves clicking against the flawless surface of the mirror below my hooves. (It is clear and dark, like the surface of a lake at night; I feel like I could fall through it.) He watches me approach, and I can’t help but find it strange that I can’t place his expression. “You know,” I say, as I step close enough to lean forward and press my forehead to the image’s shoulder, “it’s really frustrating that I can’t remember your name.” It feels cold and hard and smooth like stone, not warm like skin – and I know that I should have expected it.

He turns his head; looks me over. The golden laurels in his hair catch like bits of flame in the lantern-light. “Should I stay here until the morning, you think?” I certainly think that he is less likely to do anything to me than most of the other reflections I’ve seen, and I can’t tell where the line lies between image and reality for any of them. Predictably, he doesn’t say a word. I’ve never heard any of them speak, though I feel like they should be able to. I roll my eyes, which is probably unreasonable, and take a step back. “You were much better at giving advice the last time we met…”

The only response I am given is the howl of the wind through the gorge. I shiver, and press my wings a bit tighter to my sides.
 

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@Andromeda || I'm glad we have a thread again <3 || emily skaja, "rules for a body coming out of the water"
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