I made excuses for
And I always knew it, that I should have headed for the door

But the me was you, and your
pain was mine, and the
same situation playing over in my mind

Mary J Blige, Mirror

Mirror, Mirror

He is young, so young that walking is an accomplishment to him and he has been standing in this relic of a room for several hours now. He doesn't know just how he got to this place, but the dusty walls and decaying remnants of wood furniture make him feel like he belongs, somehow..

He feels old, but the body he wears is of a child only just being born into the world..

There is a wide mirror before him, one bigger than any door he can ever remember seeing, and he thinks that maybe if he were tall enough, he might walk right through it, walk into another world altogether.

The frame of the mirror - which might have once been shining metal as fresh as a genin's hitai-ate - has now aged to a dusty sort of bronze that looks the sun torn into the night sky, the way those specks of black cling about it.

This gold and black border hangs all the way down to his chin (even standing as tall as he is able), and all he can see through it are a pair of dark dark eyes so blue just so deep that he has to wonder just what world he is staring into.

He is wondering who they belong to..

Maybe there is another world on the other side of that dusty glass pane? Those blue blue eyes staring back at him look so sad that he wonders just why they are hurt. The bottom edge of the mirror rubs across his nose, and he presses against what is left, marveling at the cold feeling of metal.

The rims of those eyes .. those eyes are just so unfamiliar and cold that he does not recognize them at all, and it is all he can do to not cry because he can not reach out and hug those dark echoes of blue.

He lifts his goggles off the side-table. They are his favorite pair, with a leather strap that stretches just right over his head. He is rubbing the top of the frames, adjusting them.

Smile, the whisper came and Naruto looked up. Those eyes were staring back at him ..

Naruto smiled at the mirror.

And the mirror smiled back.

It is when dreaming where Naruto first realizes that he is not the only one in his mind.

He is surrounded by what feels like shadows, but they are moving and misty like black smoke, only he is blind because he can see nothing but these wisps of darkness dancing with a lightness about them as if they have danced forever. As if they are but .. reminders of the beginning of the world and will never end.

Naruto thinks he hears a voice, and he calls out to it, asking for a name.

Something echoes around his head and he feels dizzy. There are so many words moving in the mist that he can't remember them all. (The Yondaime was a great man..) And suddenly he is counting .. (There were nine of them..) His chest is filled with a sense of pride, and Naruto is confused.

The wisps move in a ghostly sort of embrace around him, as if trying to touch him. His lifts his arms up and they circle underneath, so distantly brushing across him that it's as if he has been surrounded by a flock of faint butterflies..

But Naruto asks again, "Who are you?"

With the light of the morning sun sliding over his back, he stares out across his room and tries to remember just which is more real - what he sees with his own eyes, or what he knows is lying inside his mind..

"It's so soft .." Naruto picks up the tiny twitching animal and cradles it close to his chest, staring down with wide eyes at what was so small to him. It, scared, tries to run.

He holds it tight, so close, until his hands begin to hurt..

Iruka cries out from behind him, calling.., and Naruto runs back to him as a reply.

"I found something strange! Do you know what it is?," thrusting open palms upward, a small tangled mess of fur and blood between them.

His teacher, .. closed his eyes, tired brown eyes, and turned away.

"We should keep it." Inside, Naruto agrees with the voice.

Sometimes when Naruto is staring straight up into the brilliantly hot rays of the sun, he thinks he can see a face (which is impossible because nothing can live inside that intense of a heat).

There is gold everywhere he looks, and sometimes the gold looks like the delicate strands of cloth, weaving fiber as intricate as hair. The blue blue of the sky stretches around him and from somewhere that Naruto won't acknowledge, he hears a voice.

He shouldn't envision the Yondaime's face in the sun .. but he does so anyways.

This is where Sandaime held his last battle, and Naruto thinks that it must have played out like a theater; performers draped by wispy cloths holding court in some grand parting scene with the curtains raised and royals sitting dainty in the stands clapping politely.

There are two empty coffins off to his side and the Shinobi are filling them quietly, lifting what remains of those two great legends as if they are a holy shroud, tattered edge by tattered edge, back into the dark boxes that contained them. The first and the second ..

(Sandaime's cold form is surrounded by such a crowd that he can catch no glimpse. They cling to each other, shoulder to shoulder, with faces glued so against what coats the space by their feet - as if by merely watching they can bring him back.)

But he is staring down into the one unearthed tomb which was never emptied of the body that rested with it, at a face so beautiful and young that he thinks for a minute that he is looking straight into the face of a immortal. The body can not respond, but still Naruto is afraid of waking him.

The lashes laying across his softly tanned cheek are beauty incarnate - as glorious as the sunrise - and Naruto's hand longs to stray off his solid grip of the open casket to touch this image.

He is afraid that this vision, this body before him isn't real ..

But the body has no soul resting within, it is just beautiful gold, and Naruto remembers that the foreign soul he's come to know so well is caked over his own and he blushes faintly.

He wants to kiss those lips so badly.

:

Many believed that breaking a mirror also broke the soul of the one who broke it. The soul, so angered at being hurt, exacted seven years of bad luck in payment for such carelessness.

This association of mirrors with death is common in folklore, and stems from the belief that the soul could become trapped in the mirror, causing death. For this reason, young children were often not allowed to look in a mirror until they were at least a year old. Mirrors were covered during sleep or illness so that the soul, in its wanderings, would not become trapped and unable to return to the body.

The peoples of northern India considered it dangerous to look into a mirror that belonged to someone else. It was especially so to look into the mirrors of a house you were visiting: when you left, you would leave part of your soul behind trapped in the mirrors.

"The Mirror", by Myrriah Lavin.

Note: I wanted to write this for so long now .. NoNoWriter, here's your present! Happy (be-lated) birthday.