The Wound

You move through the world with a mirror held up like a shield. Every face catches your light and throws it back. Where their story should be – yours. But the face before you was always its own. Their eyes hold darkness you didn't make. The lines around their mouth were carved by laughter you never heard, grief you'll never know. They were standing there the whole time. One day the glass catches a face it cannot hold. The mirror falls. A sound too small for everything it carried. You stand before them, hands empty. Shards at your feet. For the first time: a stranger's face.

The Path

The old habit doesn't die with the mirror. The shards still catch light at your feet. Your hand keeps reaching, fingers closing on nothing. For a while, you kneel and press them together, cutting yourself on edges that won't align. The reflection returns in pieces: an eye that blinks when yours doesn't. Half a mouth, forming words you can't hear. Nothing whole. You stop. In the stillness, you see them. Not as reflection but as themselves. Their eyes hold weather you never made. Their grief belongs to them. Their joy happens without you. Each time, your hands open sooner. One day the reflex fires – fingers close on air – and you let them. Their eyes meet yours.

The Shadow

Clear seeing carries a cost. Some pay it once, then never again. The Discerning held someone once – full weight and strangeness. He felt her heft settle into his arms like wet stone. When he surfaced, gasping, she'd already turned away. He gave a year. She gave a season. Faces exhaust him now. Each one a door that might close. So he sorts. His eyes settle on a new face and something behind them clicks shut before the face has finished forming. This one, useful. That one, distraction. Another, entertainment. Assigns them roles in his own theatre until they shrink small enough not to cost him anything. He wanted witnesses who wouldn't leave. He made everyone too small to witness. ❖ The Devoted finds the mirror empty – and fills it with someone else. She looked in the glass once and found no one looking back. Only a shape waiting to be told what it was. Her hand went to her own face and could not feel it. Now she angles every mirror towards them. Studies their reflection until she knows it better than her own. Her own glass darkens in the glare of the face she chose. When the reflection cracks, she calls it betrayal. The mirror in her hand still holds their shape.

The Cut