She spends most of her time looking in the mirror, wondering where she went wrong and how everything happened so quickly. The mirror is still and silent, and though she misses the other one she knows that mirrors can be dangerous things.
Her spells and potions keep her young. She knows this, but she still ignores the hideous curiosity that tempts her to take the spells off, just once, to see how she looks without them, to see the age contort her face, wrinkle the smooth lines of her cheeks and forehead, draw her graying hair farther up her head, thin the gorgeous ebony locks. She ignores the curiosity, but that doesn't mean it isn't still there. It eats away inside her. She can imagine herself old, knows she would age in a dignified, slow manner, but she knows she is still too unstable to see herself as anything but what she is used to.
When she isn't looking into the mirror, she is brushing her hair, something immensely relaxing, or reading. This is her sanctuary, a six-roomed cottage she stumbled into after running away, scarcely surviving, swearing through blood-flecked lips that she would never, ever go back. Over the years she traveled to close by towns and gathered things she needed.
She grows her own food and only goes to town if she needs something new. Mostly she goes for books. She reads many things, great classics like Hemingway and Dickens, Shelley and Stoker and London, but her love is reserved for poetry. She loves Yeats, Shakespeare, Keats and Byron. When she feels too happy, she reads The Two Trees, by Yeats, and is oddly and bitterly reminded of herself and her life. Gaze no more in the bitter glass. Yet she cannot stop, and she doesn't want to.
She knows everyone thinks she is dead, and that's probably the only reason she isn't. There are many people that would easily, guiltlessly kill her for what she did. She does not regret it. Her one regret is knowing she did it in such a crude, obvious manner. She realizes now that if she had been a bit subtler about it, things would have gone much differently, and she may still have her kingdom. She is not, however, very sure if she would still want her kingdom, knowing that somewhere out there a refuge such as this existed.
She is strictly vegetarian now. The thought of meat makes her sick. Whenever she smells it or sees it in the nearby town, she feels her heart tighten, and her hand begins to throb and clench as if clutching something, something bleeding all over, something still beating. If things had gone differently she would be living a very different life right now, but they didn't go differently and so she has an irrational phobia of all things pertaining to meat. Milk, cheese and butter are barely tolerated, and eggs looked down upon.
Whenever it snows she stays inside, curled up by the fireplace with the best of Yeats, huddling away from memories, but this is an altogether different phobia. Snow chills aren't just from the cold, just as aging isn't all just in the mind. She knows she will never be the most beautiful again, because the mirror sees under spells and judges all equally, but it doesn't matter anymore.
At night she sometimes listens to the thunder than inevitably means that lightning is splitting the sky, and remembers The Night, and the apple. She chose an apple because to her it was oddly symbolic. Eve's downfall was an apple as well. She was raised a Christian, but gave it up for atheism. No God could create a monster such as her. She will never forget The Night.
Her haven is furnished comfortably, magic spells weaving magnificent tapestries from simple blankets and comfortably cushioned armchairs from small, spindly wooden chairs. She stays away from crimson now. When she's too near it, the throbbing begins again, and slowly spreads to her throat and into her stomach, where it could last for days.
She has lost count of the number of times she's considered or attempted suicide. Most aren't worth mentioning. Creativity was never her strong suit.
She usually avoids people. People remind her of broken things. When she is in town, she avoids as much contact as possible without looking out of place. It wouldn't do to seem different. Strangers are regarded coldly, and outsiders even more so. Sometimes she catches a fleeting glimpse of laughing brown eyes or raven hair tossing in the sunlight, sees a flash of blood red lips smiling sweetly, chalk-white skin disappearing around a corner, and her heart seizes again, clutching painfully at her chest, and she has to sit down. She can't stand clear glass. In her dreams it rises, morphing into a coffin and eating her up. All her windows are tinted and covered with thick, flowing curtains.
Very short people, especially those with beards or wearing hats, make her run for a glass of water and a book.
Every rose has its thorns. Her lips are chapped, not quite rose-red, bleeding as if cut open with thorns. Thorns grow on brambles outside her house. She kills every rose she sees with as much magic she can muster. Foot-long thorns on the wall around Sleeping Beauty's castle. An odd resemblance between her and Sleeping Beauty's wicked fairy. Roses are intolerable. She lies in bed and feels them rip up through her cold heart.
She can't stand hearts, either. When they are in the illustrations in her books, she cuts them out with a knife and slices them neatly into little slivers, and burns them. She doesn't live with anyone, but if she did they would know not to ask what she was doing. She burns memories daily, sketching them into a small book with blank pages, then ripping them out and watching the fire eat through them.
She likes fire. It's warm, not like snow at all. She often forgets about her book and hairbrush and combs and is absorbed into the fire, can feel it licking up her legs and over her hips and stomach, up to cover her arms and shoulders and neck and finally flicker around her chin and light her up light a torch so she'll never have to be cold or walk through the snow again. The peace brought by fire is often interrupted by her poetry and bitter memories of hearts and pigs and gems held in tiny stubby hands, glass coffins lifted to reveal a monster, lips blood red because they're coated in blood.
She is only comforted by thoughts of someone out there with blood-red lips, chalk-white skin and shadow-dark hair, sitting alone in front of a talking mirror, constantly assuring her of her endless beauty, slowly but surely aging. Her magic will keep her beautiful, but the girl with blood-red lips has no magic, and she will age, and her prince will soon realize that she is not so beautiful anymore, and he will see that this is not the girl he married, not the kind little girl with birds for friends, the purest heart and flawless skin.
He'll see a woman, with bitter eyes because she knows that someday the mirror will tell her that somewhere there is someone more beautiful than she, and maybe she will explode as well. Maybe she will find the girl and maybe she will be cleaner about killing her. Maybe later her hands will throb as well. Or perhaps she will win. But he will see a woman with hard wrinkles and older eyes, the pureness of her soul tainted with flecks of black and blood and the birds have left her for someone more worthy.
And she will learn that nothing lasts forever. Even if you want it to.
She reads bits of The Two Trees aloud to herself, "Gaze no more in the bitter glass, the Demons, with their subtle guile, lift up before us when they pass, or only gaze a little while, for there a fatal image grows, that the stormy night receives, roots half-hidden under snows, broken boughs and blackened leaves. For all things turn to barrenness in the dim glass the Demons hold. The glass of outer weariness, made when God slept in times of old..."and smiles and thinks of snow-white skin, smoke and mirrors.
"There, through the broken branches, go the ravens of unresting thought; flying, crying, to and fro, cruel claw and hungry throat, or else they stand and sniff the wind, and shake their ragged wings; alas! Thy tender eyes grow all unkind, gaze no more in the bitter glass."
She sits alone, reading her poetry and burning up memories, laughing at the misfortunes of the one she hates more than anyone, and dreams of the whitest snows tainted with the reddest of bloods; crimson rose petals scattered over a cold, steel-grey sea, a little pile of ashes in an elaborate glass coffin; and she wakes up with her hands throbbing, imaginary blood flowing over her palms and fingers and down her wrists over long-sealed scars; down a long, smooth back lacerated with every shade of pain; spitting out blood until it coats her chin and drips onto her neck, the simple garnet pendant, the pain spreading out of a dull ache somewhere deep inside where all heart reside, but for once she doesn't care.