Friday 20 June 2014

#Fridayflash: The Mirror of Erised


The trolls had it wrong, of course. You can't go through time facing backwards. Nothing would make sense. Although, as it often was, nothing ever did make sense. So maybe they had a grain of truth - just a speck.

Jenny thought that life should be an adventure - something that you jumped into without looking, though maybe looking to see that there were no obvious rocks to knock into was quite a smart thing to do if you planned to continue adventuring. So now she looked sideways at the mirror Erised and wondered what she should do with it. Dumbledore had it wrong, of course, as most people around her did.

An enchanted mirror called Desire might show you what you wanted most in life. But with a backwards name like Erised, it was more likely that it would most likely only give you the thing you feared the most. After all, what was the opposite of desire?

What if - she pulled at her pony tail - she faced the mirror Erised with another enchanted mirror? Would the reflection of what she feared then be reflected back into what she desired? Would it keep reflecting until it was distilled into pure desire or pure fear?

She didn't have another enchanted mirror, so she decided that she'd just take whatever she got. Standing in front of the mirror, she looked at her reflection. There was a  ripple and then it went dark. What did that mean? Either she desired the dark or she feared it and she wasn't sure which. Words suddenly filled the screen.

Error. Too many conflicting desires.
Error. Too many conflicting desires.

There, she knew it was a hoax. She walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

In her wake, a little mouse creeped out from behind the table it was hiding behind. It peeped into the mirror and saw himself surrounded by chunks of cheese. It sighed happily.

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Writing prompt: Mirror

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