Blood on my hands. Scarred, twisted, bleeding and broken, but I don't feel anything anymore.
I can pick up another piece, another perfect, sparkling piece. The edges are stained with crimson blood, fresh blood, but I can't feel anything anymore.
I look in. I look in, and I see myself.
I'm beautiful, and I can feel it.
She sits on the floor, in the middle of a forest of crumbling stone and moss and vines and overgrowth. She's surrounded by the disintegration of what was once beautiful, by time ravaged crumbling, by the work of nature. But she doesn't see it. She doesn't see anything at all, anything except the broken shards of glass lying in front of her.
One by one, she picks them up. The haggard old crone picks each of her precious mirrors up one by one, looks into them, one by one, and she giggles like a young girl. Slowly, she turns a piece from side to side, looking at it from one angle and another. It sparkles, reflects previously invisible rays of light. The sharp edges, pointed and dangerous, cut into her rough hands, but they are already bloodstained and she feels nothing.
The floor around her is stained with blood, rust-red dye that will never come off, and mirror-powder that has accumulated over years and years and years. It is a strange sight – the old, hunchbacked, liver-spotted, wrinkled woman crouching on a dilapidated stone floor, her world nothing but a reflection. She murmurs to herself, sometimes, oh yes, my pretty, and but of course, good sir, memories of a time long gone, and no one knows whether she is speaking to the mirror or to herself or to no one whosoever.
She was beautiful once, oh yes, the life of the party and queen of the court. Men sought her, women envied her, she was the most beautiful woman in ten kingdoms, and every mirror told her that.
You're beautiful, they would sing to her, she remembered, remembers. The most beautiful.
But then one day they stopped singing to her.
Why. Why, why, why. She'd stood in front of a mirror, the most beautiful woman in ten kingdoms, life of the party, queen of the court, love of men and envy of women, and the mirror did not sing, never sang again.
She'd thought she was mistaken, at first, and stood there for a long, long time, waiting to hear the familiar song. The most beautiful. But she'd waited, and waited, and it'd never come. At first she thought the mirror had simply stopped singing, then she realized she had to learn to listen to the silence. The silence told her, you're not the most beautiful anymore. And that was when she wasn't. Not anymore. Never again.
Almost.
It was soft, faint, but definitely there. Beautiful, beautiful, the most beautiful. Always have been, always will be. Ten kingdoms, the most beautiful. And she loved that mirror, the mirror that hung in her tower room, the precious only thing that told her she was beautiful no matter what. And every day the once-beautiful queen stood before her mirror, letting it sing her its song. And she stood before it more and more and more, until the world knew her no more.
She'd stood there, before the mirror, since then till where she was now. When the once-queen looks into her shards, she sees shadows of what she once was. In the grimy, dust covered surface of the glass, she can see a young girl, the most beautiful woman in ten kingdoms. In one shard, she can see a ball, the hordes of princes waiting for her smile, their chance to dance with her. When she picks up another and peers in, she can see rows and rows of gowns, in all colours of the rainbow, in satin and velvet and silk, all for her. She picks up shard after broken shard, and immerses herself in the myriad of changing images – cosmetics, hairbrushes, love notes, beauty.
And she can hear the mirror's song again.
Beautiful, beautiful, the most beautiful.
I am.
My mirrors are.
It doesn't matter what they say, because I feel, I know, I believe that I am.
The most beautiful.