Reflections
(A Drabble)
Her body moved through the motions, much like one of her dolls, a puppet on strings with no real beating heart to drive whatever passion might once have burned hot. That flame had dwindled to a smoldering ember, pulsing like a distant heart beat on the edge of going silent. But that wasn’t true, death had not been so genteel a companion. This place was between worlds, between the conscious and the unconscious, between life and death. Nowhere and everywhere.
Ocean blue eyes widened and stared at the reflection in the glass before her, the molten gold shifting within the depths but remaining dormant for the moment. A blackened talon pressed into the flesh just beneath her right eye, the point slowly pushed into the giving skin until crimson flowed in a shallow line down her cheek like bloodied tears. Ever so slowly the nail was dragged down, the flesh easily torn beneath the wicked nail. Smoked curled around the edges of torn skin, fire sweeping in to close the wound with a sizzle and a hiss.
Glancing into the mirror once more, Luminarra turned her head slowly one direction and then the other, taking note of the way her visage seemed to morph within the glass. Alternating visions flashed light or darkness beneath her skin, pale flesh glowing with runes of power. One vision twisted, another youthful, another the crone perhaps one day she would be. Yet, none of them were her true face, not even she herself knew what that was anymore. Revered mother, mage, matron, daughter of creation, insatiable lover, bringer of her own destruction.Â
The tinkling of little bells brought her thoughts back from the random path it had wandered down, the small crystalline adornments on her silver ear cuffs ringing like crystal. Closing her fist tightly the glyphs burned into her skin flared red with mana just before her knuckles kissed the glass with enough force to shatter the vision before her. Veins snaked out from the impact, cracks flowing with violent grace towards the frame of the vanity mirror.
“You could be anyone, could be anythin’,” it was her accented voice, but the words hadn’t issued from her own stained lips.Â
“Or you could be nothin’,” the absolute casual disregard of the tone stirred an emotion in her chest, the golden hues in her eyes spiraling into focus. “I am me,” the mage forced from her immoble lips, an answer to the voice attempting to taunt her from the periphery. She wasn’t going to take the bait, that door would not be opened because she knew who always lingered, waiting for an opening.Â
“You are nothin’, Great Mother,” the words burned as an insult on the tip of Lumi’s pierced tongue.
Glass fell to the top of the dress as the half-elf pulled her fist back, shards glittering across her knuckles as the image in the glass shimmered and then exploded outward. The world around her shifted and spun once more.
