Somebody killed the funny. I figure thirteen is a good age to introduce your child to emotional doppelgangers of yourself, right?
Right.
Story: Mirror
By: Shawn "The Unfunny Joke" Wheeler
Disclaimer: All characters are property of their rightful owners.
Summary: And you thought your mom was hard to shop for.
It had been an interesting day, when she had met them. The journey alone was enough adventure to last her until her fourteenth birthday.
She had screamed. It was caused more from surprise than from any actual fear; mostly at any rate. Either way, she had blamed her parents; vortexes of doom tend to be the kind of thing that people warn their children about.
She had always assumed the mirror to be special, maybe even magic in some form. But that, that was something altogether different from anything she had ever expected.
"You okay Rebecca?" She remembered turning to look at her father's green face. "That first step never gets any easier."
"No kidding"
First step, ha. They had both fallen at least fifteen feet through the air and onto solid rock. It was remarkable that neither of them had broken any bones. And then, there they were, smack dab in the middle of… somewhere. It looked almost as if Rod Serling would suddenly show up.
The first thing she asked was where they were. It was a good question, or at least she thought it was. If they were going to be lost, she would at least have liked to know as much.
Her second question, asked without waiting for the first's answer was where her mother had gone.
Her answer was laughter, loud fits of laughter as if she had said the funniest thing imaginable. She hadn't really expected that. Obviously, she had thought, her father had gone insane.
More so.
"Becca," His laughter died down to a chuckle. "Those questions are so loaded, they'll have a hangover for a week."
She just looked at him in response, wearing that small hint of a frown that her mother had shown her quite some years before. It almost always got her father to cut to the chase.
But not that day. He had looked at her and shook his head, stating that he was not going to ruin the surprise. He had also stated that her mother was not overly fond of coming here with other people, but would still show up sooner or later, probably to take them home.
Needless to say, this had not answered a single question in the young girl's mind. The only bit of comfort that she had was that her father seemed to know what he was doing, apparently having been to the place before. This did little to ease her mind, as the only other bit of information she could squeeze out of her father was that 'they' were bugging her mother to finally meet her and that both of her parents thought that she was now mature enough to understand it.
This only served to further confuse her.
And then she met 'them'.
It had started with a hug rivalling one from her Aunt Kori. This was immediately followed by a chorus of replies ranging from sullen apologies to laughter. Each and every voice seemed altogether familiar, and at the same time completely alien to her. It wasn't until she could glimpse past her hugger's shoulders that she could truly see what was going on.
It was remarkable really, and it took more than a few seconds for exactly what she was seeing to truly register inside her mind. In front of her had stood easily a half dozen clones of her mother, each with a different colour cloak wrapped around their body, each looking at her, some with tears in their eyes.
To her credit, Rebecca did not faint as she had later learned her father did on his first time through the looking glass. Instead she had calmly inspected each of the clones before whispering to her father for either answers or assistance in running away.
Thankfully, what she had gotten was answers. Those people were her mother, each a fragment of her personality as a whole. In fact, the place they had travelled to was a physical representation of her mother's mind. So the mirror had been magic after all, which was easy enough to believe.
She found these many sides of her mother very interesting, as it was a very rare thing to see pure emotion in anyone, let alone the Raven.
The happy one, the copy of her mother that had hugged her with such force, never left her or her father's side. Constantly cracking jokes and enjoying the company. Her mother was far from being unhappy in her day to day life, but it was still a wonderful and contagious thing to witness.
Countering this copy was a peculiar and insecure Raven in grey, who spent much time apologising to either her daughter or husband for various inconsequential wrongs done to them throughout the years.
A mother in green often steered the conversation back to Rebecca and her powers, wondering when she was going to start learning how to fight using them.
A mother clad in yellow, wearing a pair of glasses continually asked about school and possible majors to take in university.
A mother wearing orange, who had secretly pulled her to the side informing her that she never had to clean her room again.
A mother in a cloak as red as blood; staring and waiting, never to say a single word for the entirety of the time spent there.
The day was spent conversing, or simply being around each of them. Getting to know just exactly what made her mother tick. It was a fun experience, and it wasn't until her actual mother came to return them to the physical realm that Rebecca had discover just how long she and her father had been gone.
But she would return. Not too often, as she did not want to over tax her mother's mind, but from time to time she would visit. If nothing else, it was the perfect way for her mother and herself to bond.