A/N - Wrote this 2 years ago. Some friends were participating in NaNoWriMo and I got swept up in the writing spirit.

Disclaimer - I do not own the fairy tale Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs nor the prompt list Introduction came from.


1. Introduction

Once upon a time, in a far off distant land, there was a magical mirror. The mirror was the only one of its kind. It knew everything there was to know in the world. Through the powers built into it eons ago, the mirror could see everything, hear everything, and feel everything.

It knew of the princess who slept in her rose-covered tower for 100 years. It knew of the sacrifice of the mermaid from under the sea. The castle where the furniture could talk. The boy who would never grow up. The land where carpets could fly and lamps could grant wishes. It knew of the adventures of the tin soldier with one leg. The girl who went down a rabbit hole and met a multitude of different beings. The secret of where the 12 princesses in a far off land went at night and returned with holes in their slippers. The magical mirror knew all of this and more.

However, even though so much knowledge is kept inside this magical mirror, it is very rarely that it is called upon as the people who know of this mirror are few and far between. So far between, that the mirror always happily answered anything that was asked.

It was during one of these bouts of usefulness, that the magic mirror arrived at the castle of a widower king. It arrived in the luggage of a woman who was to become the step-mother of the king's only daughter. Every day, the queen asked the mirror;

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,

Who's the fairest of them all?"

And every day, the mirror truthfully answered;

"Thou, O Queen, art the fairest of them all."

Yet one day, when the queen's step-daughter was in her 16th year, the mirror found that it had a different answer than usual. As it is with many magical items, the sense of saying the right thing at the right time was not present. The magic mirror truthfully told the queen;

"You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow White is far fairer than you."

When the queen heard the answer, she went into a fit of rage and shattered the magical mirror. Even in pieces, the magical mirror still knew everything that happened. It listened as the step-daughter pleaded for her life, watched as the queen tried to kill the king's daughter, and felt the agony of the queen when forced to wear a pair of iron-hot shoes.

As the pieces of the mirror scattered around the land, it continued to watch, listen, feel and experience the joys and sufferings of everyone and everything around the world. Some tales are repeated over the centuries and eventually turn into legends. Others are remembered by a mere handful of humans, while many more only exist inside the silver panes of the mirror.

As the sands of time keep running, eventually the shards of the mirror will be ground to dust, and all hope that someone could learn these long forgotten memories will gradually be lost. Then, the guide to the land of fairy tales would forever be lost.


A/N - Constructive criticism is welcome.