The Hill had been a peaceful place for my sisters and me. The grass was a bright and joyful tint of green and waved at us every time a light breeze swung us around. The sun heated our skin through the leaves above us, but his warmth wasn’t as strong as I remembered. Fall was coming. I didn’t know if I was looking forward to the day of falling, or afraid of what it might bring. “When I grow up”, Horsis said, sensing my thoughts, “I want to be a horse, wild and free, running from one end of the world to the other. Galloping so fast that it feels like flying. I will be so strong and proud that only the bravest warrior can convince me to join him in his travels.” I felt a happy energy radiating from her branch as if her mind was smiling. “Then why not become a pegasus if you want to fly? They aren’t real either, but at least they are cool,” Sendly smirked. “Horses are real. I saw one,” Horsis assured her. “Trust me, there is a lot more out there than the Hill, the wind, and the sky. And I’m going to see all of it before I will carry the weight of a mother.”

I believed Horsis. As far as I knew, she was the oldest one of us. She had been watching everything around our tree before we could even sense her presence. If she claimed to have seen a horse, I believed her. Maybe she could take me on her back one day to show me the world. Maybe she could take me on her back not because I was her sister, but because I had become the bravest of warriors. I smiled.

“I’m scared!” Elia screamed out. Her fear drove itself like a spear in the hearts of all of us. “I’m going to fall,” she cried. “Calm down,” Horsis told her, “that’s normal. We all fall one day. It’s great actually. You can finally be anything. You will be the first of us to see the world!” “I don’t want to go yet, I…” Elia’s thoughts were interrupted as her stem sapped. Her connection to the tree of sisters was gone. She was nothing but a pale, bouncy ball rolling down the hill. As she came to a stop against a clump of grass, her skin started to rip open. We watched in horror as a pale insect clawed its way out with its thin legs. “So… that’s what we are… That’s what we really are?” we thought in union. Elia had barely left her cocoon when an enormous crow appeared in the sky and started diving towards her. Our sister was helpless prey. Or was she? Elia transformed in the blink of an eye. One moment she was a hideous, crawling insect, the next she was an identical copy of the crow. The first bird stared at her for a moment, confused, before continuing on his path. 

The crow that was Elia flew up and landed on the tree. “This isn’t how I wanted things to go,” she spoke. She didn’t sound like one of us anymore, her voice was the voice of a random crow who landed on our tree by coincidence during his travels. “It will be fine,” Horsis reassured her. “The horse told me life isn’t always what you want or imagine. But that doesn’t make it not worth living. You are a bird. A strong and big one also. Sure, you didn’t get a chance to meet an eagle or a dragon, but that doesn’t stop you from flying high in the air as if you were an eagle.” “I don’t want to fly away. I will stay here with you. This tree is my home and you are my family. Can we just pretend I’m not a hideous crow, but a squishy ball of joy like the rest of you?” We didn’t have the heart to tell her no.

Thia was the next of us to go. She landed on a stone. The creature that dragged itself out of her cocoon was barely alive. She was able to root herself in the ground as a single blade of grass, but then slowly died over the next couple of days. It was probably for the best that she couldn’t talk. Hearing her fight for her life in vain would have been too much for us to process. We just hung from our tree and watched in silence. There was nothing we could do. Elia said she could hear Thia talk if she went close enough. Some days she asked her to get help, to keep her upright, to do anything. Other days she just asked for death. But Elia couldn’t bring herself to do any of those. She didn’t know how to help nor had the heart to rip her apart. They talked a lot during these days and when her fight was over, Elia picked up the meager seed her remains dropped and flew out of our lives. She had promised Thia she would find her a beautiful spot like the Hill where she could carry the weight of a mother.

“Why can I still feel you dreaming of galloping through fields after what we’ve seen?” I asked Horsis many times. And every time she shrugged me off with a smile. “Because I know. I will be fine. You will be too. You have to trust the world.” “And what about me?” Blips asked, “Will I be a horse too?” She was our youngest sister and the only one who admired Horsis more than I did. “Yeah, probably,” Horsis said. Why didn’t she sound convinced?

“Tom told me there’s another one just five kilometers north,” August said. “If we hurry, we’ll be there before sunset.” Sarah hesitated. “But it does mean we have to return when it’s dark,” she said. “Do you want that money or not? We’ll get at least ten fancy coins for that.” “Last time they only paid us sixty shiny coins per mirrorbug instead of the full fancy coin,” she argued. “Who cares about four shiny coins? It’s still good money. If we go tomorrow, someone else might have harvested them.” Sarah rolled her eyes. She didn’t really care about the risks, she just wanted to argue to pass the time during their walk. “Fine,” she told him, “but if we get there and someone got there before us, you owe me one.” August laughed. “I don’t owe my children anything. I never asked you to pay me back for raising you. Besides, you are the one who wants to go at a later time.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Hey there, humans,” Horsis greeted the strangers approaching in the distance. “How do you know what humans are?” asked Sendly skeptically. “Because there was this guy on top of the horse I met,” Horsis explained. “He was weird but brave. I liked him.”

“I think we got lucky,” Sarah said when she heard the greetings of the tree. “Hey there, mirrorbugs!” She shouted. “Mirror what?” Sendly asked. “We aren’t bugs. We are sisters.” “My apologies.” Sarah smiled. “Hey, how come there is only nine of you? Aren’t there at least ten sisters per tree?” “There are more trees like us?” I asked curiously. I had always known there were probably more, but it blew my mind to have this knowledge confirmed. The man nodded. “There is a lot more of you where we came from. You know what, I’ll take you there.” He stretched out his arm, ripped Blips from our tree, and threw her in our basket. 

“Hey!” Horsis shouted, “Don’t do that! We aren’t ripe yet!” Sarah ignored her protests and grabbed another one of our sisters. And then the next one. They were so fast my sisters couldn’t even scream before we lost our connection. Sendly was next. As soon as her stem detached from our tree, black wings erupted from her cocoon. She pecked at the hand of the girl until she had to let go. “You need to transform!” she shouted. “We can’t fight the way we are.” “I don’t want to become a random crow,” Cassy complained. “Maybe they’re good people. We might get a chance to find something better if we let them take us.” “Oh yeah,” Sarah laughed as August ripped her from the tree, “we have unicorns and dragons and butterflies where we live. You need to see them!” Sendley was still trying to attack the humans in vain. She barely knew how to fly and the humans could block her attacks easily. Another sister disappeared into the bag and now it was my turn.

If someone uses a weapon too strong to beat, it might be a good idea to try wielding that same weapon. The hand of the girl first squished my body and then made the stem on top snap off. And suddenly my skin didn’t feel like my skin anymore. It was just a dead layer of protection. I pictured the image of the man, because he looked the strongest, and started pushing away the cocoon around me. When my head broke through, the world suddenly looked a lot brighter. More real. My insect paws had fallen off and looked extremely tiny now. I was growing, breathing, couching. It hurt like hell. The girl had dropped me. She was still towering over me. And then a flash of pain blinded the world. I couldn’t grow anymore. I was a pale blob rolling around in pain. Too exhausted to move a mussel. Once the humans realized I no longer posed a threat, they continued picking my sisters off their branches one by one. They didn’t resist, too shocked by what I had become. Why wasn’t my transformation complete? When I opened my eyes, I realized I was huge, but not even half the size of the human I was trying to mimic. My hands were blobs with only a thumb. My other fingers were molten together. I couldn’t get up. Even breathing was painful. What was I? Why did it fail? A painful shiver threw me back into the grass as I was trying to get on my knees.

“What are we doing with this… thing?” Sarah asked. The man shrugged. “Just leave it. It’s dying. I’ve seen mirrorbugs die from insta-changing into a rabbit. The fact that she didn’t complete the transformation means all her energy is gone, she’ll starve to death within an hour.” I didn’t know if my vision was blurry because of the pain or the tears in my eyes as I watched the two humans grow smaller in the distance. I curled up into a ball, too weak to scream. I felt the coldness of the earth slowly creep into my bones as everything I had ever known and expected had been shattered in less than a minute.

Horsis’ story has always been destined to be one about travel. Exploring the wonders and the dangers of this world. No adventure is free of pain, but Horsis doesn’t care about the past, she only sees the future. That’s why people tell her tales to this day. You’ve probably heard some of them. My story is one about revenge and the stubborn pursuit of reclaiming what can’t be brought back. A story people tell their kids when they want to warn them of the consequences of greed and bloodthirst. Why some alliances should not be made and why happiness can never be born from hate. Parents teach their kids not to be like me. But if I could go back in time to that moment I was lying on the ground, desperate and broken, almost touching the hand of death, I know I wouldn’t change a thing.