Children of the Mirror
...27th Part: Krad...
Admittedly, I did enjoy Dark's silly shower of attention, but he seemed to be a little more into it than I was comfortable with – not that I couldn't have adapted, but...
I walked through the hall, feeling hot and flustered. Dark followed. He didn't seem too rejected, which made me feel a little less squeamish for it.
But there was something that made my stomach turn in knots. I knew we were getting close to what we were looking for: that mirror, if I was right. I looked around for my reflection in each room. Dark went around brushing dust off of things to help. He kept his mask of optimism on for me, but I could tell by looking into his eyes that he was feeling as nervous about all of this as I was.
In one of the last rooms we chose to examine, we found it.
"Krad!" Dark shouted suddenly. "This is it! Get over here!"
I rushed across the room to him to see what it was he was yelling about. My breath stopped short when I saw what he did: A large oval mirror leaning in a corner of the room. A thick blanket of dust stuck to it, but as Dark brushed it off, coughing and managing to cover his nose and mouth with his shirt, we could finally see the intricate detail that shaped the wide frame. The frame was made of many metals welded together, all rusted or aged into different, beautiful colors. The copper was turned green; there was gold, silver, brass, nickel, and who-knows-what-else mosaicked together and then bent and shaped into broad, wavy leaves and vines, among various other shapes. The pattern was completely without theme, but it was undoubtedly beautiful.
"Wow," Dark said. "Now I understand why I steal things."
"Do you?" I couldn't stop staring at it. I half expected to see the young police Commander staring right back, but all I saw was my own profound reflection – and Dark's. I wondered if he expected to see the other kid in front of him; the red-haired one.
"Do you get the same sense of... power... emanating from it as I do?" he wondered.
I nodded, watching him reach out to touch it. "Yes. It seems to be... living..."
"Exactly." Dark's fingers brushed along the grooves of the frame, and he shivered.
I grabbed his hand before I pressed my palm lightly against the glass. For a second, I thought I saw wings spreading from both our reflections' backs. Withdrawing my hand quickly from the mirror, I spun around to look. No wings; not even a single feather.
Dark looked at me with a puzzled expression.
"It's nothing," I muttered.
"I think we should take it back to the other room with us," he suggested. "It's getting late – we can take another look at it in the morning." Letting go of my hand, he picked up the artwork and darted toward the door with it. "Chase me!" he called over his shoulder.
"Dark!" I shouted disapprovingly, running after him. "Get back here!" The term déjà vu crossed my mind again as I followed him through the museum. Now I wanted the wings I'd seen in the mirror. I wanted magic. I wanted to catch him.
. . .
When we got back to the room we now inhabited, Dark propped the large mirror against a wall and shoved his hands into his pockets with an air of satisfaction. "Well," he said, "we found it. Here it is."
I nodded. "Now what?"
Dark shrugged. "Beats me. Let's sleep on it, shall we?" he suggested, smirking at me.
"Last night, Dark," I warned him. "Then we are figuring this out, once and for all. This task is becoming tiresome."
"I agree," he yawned, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. "So how do you want to do this, this time?" Dark asked, meaning how we'd position ourselves on furniture-for-one.
"Opposite of last night," I told him, catching his yawn and stretching.
He didn't argue. I crawled onto the chaise and he sat down with me, positioning himself between my legs and leaning back against my chest. I draped my arms over his shoulders and pressed my face against his violet hair. Dark patted my knee absently. "In the morning," he promised, "we'll figure everything out."
. . .
Dark seemed to always wake before me, for some reason. When I woke up, he was playing idly with my fingers. "Oh, you're awake," he said, leaning back to look up at me. "You ready to check that thing out? Figure out all its secrets?"
I looked over at the mirror and sighed. "Definitely."
"Alright, then let me up," he laughed, shoving gently at my leg, which was bent over the top of his.
"Oh."
We both removed ourselves from the chaise and walked straight over to the mirror to examine it again. It looked the same as it did last night. It was the same metal, the same glass.
But something else, I noticed, was different. I no longer felt that same dread or anxiety, but an overwhelming... normality. I couldn't remember a time anymore when my emotions weren't out-of-this-world, but now there was this odd lack of anything. Just calmness; the equivalent feeling of a shrug. It left my mind clearer, I think, than it had ever been.
Dark noticed it, too.
I remembered what I'd seen when I touched the glass of the mirror. "Dark, put your hand against it – the reflective part, not the frame."
"Okay..." As soon as his hand touched it, he was backing away again. "Whoa..."
"What did you see?" I wondered.
"Magic." He grinned. "It was glowing in your hands, and mine. Yours was gold-colored," he informed me. He looked as fascinated by this as he had by the simple mirror as we'd first come across it.
"Last night, I saw wings," I told him.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me closer, to stand next to him in front of the mirror. "At the same time," he whispered.
We both reached out, pressing our hands against the reflective surface. I saw the magic that Dark had seen. I saw feathers. And suddenly it was all obliterated by a sudden burst of white light, like an explosion, and Dark was pulling me back from it, tripping and falling to the ground, taking me with him.
We watched as the glaring white light swirled and turned black – although how light could be black, I couldn't comprehend. The blackness moved out over the frame and stuck to the edge of it like flames, while the white seeped out around the edge of the reflected image.
Dark and I looked at each other, then back at the mirror.
"What was that?" he breathed.
I shook my head, amazed. "I... I don't know..."
He wrapped his arms around me, and I returned the embrace. We simply sat there together, watching the light and shadow flicker about.
Dark reached out to it again.
"Don't –"
When his finger touched the glass, the image rippled like water. He pulled his hand away again and looked at me seriously. "We have to go through it," he said.
"What!?" He couldn't really be suggesting we walk through a mirror!
"Come on," he insisted, standing up and pulling me up with him.
"I'm not going through that!" I protested. "Are you completely crazy!?"
"Maybe I am," he said, "but this is how we're going to get answers – it has to be!"
"It does not have to be! This is ludicrous!" I almost shouted.
"You're scared," Dark guessed. It was more of a statement than a guess, though. He gave my hand a squeeze. "Don't be."
"I'm not –"
His look told me it was useless to argue. "I'll tell you a secret," he said, leaning in toward my ear. "...I'm scared, too. But I'm also curious; aren't you?"
"Well... yes..."
Dark kissed my face. "Then let's go."
A phrase entered my mind, then, and I couldn't stop myself from saying it. "Those of us who don't have our own forms..." I said. "Nothing we hope for... nothing we wish for... will ever be granted to us..."
"Are you ready for the end of the world?" Dark asked softly, smirking. I hoped he was only joking.
I nodded, gripping his hand with an intensity that probably could have broken it, but he didn't complain. He pressed his hand against our reflection and the glass rippled again – it couldn't have really been glass anymore. His arm disappeared up to his elbow, and then he took a deep breath and stepped one foot into it. He was going in it, pulling me with him.
"Dark – wait!"
I had to say –
"I –"