7 Doors and Mirrors

The room was nearly silent aside from the occasional painful groan and low mutterings of the girl tossing and turning on the bed. As her road shifted layer by layer from a restless sleep to wakefulness, the extreme pain radiating from her shoulder was an unbearable discomfort. It felt as if someone had taken a blunt object and stabbed it in her shoulder with all their might; hitting it with a truck for good measure.

Her breath hissed out between clenched teeth as her eyes slowly slid open due to her regretfully waking. In sleep, though it hadn't been all that peaceful from the constant nightmares, at least she had been ignorant to the heavy amount of pain that was currently wracking her body.

With a sudden jolt, she shot up to a sitting position, only to have an intense aching sting stab at her right shoulder. She fell back with a light "poof" into the bed. Her breath was ragged as she tried to contend with the unpleasant shock waves that radiated throughout her entire body.

Eyes searched about, taking in what could be seen of the unfamiliar room, as lips pulled into a thoughtful frown. The fingers of her left hand gingerly brushed over her bandaged shoulder. Nastasia felt grateful that her wound had been taken care of, but at the same time, it caused a great worry to brew in her heart.

Having just met, being unable to communicate, she and that demonic beauty could barely be considered acquaintances. It was a rare occurrence for a person to do something for a stranger free of charge. That demon didn't seem to be the altruistic type, however, she couldn't begin to guess at what he would want from her.

"No, bad Asya...." she chastised herself in a whisper, using her pet name. It wasn't good to suspect a person after receiving their good intentions to help. They had only just met one another, what designs could he have other than acting out of compassion?

On the other hand, her mind whispered, there are people that'd sell their own grandmother for profit let alone a stranger. Considering this and the fact that she had just been betrayed by her assistant, Nastasia decided to play it safe. The first sign of trouble and she'd skedaddle while the going was good.

As she thought back to earlier events and recalled how that devilish man held her and how he patted her head, her heart squeezed slightly. Bit by bit, the guard she had just worked up began to unknowingly lessen. Her mind started wandering over his sharp-angled features and the delicate upturn of his lips as he gave a sultry grin. Though, if she had to pick a feature, it was his beautiful and clear ruby eye that made her heart sigh. At first, she thought it was a contact lens, but after viewing his face up close from the side, she could tell he wasn't wearing any.

It made her curious as to how that red eye came about. Perhaps it was a strain of albinism in his DNA that concentrated in a single part of his body? Or maybe it was a mutated gene that resulted in poor pigmentation of the eye? Nastasia soon became immersed in her thoughts, going over the various possibilities, while thinking up ways of getting that demonic beauty to satisfy her curiosity over it.

Gasping as she realized she had fallen into her old illness, she forced her mind back to the matters at hand. It was an unfortunate ill of hers to fall prey to curiosity... and to sate her curiosities, she had the bad habit of going to abnormal lengths.

For instance; had she allowed herself to really fall into her insatiable desire to know, she would bury herself in research to the degree that she would eat, drink, and sleep the knowledge. Once she knew enough to reach her desired end, she would put it to use. Her grandfather had always praised this bad habit of hers, yet at the same time would warn her about it too.

"Curiosity is a good thing, Asya, it keeps you focused, however too much can lead you down a path of ruin. Make sure you keep a proper balance between overdoing it and folly."

Whenever he told her this, he would follow up the advice with:

"Whatever you decide to do, make sure you're proficient on all sides of it. A person who knows all sides of what they're doing is much more desirable than the person who can only look in one direction and then flounders pathetically when asked to turn their gaze another way."

Thus, from her grandfather's constant advice in this way, is how the jack of all trades and master of none "her" was born into this world. If her grandfather spoke it, she would take it seriously and commit it to heart. After her father had died fighting in a war when she was still very young, her grandfather had stepped in to show her a father's love.

She really needed to leave and find her way home before she made those waiting for her worried to death. Though it had only been about a day, she was concerned that word of her disappearance would make it back home. Her heart hurt terribly at the thought of her family thinking her dead.

The pain of her shoulder receded into a dull ache that was easily manageable after laying down and distracting her mind. Testing it a bit by slowly rising to a sitting position on the bed, she found that while it hurt, it wasn't debilitating.

Being good to go, she slid from the bed to venture out and find where that demonic guy had gone off to. Even though they couldn't understand each other's words, perhaps she could find a way to communicate enough to get her point across. Those soldiers seemed to fear him and he was able to get rid of them so easily. Nastasia felt that with his help, getting home would go a lot smoother.

Hopping off the bed, after getting out from the covers, skin that should not have felt a cool breeze felt it. Wrinkling her brow she looked down at her naked upper flesh that she had failed to notice before as she felt her cheeks heat. Well, to treat the wound, one would need to get rid of the shirt that obstructed the ability to heal it. Since it was necessary, this offense could be overlooked. As she began to consider an embarrassing if, her mind quickly squashed it. She refused to think about whether or not that demon possibly saw her naked body. It would make it difficult to face him once she found him.

Setting off she once again drew to a pause as... where was the exit? Walls, walls, and more walls! There were neither doors nor windows! Her eyes flew to the ceiling as she began to wonder if they had tossed her into some underground room to keep her from escaping before selling her into the skin trade. Her heart squeezed painfully as she began to panic from that horrifying idea.

No, wait, this room was pretty big and dark. Perhaps she overlooked the door?

Calming down, Nastasia reached for the candle on the table by the bedside. It was the only light available in the room. Taking it in hand, she walked straight along the wall the head of the bed rested against. The intention had been to walk along it until she found a door. However, as she drew close to the corner where she would need to turn, she became distracted by the full-length mirror laid between it.

Nastasia gingerly reached out to touch the face looking back at her in horror before retracting to touch her own flesh. The "her" in the mirror mimicked the action. Beautiful, poreless flesh rested on a face that couldn't be older than fifteen. It was like looking back in time.

"Well shoot," she muttered, "if I go back looking like this they'll believe I'm my own illegitimate child before they'll believe it's me."

For the forty-year-old her to look like the fifteen-year-old her, was the river she fell into some sort of fountain of youth? As her shoulder started to hurt something fierce, she could not help but curse that river as she lamented miserably.

"If you could do this, why couldn't you heal my shoulder?"