Mirror - Part 2
Rachel looked in the Mirror. Something about the mirror attracted her to it. It had a touch of mystery to it that she hadn't realized when she had bought the mirror. She looked at the clock and the door which were carved at the edges of the mirror in the wood. She picked up her comb and started dressing herself up in front of the mirror, combing her hair. She let her black hair loose from the ponytail as she started applying oil to it. She didn't really like dressing up so much and her hair mostly remained a mess unless she had to go out someplace important or her mother forced her to comb her hair. But this new mirror fascinated her, and it irked her that she didn't know why. It felt like the answer was at the tip of her tongue, at the back of her mind. She felt that the answer was like a carrot dangling in front of a rabbit, always within reach but never getting it. After dressing up, she sat on her bed and started looking through the picture book of different places which had pictures of various places across the world. She looked at them as she tried to imagine how they would be looking in real life, instead of in these paintings.
"Waah! I so wish I could go to these places and experience the lives of the people living there and try out everything which I have ever wanted to. These places look so beautiful. How my eyes long to see these picturesque places.... "
As she was wondering about these things, she heard her mother calling her out for dinner.She went out of the room, not noticing the haze which had formed over the mirror. She went and arranged the dinner table, waiting for her father to come after getting refreshed. After some time, her father, a large man with ginger hair and green eyes which she had inherited from him, came and sat at the front of the table, with her mother and her sitting on both sides, waiting for her father to start the dinner. The dinner table usually remained quiet, with everyone eating their dinner and then going their own ways. But today, as Rachel saw her mother nudge her father across the table, she knew that they would be talking something about her and she would not like it one bit.
Her father stopped eating, cleared his throat and looked towards her " Uhm, Rachel?"
She looked up from her food and asked" What is it, Father?"
'Hmm, how to say this...' "So, what do you think about the son of the General of our King?"
" I don't remember meeting him, Father" she said even though she knew who he was. She knew why her father was asking this question. It doesn't take a genius to figure out where he was getting at.
" You met her at the ball which was held two weeks back. He was the one who danced with you at the ball. He was wearing a gold trimmed blue court with the royal insignia on it. "
"Ah yes, now I remember him, Father." She said accepting her defeat because she knew that her father will continue describing him until she accepted the fact that she remembered.
"What do you think about him?" his father asked, now the cutlery placed on the plate as he had stopped eating food at some point in the conversation and now his focus was completely on her and the answer which she would give. Even her mother was now looking at the conversation with interest as she was listening intently to what she would say.
" I don't have any opinion of him, Father. I see him as I see any stranger walking on the road. Thank you for the food, Father." she said as she got up from the table. Her father's expression remained neutral while some regret or disappointment could be seen on her face as she heard her response. But she didn't care. She got up from the table gracefully, went and washed her dishes and went straight to her room. She closed the door as she flopped on her bed and started crying on her pillow. She knew it was only a matter of time before they kept the marriage proposal in front of her and she would have no choice but to accept it.
" 'Sniff, sniff...' I wish I could just run away from here sometimes. This place has begun to feel like an cage to me. Abadia, Gracias, Waltrer or any other place. I just wanna run away from here. From this small town."
As she turned on her bed, she saw that there was something akin to a haze which had formed over the mirror. When she went near it she saw that the haze had started clearing. What she saw below shocked her. It was the view of a city! And not just any city, if she remembered it correctly, it was the Waltrer City which she had seen in her pictures. And it was up and running too! She could see people going on about their everyday lives, unaware of the fact that someone was looking at them from above. They looked so tiny. She thought if this is what Gods felt when they saw humans from up above in the Heavens. The city looked much more magnificent in real life and she was awestrucked by the design of the palace. Her want to travel around the world increased as she saw the real beauty of it. She then observed that the doors carved into the borders of mirror were open and the hands of the clock were pointing towards East, the direction in which she knew Waltrer City was located. As she closed the door in the borders with her fingers, the view of the city stopped showing in the mirror and the hands of the clock again went to their normal position. When she tried to pry open the door again with her fingers, it didn't even budge an inch. But then she remembered what had happened before she saw this. So she started thinking about the Waltrer City while being near to the mirror while a haze again started forming on it. But when she went too far away from it the doors closed automatically and nothing happened. Now she had got the grasp of how this thing worked. She wanted to know more about it but she didn't know where the old man would be. As she looked at the mirror again, a fire of determination started forming in her eyes....