Lady in the mirror

Chapter 1

My hands graze the railing on the stairs leading down to the basement. It’s my turn to clean this month, and I am not looking forward to it.

I sigh and summon a vacuum. Green, as always.

My eyes glow as I work the vacuum cleaner, cleaning the carpet. I zap the mold with my powers, smiling. Mom always disliked magic for cleaning uses- mainly because the maids back at her father’s castle did it that way, even though they were all magical demons (great choice, Gramps.).

But she isn’t here today.

It takes me two hours with my magic- which is bad enough. I notice a door I hadn’t seen before. Something glows beyond it. I shrug. I’d already encountered a lot of cool glowing things. Something good always came from it, it seems.

I open the door just a crack, sticking my head in. I look left- nothing but a desk, papers strewn across it. Typical Dad Base, Mom and I call things like that.

I look right. It’s just a full-body mirror. It’s one of those things you’d look over and not notice until you look a second time, and then it just pops.

This mirror is beautiful. Purple metal shining in the weak overhead light bulb, with the form of two Chinese dragons swirling over the edges to meet each other at a crystal orb.

It’s beautiful, even when it’s covered in dust.

And I mean covered.

I step up to it, take a deep breath, and blow. A cloud of light brown and grey surrounds me, and I cough. There goes most of it.

I pick up a duster and start dusting off the dragons- first the one on the left, then the one on the right- and finally, the orb in the middle of their outstretched claws.

I step back, admiring my work. The mirror itself is black glass. Whoops. Forgot to clean that.

I lick my hand. Electric green saliva (it’s MAGIC, ok? Not my natural spit. I’m normal. Just wait.) oozes on my palm. I place it on the mirror, and pull back.

As I wipe off my hand with the paper towel, the saliva multiplies by itself, growing and dripping down the mirror until it’s coated. Then, just like that, it evaporates. The mirror is shiny again.
Shiiiiiiiiiny.

I grin, looking at it up and down. I turn around to leave and clean up the Typical Dad Base number 7. (Meet my father, people.)

I’m in the middle of filing the papers when I hear a click.

Then a bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

I turn around. My jaw falls.

In the mirror, instead of the reflection of this hidden room in the basement and the Typical Dad Base number 7, there is infinite space and a girl, looking down at a profile angle.

And my gods.

This girl.

B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.

She’s around my age (17, for those of you who were unaware). She has wavy dark purple hair, tied in a tight bun and the two bits of bangs framing her face. She has a sharp arch for a nose, which is elvish, and her ears are significantly shorter than elf ears, but they are longer than Leorian ears. So she’s half-elf.

She holds her hands, very lady-like, making the slightest folds in her galactic dress. The sleeves of this dress are tight up to her elbow, whereupon it opens up, ending about four inches lower than her wrist. It’s dark purple lace, and the dress is a dark purple silk.

She turns and looks at me. I almost fall over.

The second half of her face- the one I couldn’t see before- is almost fully stone. Her left eye is pure yellow- no iris, just yellow. Her veins are dips like those cracks you’d see in tiles.

She makes eye contact with me, and she sighs. She turns to her profile again, closing her eyes gently.

“A't ciw hvuwwy wi yio et I? Yio'vu paju uzuvyicu upku.” she growls.

“Um.” I blink a few times. “I-I don’t speak that language.”

“Yio mezu biw wi su qijacb.” she mutters.

My head spins. I think she’s speaking Elvish… but I’m not really sure. “I speak English, not whatever you’re speaking.”

She nods. “Upzakm.”

“Ohhhhhh.” I smile. Elvish. Upzakm is Elvish for… well, Elvish. I try to get on her level by saying the one Upzakmian sentence I know.

“A... lic'w khuej Upzakm..” (Translation: “I… don’t speak Elvish.”)

I expect her to laugh. She doesn’t. She growls again.

“A et ciw hpeyacb wmew betu. Piij tu ac wmu uyu ecl wupp tu yio'vu ciw exveal ix Uppe Thescrosa.”

I put my brilliant mind to work, but the sentence is too long. I freeze time and spend what would equal to half an hour translating what she said and thinking up my response.

I am not playing that game. Look me in the eye and tell me you are not afraid of Ella Thescrosa.

I unfreeze time and do as she asks. I look her straight in the eye. One dark purple, deep like space, one bright yellow.

My eyes flash their trademark electric green.

“Piij, Uppe.” I sigh. “A lic'w necw wi movw yio. A qokw necw wi ekj nmy yio'vu ac ty tavviv. A lic'w jcin yio- I et ciw exveal ix yio. Cin sefj ixx.”

(Translation: “Look, Ella. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to ask why you’re in my mirror. I don’t know you- I am not afraid of you. Now back off.”)

Her eyes start to grow panicked.

Her hands fly into the air, and a machine appears on the side of the right dragon.

“Now you can speak your own language as I speak mine.” she smiles.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Translator machine.”

“Oh.”

We sit in awkward silence.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I heard so many tales of humans from my father that meeting one for the first time  is slightly nerve-wracking.”

“Your father?” I ask.

She nods. “You’ve probably heard of him: Ecth-Khalla?”

“The Elvish god of the Universe and Space?” I nod.

Then it hits me.

“You’re a demigoddess?”

“It’s confusing,” she sighs. “My father was an Elvish god. My mother was human.”

“That’s odd.” I tilt my head. “I’ve never heard that tale. My mother’s parents are a Leorian and human, the latter of which was related to freaking dragons, and my father is human too, but his mother is a witch, so I’m a wonderful little mutt. But a half-human Elvin demigoddess? Wow. I feel bad for you.”

She sighs, placing a hand on the mirror. My heart is thumping out of my chest.

As mentioned earlier, B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L.

“Are humans really like that?”

“Like what?”

“Cruel, heartless monsters that abandon children and kill each other for no reason?”

My mouth gapes. “Your father told you that?”

She nods shyly.

I groan, shoving my face in my hands. “Some of us are, yes. Most of us, no. I’m a hero, actually.”

“Hero?” She tilts her head. “I thought only elves were heroes.”

“To themselves.” I laugh, but she doesn’t laugh back.

She just stares at me and blinks.

“I-It’s a joke.” I stutter. “Haven’t you heard a joke?”

She shakes her head no, and my jaw falls.

“Oh my gods. N-no offense. But your father doesn’t have a sense of humor?” My words slur and stutter from then on, becoming incomprehensible speech.

“We have a lot of learning to do.”

“Humour.” Ella tilts her head. She found and brought a chair the second time we meet, and I’m using the swivel chair from Typical Dad Base 7. “Explain.”

“It’s a concept.” I lean backwards and grin. “It’s like… Gods, I can’t explain it. It’s taking something and making it funny. Play on words. Those are called puns.”

“Define ‘funny’.”

“Humorous.” I lean forward, pushing my elbows on my knees.

She gives me an innocent look that looks like ‘And?’

“Humourous means ‘with humor.’.”

“So its all going full circle?”

“You could say that, yeah.” I shrug.

She clapped her hands together. “Tell me a joke.”

“Ok.” I lean back again. “Past, present and future walk into a bar. It was tense.”

She blinks a few times, like she did during my first joke.

Then her eyes sparkle. She smiles.

And laughs.

I smile. I’ve always been a joker, but that was one of my lesser jokes. Ella really is special.

Then it hits me. Carah. I’m still in a relationship with Carah. My face goes slack. I wish. I don’t even know if she’s straight or not. My back slouches, and I rest my forearms on my thighs to balance myself. They cross at the wrist, but I don’t interlace my fingers.

“Jackie?”

I flick my eyes up. I’ve always had a habit of doing that when I’m facing down, and all the girlfriends I’ve had have said it makes me look irresistible, with my hair in my eyes and my eyes sparkling like emeralds. . I just shrugged and said it was something my father did too.

Ella doesn’t seem to understand that reinhabilited eye contact means she can talk, so she still looks at me expectantly.

“Yes?” I say.

“What’s love?”

I don’t know if she’s a mind reader or not, but she seems serious. I shrug. “Are you asking about my love life, or love in general?”

“Well, your love life.” Ella said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s obviously an example of love in general.”

I go red. “Well, here’s the thing…”

Then I stop myself. I don’t want her to be upset. So I clear my throat.

“I like girls,” I say, shrugging. “I’ve had a good few handfuls of girlfriends. Being a hero and attending events, I’m pretty open about how I feel about them.” I chuckle nervously. “I’ve grown a reputation as a rough kisser.”

“What’s a kiss?”

I choke on my words. “It’s like pressing your lips together in an act of sexual or romantical attraction.”

“Oh,” she looks down, then back up. “How do you kiss?”

Now I’ve had enough. I shove my face in my hands, groaning. I’m pretty sure my face has become nothing but blush. She’s too innocent, too cute, too… pretty.

“Can you… show me?” She asks.

Oh, just kill me now! Gah! I just can’t!

I stay quiet, and suddenly I hear her gasp.

“What’s sexual or romantical attraction?”

“Romantic attraction is when you feel romance towards a person. You want to be in their presence, hug, kiss, and hold hands with them.” I dodge the question. Not yet.

But she’s persistent.

“What about sexual attraction?”

I dodge it again. “For example, I felt romantical attraction to my girlfriends.”

“We’re you sexually attracted to any of them?”

“One,” I say.

“What is sexual attraction?”

“It’s when you want or have sex with the person you are attracted to. They are often called partners.”

“What’s sex?”

I start to laugh maniacally. This is it! Hats off to Ella Thescrosa. She has officially annoyed and pestered me to insanity.

“Later,” I say. “Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?”

She blinks. So innocent. So… irresistible.