Disclaimer: Snow White is not mine. Neither is the prince.

Vanity

Snow is, predictably, staring hatefully at her reflection in her dead stepmother's silver-lined mirror. As of late, Snow has taken to this activity with a fervor, it is an obsession of hers that has failed to wane and die. So the prince worries a little. Worries a lot more when Snow starts to whisper in that desperate, almost hysterical tone of hers, "Mirror, mirror…". She never finishes her question, perhaps there is fear of what the answer may be.

Sometimes when the prince succumbs momentarily to boredom, when princely duties are not calling, disquieting murmurs will plague his ears. Suppose Snow would have been happier in her unnatural sleep, youth forever on her beautiful brow, never knowing an older age that her vanity would not allow her to accept. Sometimes the prince sees Snow looking in the old enchanted mirror and he can almost taste her regret of the day twenty years before when he kissed her cold dead lips still sanguine from a witchy spell. Sometimes the prince regrets it too, but mostly he just wants to slam his fist into that hard, shining surface to hear the dying CRACK, CRACK of the mirror losing its power. But then the prince remembers that a broken mirror would only result in more Snows glaring in her aging sorrow from the multiple uneven facets of reflecting solid.

So the prince does naught but watch as Snow mourns her fading youth and with that her fading beauty, he watches her watch the lines in her face grow deeper, her jaw start to droop, her eyes start to lose their deceptively immortal sparkle. He will watch her wither until the day she finds eternal rest.

"Snow," he says.

She says, "Mirror, mirror on the wall…"

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