Mirror, Mirror... - In the Beginning...
#1 of Mirror, Mirror...
Mirror, Mirror...
In the Beginning...
Updated August 5th 2013
It was a beautiful mirror. I traced my fingers along the swirling patterns on the frame, feeling the smooth texture of the carved wood. The patterns drew the eye to the mirror glass within the frame. It was old glass. Imperfections in the making process left artifacts in the images it reflected. The homes across the street, the people browsing the items at this neighborhood yard sale, the sky behind them, all patterned with a surreal waver from the shape of the glass.
The mirror gave quite a view as well. It stood taller than I and at least five feet at the widest of the odd shape it carried. It was as if somebody cut the ends off a long oval top and bottom and rounded the corners more. The sides bowed out and the corners took sweeping curves though the top and bottom were almost perfectly straight. Wooden supports ran up behind it to hold it in place on simple but sturdy crossbar feet.
It was odd to see such an item here. I took walks through the nearby neighborhood on occasion on my days off and saw enough of the yard sales during the summer. Entirely out of place compared to the old chairs, pots and pans, forgotten childhood toys, and other brick-a-brack that graced the lot. My eyes went to follow the swirling patterns once again. The patterns were so graceful, they almost seemed to flow into the glass itself . Perhaps the glass had gained stress waves from the different thickness of the wood. The whole effect was mesmerizing.
"Honey, look at that mirror. Gah, what a horrid thing!"
The voice behind me broke me out of my reverie.
"Looks older than dirt and worth about as much. What a piece of junk," a man responded to the woman who had commented first. The reflections of the couple in the glass definitely left much to be desired in clarity.
"Oooo, look! A rice cooker! We should see how much that is," the woman exclaimed, dragging the man off to another table.
I shook my head with a sigh. Some people had no appreciation for things like this. I gazed into the mirror, not looking at myself as much as looking at the world behind me. It was entrancing, almost like a dream.
A motion in the mirror made me glance over my shoulder, but there was nobody there. Glancing back at the mirror, I noticed an intricate pattern in the frame that drew my gaze to it. I reached to touch it.
"I can see you appreciate that poor mirror. I've had it for ages, though everybody else finds it ugly. You look like you could give it a good home."
I turned in surprise, having been unaware of the old man's approach. "I'm sorry, it must be important to you," I murmured.
He smiled fondly. "She's been a good friend to me all these years, it'll be good..." He blinked a few times, his voice growing stronger. "It'll be good to see the old mirror go to a good home. A home with somebody who'll appreciate her. That's the important thing."
"Well, I was just browsing, I don't have much money..."
"You can have the mirror for free, just because you like it."
I was tempted, but I looked at the size of the mirror. "Er, well, I don't drive, and I live a block from here. I'd never be able to get it home."
"I'm sure my granddaughter would be happy to help you. She has a truck. Let me go get her." He smiled at me and hurried off to his house.
My gaze went back to the mirror. Huh. Well, that was unexpected. I reached out and touched the pattern that had my attention before.
"You must be the guy Gramps gave the mirror to." I turned to see a lovely young woman, maybe 19 or so, standing with a set of car keys. "Come on, let's get it to your home. Be good to it. It's old."
We managed to get it loaded safely into her pickup truck and the short drive was uneventful. She helped me carry it up the stairs to my apartment and showed me how the legs had pins that kept them from turning, but if they were removed, the legs could turn flat. After a moment's thought, she retrieved a box of tools from her truck. We decided to fasten the legs to the back of my dresser to it would make a wall mirror there. Being attached would allow the full frame to show, rather than being cut off at the bottom by the height of the dresser.
Working in my bedroom, we soon had the mirror fastened securely and we pushed the dresser back against the wall. "Keep it well, for Gramps and for the mirror. It's been through a lot. Gramps saved it numerous times. He's restored it well, so it should last you forever, if not longer. It was just important to him to find somebody who the mirror liked." She was silent for a moment before she realized her misstatement. "I mean, who liked the mirror."
She shook her head as if to clear it and smiled at me. "Well, that's good to go." I nodded and saw her to the door. She paused just outside the door, turning back to me. "I hope you don't mind if I come back to visit sometime." She smiled shyly. "Oh, just to see how the mirror is doing," she said, flustered when she caught the odd look I gave her. I nodded and started to say it would be fine, but she blushed and pulled the door closed on herself.
I headed back to my bedroom and sat on the foot of my bed, looking at the mirror. Somehow the swirls on the frame were more defined now that I could look at them. They drew no pictures, wrote no words, yet somehow they told a story of the age of this mirror. I believed it when she said it had been through a lot.
I found myself gazing through the mirror into the reflection of my bedroom beyond. The reflection was imperfect, presented through the old glass. I wondered how old this mirror actually was. I caught myself comparing the world I sat in to the world in the mirror. Strange how just the smallest change in viewpoint caused such a drastic change in how the world looked reflected in the mirror. My breathing alone was making the scene shift subtly.
The mirror itself seemed odder the more I looked at it. I felt a thrill of fear and expectation at the same time.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. What a strange feeling to have from the mirror. I rubbed at my forehead and looked around my room again. Well, the mirror would definitely give a much better feeling of space, even if it wasn't perfect glass.
A motion in the corner of my eye caught my attention and my gaze snapped back to the mirror. I stared at it for quite some time, trying to figure out what I had seen. Nothing in the room had been moving. Except me... I must have seen my own reflection in the corner of my vision. I got up off the bed and walked to the dresser, gazing into the mirror at the strange effect it had on the reflection of my room. It still seemed surrealistic. Almost as if I could...
Tentatively, I reached toward the mirror. I don't know if I hoped or expected my hand to go through it somehow. I wasn't expecting the small static shock I got instead. Made me jump. My fingers touched the glass lightly, but the glass was definitely there. No way I was gonna break it to see if the world on the other side stayed. I may be seeing things, but I wasn't insane.
I sighed and pulled my hand away from the mirror, looking the surface of it over. That was odd. No fingerprints anywhere on the glass. I knew that we had our hands on it when we were carrying it here. I would have expected quite a lot of fingerprints to clean up. The surface was pristine though. Not even a speck of dust. How unusual. Curiously, I licked the end of my thumb and smeared the resulting wet thumb across the mirror.
Maybe it was too soon to declare myself not-insane. There wasn't a streak left behind. Not even a smudge. Maybe I just needed glasses. No. That wouldn't explain the glow developing in the depths of the patterns carved into the wooden frame, nor the warmth of the mirror when I touched it. In fact, the mirror radiated warmth now. I could feel it against my body. The prior illusion of the swirls seemingly continuing within the glass itself was no longer an illusion. The glow from the patterns definitely continued within or behind the glass, making endless paths within the frame now.
What was this, some sort of practical joke? Maybe the mirror had a hidden camera in it. The radiant heat against my body worried me though. It was strong enough to pass right through my clothes. The fact that my bare skin didn't feel it any more strongly didn't occur to me at the time. I didn't want some sort of practical joke setting my apartment on fire, but what was I going to do if it was that hot?
I winced as my hand moved closer, but the heat was no greater. Just a warmth still, no matter how close my hand got. Then my fingers touched the glass again.
It probably would have looked really odd if anybody had seen me fly backwards onto my bed. I likely would have screamed when I got knocked back by the blast of light as if the light itself was a physical force. As it was, the fact that I was quite unconscious from the instant my fingers touched the mirror forestalled that outburst and made the event much less dramatic. Well, other than my limp body flopping onto the bed and bouncing a few times.
I woke up later that evening with a fuzziness in my thoughts that spoke of heavy drinking or something similar. Considering I didn't drink, that was worrisome. I glanced at my watch. Hmm. Saturday. I didn't have to be up for work tonight. Or tomorrow. Why was I asleep on top of my bed in my clothes? I sat up and rubbed at my eyes, feeling horribly groggy. The room didn't seem quite right.
I stared at the wall at the foot of my bed and finally put two and two together. There was a mirror there now. I could see the faint shadow of myself moving in it.
"Are you alright?" It was a very quiet voice in my room. I could barely make it out.
"I'm okay," I murmured, rubbing at my eyes some more. Then I froze. Not only was there somebody speaking in my room, but there was also another motion in the mirror. A small one, but it definitely wasn't me. I reached over the side of my bed for the flashlight by my nightstand and flipped it on, searching the room for the intruder.
"I was worried about you. You should calm down, you seem tense." The voice was more distinct now and came from the bed beside me. I swung the flashlight to the spot, but there was nothing there. Then the motion in the mirror caught my attention again. I swung the light up to shine at the mirror.
The glowing eyes were the first thing I saw, since I accidentally flashed the reflected light into my own face. I blinked. In the mirror image, there was a small, black cat sitting on my bed and watching me worriedly in the reflection. I glanced down at the bed in the real room, but there was no cat there. In desperation, I swung my hand at the spot in the real room.
"Ow, hey!!" the cat exclaimed with a hiss as my hand made contact with its invisible-except-in-the-mirror self. The cat swiped back with a clawed paw as my blow sent it sailing off the bed and it was my turn to exclaim in pain as the claws dug into the back of my wrist and left four long scratches on my arm. Blood began to well up in the gashes as the cat jumped back onto the bed in the mirror image. I cradled my scratched arm to my front, trying to make sense of what was happening.
"Why'd you hit me?" the feline asked plaintively. Based on the voice, it seemed to be female. "Oh, dear, did I do that? Oh, I'm sorry!" I felt paws on my wrist as she reached up to examine the scratches and winced as her tongue drew across them, but the wince was unnecessary. The soft caress of her tongue took away the sting in an instant and as I watched, my arm healed right up.
Several licks and no scratches on my arm later and I finally remembered. The glowing mirror. The heat. I must be insane.
"Now why would you think something silly like that?" the cat asked me, sitting on the bed and watching me through the mirror again. "Wait... You actually DID just think that, you didn't say it. Wow. This link is forming way faster than it should." I could hear her voice clearly now, not tiny and far away like it was at first.
She leaped from the bed to the dresser. "No, no, no, no... way too fast! I didn't even get a chance to see if you were good! You..." She spun, arching her back, tail fluffing up as she hissed at me furiously. "You already hit me! Really hard too!" I was so horribly confused, but only for a short time as she suddenly launched herself at me.
I had a moment of seeing the black shape in the mirror grow substantially larger even though it was moving further away in my view before I got hit hard in the chest by something much much bigger than a housecat and knocked flat on my back. Huge paws held my shoulders down and claws dug through my skin. A quick glance in the mirror showed my terrified face just inches below the fangs of a massive black panther or something similar.
"Break the link! Now!! Break it or I'll kill you before it finishes and break it that way!" Her voice was deeper, but still her voice. What link?! Oh god, I'd break it if I could, but I had no idea what she was talking about.
"DON'T PLAY GAMES WITH ME!" she screamed. I would have cried out in fear, but her jaws closing powerfully on my throat cut that short before it happened. Strangely, there was no pain, just the pressure of my flesh ripping beneath her teeth, my life being ended. She released me in an instant though, her own scream of pain echoing in my ears as I felt my vision fading. I felt a different pressure against my neck just before I faded to black.
I wasn't out for too long though. My hand went to my throat as my eyes blinked open suddenly. It was whole, but my fingers came away with blood. If it weren't for that, I would have thought I just had a nightmare. Well, if it weren't for both the blood and the sobbing face buried in the crook of my arm.
"Don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me," she exclaimed in tears, jerking away from me as I moved to sit up. Her body felt strange. A glance in the mirror made me gape in surprise. No small black house cat or huge black panther, but a human-shaped creature that looked like a cat. A were-cat maybe? What the hell was happening here?
"Stop teasing me!" she wailed. "You got your link! Let me in! Please... I'm so afraid... don't block me out. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, don't hurt me..."
I looked at the copious quantity of arterial blood soaked into my bedsheets and pillow. I looked in the mirror at the cat woman clinging to my arm beneath the thick blood gracing my chin and chest. I realized that my throat was whole, but a moment ago, my throat had been in her jaws and my life fading rapdily. My heart suddenly raced and I panicked, tearing my hand away from her grip despite the draw against claws she unintentionally put into it and leaping off the bed to run to my bathroom.
I was barely aware of the exclamation of pain from her as I slammed the bathroom door behind me, panting in fear in the darkness. I was horribly afraid of this creature. I had no idea what to make of any of this.
"Please, let me in or come back, it hurts! I'm sorry, the claws were my fault, but it was an accident! Don't punish me like this!" She cried and begged me. The voice was in the bathroom. I flipped the light on in a panic and there she was, in the huge mirror behind the sink, holding her right hand in obvious pain and gazing at me in desperation through the mirror. Her eyes were a mask of fear and pain.
I shied away, hitting my own clawed up hand against the door as I jerked back. She yowled in pain and held her hand closer to herself, reaching desperately to me with her free hand. I had nowhere to get away.
Her hand passed right through me though. I shook my head. She couldn't touch me here? I stood up straighter. "W-who are you?! What are you?" I demanded, trying for bravado though my knees and voice both shook in fear. I looked down as I felt blood dripping from my hand to the floor.
Her gaze snapped up and she stared at me in the mirror, a look of disbelief on her face. "You... you're afraid of me?! What, how...? Oh spirits, what's happened? You... you -CAN'T- let me in!! You don't know how." She shook her head, a look of abject terror on her face.
"Please... please come back to the... mirror. I need to heal you, it hurts so badly..." her voice trailed off into a meek whimper.
My panic-filled mind suddenly put facts together again. I looked down at my clawed hand, blood dripping from my fingertips as I held it up to gaze in wonder. It didn't hurt at all. My eyes lifted to where she was clutching her own hand against herself. "My hand," I murmured. "You feel all the pain I should feel."
"I do. Any pain you would have, I feel instead. If you die, I spend the rest of time in excruciatingly hellish agony. Please come back. Please let me heal you."
It was hard to trust her. She had already tried to kill me. Yet, at the same time, I remembered my last moments before I blacked out. The look on her feline features as if her own throat had been torn out. Her nose and mouth cringed in agony as she nuzzled my throat and healed me in a heartbeat. She looked so desperate, yet so sincere, I decided to trust her.
Cautiously I opened the bathroom door with my good hand, leaving more bloodstains on the carpet as I swiftly returned to the bedroom. The moment I was in view of the mirror, even though I couldn't see myself from the angle, I felt my hand taken lightly and watched as the wounds beneath the blood closed swiftly. Watching as they healed gave me a much better feel for just how severe they had been. That would have been extremely painful.
I looked at the quantity of blood in the room. All of it was mine. I wondered what a CSI unit would make of this. I also wondered how the hell I was going to clean it up. "I need to clean up before this dries," I muttered, dazed. I couldn't see her, but she released my hand. A sigh escaped my lips as I looked at the mess.
A load of laundry and much scrubbing of the carpet and floor later, I was exhausted. I work nights, so this was my time to be up, but I'd been through a lot. It was disconcerting to have her there, watching me. In the bathroom, I knew she couldn't touch me, but in my room, I kept glancing at the mirror to keep an eye on her. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what to make of it. I didn't even know what to ask to find out. She watched me worriedly through the mirror, obviously very upset, but she didn't approach me while I cleaned things up. It was shortly after 1 am when I got new sheets onto my bed and climbed onto it to sit cross-legged and consider the situation.
"Okay," I finally muttered. "I don't THINK I'm going insane, but I don't know for sure. That's a lot of blood for me to be going insane."
"What -are- you?" she asked quietly.
"I should be asking you that."
She blinked at me. "You really don't know... How...?" She sighed and shook her head, changing instantly into a tiny black kitten. "I'm a mirror famulus. I was torn from my home by a wizard and linked through from nothingness to this world by this mirror. Linearly, this mirror was created only a few hundred years ago. Following my journey covers thousands of years, since most wizards spend a lot of time outside time itself."
She gave herself a shake, obviously disturbed. "I've never actually EXPLAINED this to anybody before. Anybody who can see me should know already." She looked at me meekly. "You scare me."
"You think I feel any better? You kinda tore my throat out back there," I retorted sharply. She shrunk in on herself. Literally. She became a smaller cat. I winced. She frightened me, but she seemed more scared of me than I felt of her. "Why are you so scared of me?" I asked more gently.
"You've got to be a wizard, otherwise we wouldn't be this linked. When I saw you first, I thought you were a mage. So I had Harv give my mirror to you so he didn't have to worry about me anymore. Wizards live a long time, but he wants to retire and he doesn't want to be a danger to me. But... But I don't know what happened. You could be evil and intend to torture me, and now there's nothing I can do about it." She put her paws over her face, weeping piteously.
I simply stared, open-mouthed, still trying to wrap my mind around the whole situation. Okay... So if I hit her, it hurt her. If anything hit me, it hurt her. That seemed to make more sense now. I could see where a sadistic wizard could cause intentional injury to himself as well as to her directly and put her in a lot of pain that she could do nothing about.
Wait. Wizard? That was the big problem here. That right there was insane talk. "What the hell are you talking about? Wizard? Mage?"
She took one paw off her face and looked at me. "You really don't know. That's what worries me the most."
I really didn't know. That was why I was worried too. This sounded like crazy talk. Admittedly it seemed more and more like it was only in my head. "Why does it worry you?" I asked, playing along with what might just be my own strained psyche.
She took her other paw off her face and stared at me. "Because you think you've just gone insane, and so you can be a real danger to me."
She jumped onto my lap, making me glance down in surprise, though there was nothing apparent in the real world, only in the mirror. I felt her small paws against my chest and I turned my attention to the mirror again. It was strange watching her look me in the face, though I was looking through the mirror.
"Okay, for both of our sakes, we have to figure this out. You're a wizard, or we couldn't even be partially linked. But you're not a mage, or you'd know it. That means you can't be a warlock either. You'd know that too. Unless you got hit on the head and forgot?" She shook her head, confused. "Oh, this makes no sense!"
She put a paw on either side of my chin, forcing me to look down at what was admittedly still seemingly nothing at all. "Okay, I need you to go see Harv. I trust him, he was good to me. He can help us figure this out."
My head was already spinning with this whole concept. "Harv? The old man? It's past 1 am! I can't go knocking on somebody's door at this time of night!"
"You wouldn't have to anyway," she said sagely.
"What?"
She nodded and licked my chin. "Be quick and be cautious, but go to his house. Now. If I don't miss my guess, you won't need to knock. If I'm not speaking true, you can come home without knocking or even going onto his property." She seemed very sure of herself.
I had no idea what this was all about, but I figured that if I went with the insane ramblings in my head and just walked over there, nothing bad could happen.
"If you keep thinking of this as insanity and don't be careful, very bad things definitely could happen." She sounded very serious, so I decided that maybe I should play along a bit better.
I cleaned myself up as best I could. No good reason to go walking outside covered in pints of my own blood. I don't think I could explain that one to the police. I found it curious that she could appear in mirrors elsewhere, but not directly touch me through them. She hovered over me worriedly in the bathroom mirror, back in that weird humanoid cat form.
"When we are properly linked, we'll have more power together. Until then, I can only touch you through my main mirror."
The fact that she could read my mind and, unless I missed my mark, I was the only one who could hear her, lent more towards the insanity plea. Soon I was dressed and mostly clean of blood and stepping out my door.
"Please be quick," she said, near my ear. I jumped, looking around furiously again before I noticed her warped reflection beside mine in the doorknob. "Yes. Anything that reflects and many things that refract light, though mirrors are best. Why do you think wizards like shiny balls?"
Ah. Okay, it made sense. In as much of a way that this entire situation could even possibly begin to contemplate the possibility of making sense through its impossibility. This whole thing still just didn't seem possible. A quick trip down the apartment stairs and I took in a deep breath of the chilled night air. Then a sudden "Eep!" of surprise from the cat as a hand caught my shoulder and pulled me around the corner.
"Fancy meeting you here at this time of night," a semi-familiar voice murmured while its owner steadied me. I blinked through the shadows and recognized the old man's granddaughter. I never did get her name.
"You released a lot of energy. That makes things curious," she said cryptically. "I knew you weren't a mage, but Gramps gets his way, so now it's back to being his problem. Come on."
She spun and stepped away from me, tugging me along by the hand. I was about to open my mouth to protest in confusion when I realized that the one step I had taken did not put me where I expected to be. She let go of my hand as a pungent odor assailed my nostrils and I blinked at the surroundings. This was definitely much further than just a step away from my apartment.
"Don't try any magic here," she warned me. "It's heavily warded and you wouldn't survive the backlash."
Okay. This was getting weirder. "Magic? Like taking me from my building to here in one step?" I was trying to figure out if there was any way this could be an elaborate stage trick, like the 'transporter' in The Star Trek Experience that was in Las Vegas. I couldn't see any way for that one step to get me here though, wherever here was. There was enough light around for me to see myself and her, but the rest faded into darkness in short order.
She ignored me for the most part, biding her time for a few seconds before grabbing my hand again for another step forward. I didn't even take a step before finding myself in a room that could only be described as a scene from Harry Potter mixed and matched with parts from advanced science fiction.
"Well, well, my dear, I heeded your request and now you don't know what you got yourself into."
"It's Harv!" I heard the cat exclaim nearby. There were definitely enough reflective things in this room for her to be present. I spun and saw the old man, his eyes twinkling quite merrily at me.
"I don't think you realized what you were getting into when you accepted the mirror, lad." He stepped toward me, looking me over. "I expected some confusion, a slow revelation, and maybe to see you back in a week or two. Obviously I didn't realize what I was getting into either."
I simply stared at him, stealing glances at the rest of the room. He caught my attention again as he was suddenly that much closer to me. Snuck up like he did at the yard sale.
"A lot of blood involved, not just all that energy. Hmmm..." His eyes became solid white all of a sudden as he grasped the hem of my shirt. I took a step away but his grip was very strong. "Oh dear. She did that to you? Indeed. The speed of the link was both a bane and a boon. Much slower and there would have been less panic. But just a tiny bit slower and it wouldn't have formed before she killed you." I let my breath out as his eyes returned to normal.
"I told her you weren't a mage, but she insisted you were and you felt okay," he said. This still wasn't making complete sense to me. "So either you have forgotten, or you're not a mage or a warlock. Or anything trained. So really the only things we can do is see if you're locked or leave you to your own devices."
I opened my mouth to ask what the heck he was talking about but I heard the cat whimper. "If you're locked and you're something bad..." She didn't finish the sentence.
"If we leave you alone, you're taking a bigger chance. All that energy definitely attracted attention. Things will be poking around," Harv said. I blinked. He could hear her too?
"I can," he answered, making me jump. "And yes, here in my sanctum, I can hear your thoughts too. Never expect privacy in any wizard's sanctum. So now you need to make a choice, lad. Do you want to leave here and take your chances with the curious ones, or do you want to take your chances with being unlocked?"
I stared at him silently. I had no idea what either of those meant, but he didn't answer until I asked. "To be unlocked you would need to allow it, even if you are locked away from yourself. If you turn out to be any kind of incarnately evil wizard, I will be obliged to destroy you. If you are not of any evil training, you'll have your mind back."
"And taking my chances?" I asked.
"Given the flash that happened, you'll have everything from spirits to elementals to wizards sniffing about. I say 'take your chances' but honestly you'd invariably be under constant attack and probably keeping the little lady busy non-stop trying to keep you alive." The cat whimpered again.
I heard a whisper in my ear, "I'm afraid, but please let him try to unlock you."
I felt a shiver down my spine. If the cat was tied to me such that my death from being evil would put her into the equivalent of hell and she was still happier with that idea than taking chances alone, then I should probably do it. She was possibly the only one I could trust. I knew first hand how my pain affected her.
"Then go ahead and unlock me," I said, steeling myself for whatever I may become as a result.
The old man nodded and sniffed slightly, then simply tapped my chest with a wrinkled finger. I felt a moment of dizziness and almost threw up, but it passed quickly. He smiled and turned his back on me, walking over to a workbench with an odd arrangement of bubbling chemicals and tech items. He soon returned with a small pill bottle and pressed it into my hand.
"I'll keep wards up around your home until you learn. I'm taking my chances, but with this lovely kitty helping you, I'm sure everything will be fine."
I blinked, confused. "Um, what? What am I supposed to do? You're going to try to unlock me, right?"
He chuckled. "Long done. You didn't have any locks on you at all. You're even your natural age. Nothing hidden away, nothing trained."
"Wait, that means he's...?" the cat asked.
Harv shrugged. "A fresh sorcerer, and all yours if you can get him."
I winced as the feline voice squealed in glee, literally bouncing around me. "Would somebody please explain to me what's going on?!" I demanded.
Harv shook his head. "I'll leave that to your famulus to do. Now we need to get you two home before she breaks something." I frowned slightly. She could interact with things here? He shook his head and put his hands over his ears. "Like my old, frail eardrums." Well, she was being quite vocal.
I jumped as a hand landed on my shoulder again. I had forgotten that the granddaughter was still there. I turned and opened my mouth to address her, but I stopped when I realized I was standing in my own livingroom again. I wobbled slightly. It was still my normal "day" period, but I felt exhausted.
"Well, maybe I won't get to visit you like I thought I would, but I'll still poke my head in to help on occasion if you'll have me," the woman said, a small pout at the start of her statement. I got the distinct feeling now more than before that she was flirting with me a little.
"Before you ask," she said, walking over to let herself out the door, "Yes, I'm old enough." She shot a wicked smile at me. Definitely flirting. "One hundred and fifty nine years in fact," she said before she closed the door. That last bit threw me for a loop.
The feline was still bounding around me and making happy noises, based on the sound. I was so tired I couldn't think of anything but bed. I stumbled toward my bedroom and no sooner had I stepped inside and could see the mirror than I was scooped up in furred arms and carried swiftly to the bed.
"Hey!" I exclaimed, only now having the chance to realize that I felt her touch completely through my clothing as if it were not there. "What the?" She had interacted with me before. In fact she had ripped my throat out before. But being picked up by an invisible force was just... weird.
"Please don't think about that too much," she begged. "I was so afraid. Can you blame me? I was trying to save myself, just like you tried to save yourself when you were afraid." She set me down beside the bed.
"I did do a lot of healing for you, and he did an unlock on you, even though you weren't locked you're all tired now." She patted at my arm and I glanced at the mirror, watching her walk around me and examine me from every angle. "You should get ready for bed. I don't think you'll be able to stay awake too much longer."
I was feeling very tired. Trying to push the oddity of the day's events back, I stripped and sat on the bed. I noticed the small pill case the old man had pushed into my hand, lying on the floor. I decided it shouldn't stay there, so I picked it up.
Curiously I opened it, finding what appeared to be some pills wrapped in tissue paper inside, beneath a folded note. Carefully I unfolded the paper and peered at the writing on it.
"It's up to her how she wants to try to finish the link, since you have no idea how to help. But just in case she chooses one way, these might help if you end up needing them. Given the options, she probably will."
My vision was already blurring from exhaustion so I set the note on my nightstand and closed the pill case without examining its contents more closely. I flopped back on the bed, almost unaware as she fussed over me, working to spin me about on the bed and trying to use my hand to pull the covers down.
I had a moment's thought that it was chilly and I should really get under the blankets, but I just couldn't get up the energy to do so. Then I felt a massive, furred body snuggle against me as a huge foreleg draped across me chest. Her muzzle snugged against my throat and I felt her breath on my chin.
My last thought as I faded off to sleep was that it was weird that I was no longer freaking out about a mostly-invisible giant black panther that only I could see in the mirror keeping me warm as I fell asleep. Somehow my brain had just gone numb by now.
It was probably a good thing I didn't look at the wrapped pills or I might just be freaking out despite my exhaustion.
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