Alive again I watched the woman come and go from the room. Dead again I waited for her to return. Every time it started the same, room bright yet lights off, white surfaces illuminated by a rising light entering through the window. Every time it ended with the light receding, the overhead bulbs harshly detailing my environs and allowing the woman to still clearly see herself reflected in my surface. Occasionally the woman would enter at some middle point in between, when te light from the world outside was constant and the time nebulous, never lingering as long as she did at the start or even end.
I endured the rumbling ebbs and flows as I waited for the ideal scenario to emerge. Each time she passed out of the room and returned whenever she choose pushed me to give up on my current course of action, but I held firm to the plan. I slipped into the familiar state of anticipation I often found in the moments before I acted, struck out. I casted ensnare less and watched more, becoming passive in the lead up to something different, something most likely difficult. All the while I imagined how she left that phone on the counter, how she’d rushed backed to me to find it. I replayed what had made her return to the room and place herself back in view of my surface.
It took time for the right moment to arrive. The growing power inside me was the only sign with which I could prove my continued existence-that I had in fact been here waiting and changing. It wasn’t too many visits from her before the moment arrived although it was enough for my adolescent patience to be tested.
it was one morning where she entered my room in a rush, moving about the bathroom with a harried haste. Her whirling movements altering me to approaching opportunity and stirring both excitement and the resting power within me. She readied herself, rushing in and out of the bathroom-leaving the counter top in disarray.
Through the storm of action I waited. I watch her leave and return just to exit again. Watched her clean and apply and leave a sock by the sink she came back to retrieve. Watched her mouth form muttered curses and lament. Watched her wild eyes look into the mirror and she passed me by, shooting furtive glances at her own reflection. She applied her makeup in record time, and then she rushed out finally ready. Except she wasn’t.
I lingered in the surface of the mirror, lingered in my surface I rephrased. I stood aware as she left, knowing it wouldn’t be long before she returned. The rolling indefinable force within me huge and swelling. She shot back into the room and slammed the keys down on the counter. My awareness shrank.
The moment condensed as her hand reached out to grasp her perfume and I focussed my being on to that singular point where the keys lay-innocuous-and brought my willpower to bear. I envisioned that day where the women had left that object on the counter and then come back for it. When her phone had laid there in my domain forgotten. I envisioned the absentmindedness she had displayed, and what resulted of it. I envisioned those keys on the counter staying there, bent my will on making them be forgotten.
Then I made it be. As with ensnare I used the power I held to enact my desire. For my will to become form and affect the world. I used this magic to slip the keys out of her mind. In her haste as she stole out from the room without so much as a look into my surface she had left her keys behind. A grin crept across my nonexistent features as I took credit for the lapse in the frantic woman’s operating. The power inside me quelled with the new spell I had cast, and I felt the fringes of my vision darken although my view of the world didn’t change. I felt tired, but satisfied. I felt like I’d flexed a muscle, lifted a grand weight-somehow experiences exhaustion without any body to really feel it.
Stolen novel; please report.
Yet, with ever second that passed my excitement grew. I did not fade back into the mirror, I stayed present wide eyed. Pride and disbelief coloured me, I was once again at awe of what I had become capable of. Time passed swiftly as my emotions peaked and swirled into a mixture of elation.
Then the exhaustion retreated. Pushed and pushed away was the tiredness in my being. Faster and faster invigorating power rushed into me. The thundering rumbled from within me with force I had never before felt, my being shuddering with each building moment.
Before I knew it the woman had returned. The thundering tide inside me crashing and growing a hundred times with every dejected breath she breathed. The woman came into the bathroom and grabbed her keys. The crescendo approached and I was helpless in the face of churning power that filled me. I fought to stay conscious as my mind drowned beneath the waves, to keep my eyes above the burying water. The woman stood in front of the mirror. She stared deep into my surface, her disjointed breaths leaving her heavy with resignation. Then she looked down, unable to even meet her own eyes. I breathed deep and fast. The woman glared at the bottom of the mirror angry and disappointed. The emotions weak and fleeting when her bone deep wariness came to bear. Her shame weakening the positive vencer holding the true feelings at bay. The barrier warring down between how she truly felt and what she allowed herself to think, between the self doubt and hate and sadness and the mundane reality of life and the tiny sun her world amounted to-between her work life and her ‘tel’ one and how supposedly different they were and the belief she held that she was somehow headed for better. The culmination of all life has been recently, all she had suffered through and how she was supposed to be putting it all behind her. The crumbling idea that she could really have a fresh start, do different, do better for herself. The vague and yet so strongly clung to notion that she deserved better and she would get more and the reality that she deserved nothing more then she had. That she may not even be worth the small pathetic life they had left her in…
The woman’s shoulders shook as she sobbed in front of the mirror. Completely at the mercy of life’s will. Crying for all the grand change she’d never made, for everything she’d left behind that she had no chance of escaping. The woman’s lip quivered and her hands below her chin hovered uncertainly, as of unsure how to comfort her in the face of whatever it was she was even feeling.
The mirror didn’t even have the sense to look forward and see her. It’s body shock with the throes of unbelievable power, the most sensation he had ever felt flowing through him. Power and pride and joy converging and feeding off one another. Elation multiplying as the mirror exalted in not as much it’s achievement as much as the over worldly torrent of power smothering it.
The mirror felt itself being pulled deeper into the place where it always retreated leaving the world of awareness behind; Happily fading into the tremendous lively power filling him and allowing it to whisk him away. However as it faded further into the blackness it realised its vision was the only thing it faded away from. The shrinking window of the mirror causing a bright spark of panic at his core at odds with his current luxuriating power. It realised that this time it was receding back into its resting place, the world behind the surface of the mirror, and it consciousness was receding along with it. The overwhelming power it felt started to dissipate as it floated back into the backness and it was as it stared around this strange new place it had drifted into that it’s eyes locked onto the pinprick of the mirror. In that moment it saw with perfect clarity the sobbing women on the other side. In wonderment the mirror spun and panned its gaze over the purple black void it found itself in, and the other many glints of silver suspended within it. The mirror sat there in the world of void and gazed out at the thousands of reflective surfaces.
Level 5
Spell learned: Obscure
The mirror smiled.