Mirror, Mirror [Flashback]

[Kit Rowan]

“It’s just a tradition Kit, and not a smart one. That place is no place for anybody.” And Kit had turned her head to the side and asked, “have you ever gone inside?” Her uncle shook his head then. “And I’m glad for it. Those mirrors have nothing worth seeing on the other side.” He put his hands on her shoulder and knelt to her eye level. “Do you understand?” "Yes," she said, and though she did not lie her answer did not mean what her uncle had hoped for. 509 AV, Season of Fall, Day 34 It was a day of no particular importance. She was thirteen, and if she was not soon to be a woman grown she would need to take on all the burdens of it. Most of her cousins had been married away to distant husbands, while she remained at home, unmolested. Her first bleeding came and went without incident, and though Kit had always feared that in spite of all he said her uncle would push her to marry some stranger he did not. She did not fool herself into thinking it affection. The ghost of her mother’s—his sister’s—memory hung about him like a cloud. Nevertheless she was beginning to understand that she was not welcome there. The thought did not bring tears or mourning. It was like watching a sick man slowly die. All the tears had been shed in advance, all the final prayers uttered, last words shared. Though Kit was young, she had waded through those currents all her life, and now that she had neared the end of this part of it she felt cold and empty. Already her clothes were neatly packed, and had been for nearly a season. All her little tools and necessities put away. But she could not bring herself to leave until they told her ‘go.’ Like she did most nights, Kit tip-toed down a long stairwell and wandered into the streets, no clear destination in mind. She shoved her hands in her pocket and, though she tried not to be conspicuous, stayed in the dark places.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit’s heart was an empty thing. She let a hand wander until it found her heartbeat, steady, rhythmic, real. It was comforting. I’m alive, she thought, but she did not smile. She walked for what seemed a long time before she realized that she was alone on the street. There was only one road away, and though there were buildings around there were no doors turned toward the street, except one. Kit it and bit down her lip, and though no one was there to see she tried to hide her shivers. The House of Broken Mirrors was not a particularly intimidating place but Kit understood something about it that others did not. She could understand how they might make the mistake. It was plain; the color of dry earth, and the only warning was a sign above the door written in faded white. Do Not Enter People from other cities heard stories about it, and they assumed that they knew it, but they did not. Kit did. Once she had seen a boy stagger out, racking at his eyes and sobbing, crying out in a language she couldn't understand in a voice that she still knew meant help me. And cried and scratched as they held him down and sent for help, useless and blind. The House of Broken Mirrors was that boy, and it was his mother and father who had gone in with him and never came back. And as she turned away, it was her uncle, awe in his voice, saying "and when your mother came out again, she was laughing." And it suddenly seemed to Kit that nothing would be worse than wandering the city for dozenth time, wondering when she would need to strike out on her own. She walked slowly back and put her hand on the doorknob, swallowed hard. Kit mustered her courage, and before she could convince herself to leave she opened the door, stepped into darkness. It slammed with a noise like thunder, and Kit was alone with her reflections.

[Kit Rowan]

It was, they told her, the Valterrian that brought them together. "Your mother invited your father to a play her troupe was hosting. It was about the tragedy of Kova." There was a tragedy of Galifer as well, the main difference being who they wanted to make sympathetic. "Your father saw her and fell in love right then and there." Kit had not known her father for long, but he had shared stories. He said that she called him 'my Ivak,' and he 'my Kova.' That was about all she saw, however. Her own reflection, perfect and unaltered. She tried to smile at them, but the one she saw looking back was sick with worry. Kit considered turning back; it wasn't too late. She had already stepped inside, too, and the door was right behind her. Nobody would blame her, Kit was certain . . . and it wasn't like she had to tell anyone. No one would know. But no, that was not true. The only person who mattered would. Kit had brought no light with her, no candles, no lantern. Stupid in retrospect, but the Mirrors were working with her, alive with their own light. She could not see the ceiling and she could not see her feet, but it was a small comfort to be surrounded by light, no matter how pale. Kit watched her reflection, waiting for the monsters to slip outside, for terrible visions and nightmares. She never even tried to keep track of the twists and turns, the rights and lefts. This was Alvadas, and it played by its own rules. That went double for the House of Broken Mirrors. She saw the child's bloodied face in her mind's eye, wondered what might have caused the boy to tear at his own body so. Kit saw great hulking things in the shadow of her thoughts, wet slithering creatures that babbled in tongues. But her eyes did not. Kit wandered through the mirrors, stopping every dozen steps to be sure the echoes of her footfalls were not hiding the pursuit of some doppelganger. Her wariness was never rewarded, and at first she was grateful. Something occurred to her. If there's something out there, it knows when I stop. I'll never know if anything is following me, but actually following would be easy. All those echoes . . . Were they all hers? Kit was certain they were not, too many, and all it would need to do was move a little faster than her, and bit by bit it would get closer and closer until— Stop it, she thought, you're being ridiculous. But once she thought it, she did not move for a long time, peered into the darkness behind her—no, it's the other way—in front—No! The other! She saw nothing but herself; a scared little girl breathing far too fast. Kit clutched a hand over her heart, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She opened them fast, expecting some terrible apparition to be standing there in front of her, terrible mouth open wide, but she just saw that same girl, a fierce light in her eyes, one of her throwing daggers drawn. It didn't look right on her. She looked small, weak, but her face was twisted in fear that was almost anger. Who are you fighting? She asked the girl. Yourself? It was too funny. She laughed, ragged but real, slipped the knife into its hiding place and kept walking.

[Kit Rowan]

There was a sudden chill in the air, and it only got colder. Her hair stood on end, breath came out clouded, all in the space of seconds. Kit wrapped her arms around herself, shivering now from the cold, trying to massage the warmth back into her arms. Then the mirrors started changing. Little pointless images; her sitting on the lip of a roof, her bare feet swinging, starring at a frozen sunrise; haggling with a fishmonger in the street; perched on a high place, eyes determined, staying balanced on a metal pole thinner than her feet. Another; a sign she had never seen pointing downward, labeled ‘Ukalas.’ As she walked further in, they started to change, from suspended moments to brief bits of movement and action. The mirrors flickered, switched from image to image, like a flipbook. She leapt from roof to roof; she laughed, sat in her room and cried, stared out the window at a motionless street. She was so fascinated she forgot to be afraid. It was like her whole life was laid out here for her. Kit lingered a while and watched the scenes. They did not change no matter how long she watched, so she moved on. They began to center around her father. She saw him standing in the street, and her running from behind her uncle, jumping forward, the scene stopping just before she touched him. She watched his hands moving through his gestures, mouth moving in silent instruction as she mimicked him, and a green cloud came from her fingers. She stood by his bedside, one hand lost in his, and she remembered that though his voice was young even though his face was old and white and wrinkled. Kit watched, transfixed, as his mouth moved. ‘My Kova,’ he said, and pulled her closer before Kit realized what was happening. And then his mouth opened wide, his teeth all serrated knives, and he bit into her throat and she screamed, and pushed her to the floor, tearing at her as she screamed silence. That wasn’t what happened, she thought, as though from a great distance. She turned away, shaking, not comprehending. And she saw herself, naked, with bloody palms and wild eyes, pinned by his uncle as her father stood by the door as she scratched and screeched and screamed. ‘Be strong,’ she remember him whispering as the Res went inside of her, before she knew what it meant. ‘Be strong.’ His hands danced in gestures, and Kit remembered the way her insides twisted, and knew that she was begging him to stop. And that he had not. She staggered backward, looked away and saw herself at her father’s bedside again, with a pillow in her hand against his face, and he struggled, too sick and weak to fight back. Her mirror’s smile too wide to be anything but a nightmare, but what scared her most was that, through the horror, through the disgust, she could feel one like it that tugging at her lips. She started running.

[Kit Rowan]

She saw her mother next. Kit did not know her face, did not know anything about her, but the image in the mirror was like the idea of mother, standing on a hill of green and white. She had a dream’s face, detailed and beautiful and perfect but nothing Kit could attach words too, too flawless for memory to hold. It seemed to Kit that her skin was the color of life, burning through from inside her in waves. She watched as life dwindled away around her mother, rendered somehow less by her presence, as though all things were a pale imitation of what she was. Kit saw her father standing behind, his face ragged and reverent, resigned to his doom. Kit looked down and realized the bits of white were skulls, overgrown with grass and flowers. As she watched her mother touched his face, blood pouring down out of his eyes and ears. But she did not see the rest, because she was still running. The rest of the images were her. She saw herself with dead eyes, wearing linen thin enough to see through, a large man with a manic grin clutching her close and running a hand along her thigh. She saw herself, hair wild, fire everywhere, with a tattoo she did not know running along her arm and onto her face. She was dying, a Nuit with impassive eyes staring down at the inside of her. And they switched places, and she was dead, staring down with a smile as she pulled a beating heart from his chest. More and more and more, and no matter how fast she ran Kit saw every single one of them. Kit looked back, saw a mirror not a foot away, and when she turned around realized she was surrounded by mirrors, the hall simply gone. One of the reflections is her—ponytail, patchwork clothes and all, but she’s smiling. “It’s a choice,” the other Kit said, in her voice. “Victim or victor? What is right or what will save you?” She sees herself, eyes torn out, the orphan boy all over again, wearing her face. On the other side is the Kit who spoke, with clever eyes and a dark smile. Kit hesitates a moment, raises a hand and touches the mirror. The other her smirks, dissolving at her touch into nothing. Everything dissolved.

[Kit Rowan]

And she was standing outside the door, with the sun in her eyes, the sounds of Alvadas shaking away all around her. Kit blinked away the glare of the sun, looked back over her shoulder at the House of Broken Mirrors. It was too ordinary, too plain. Her hands were shaking, her whole body was shaking. And only then did she notice the tears running down her cheeks, the little, frightened noises. She fell to her knees and stayed for a while, hugging herself, too relieved to care who was watching. What seemed like hours later, Kit picked herself up, and remembered that once when she had heard that the House of Broken mirrors had no monsters of its own. That all it ever did was give the ones you brought in a face. "It’s a choice," she said, in her own voice, and it was the same one she heard in the mirror. She walked away very quickly, and only looked back once.

[Fallacy]

XP Award! Name:Kit Rowan XP Award: Observation- 2 Lore: Braving the House of Broken Mirrors Illusionary Visions Notes: This thread was… Interesting. I was lost in what you were trying to achieve in this thread because in the end it seems like she got little to no character development. Any questions or concerns about the rewards gained please send a PM