1 1/Cursed Mirror

Alice was a pretty smart girl. Not a genius by any mean, but still relativly intelligent.

However, she was unable to explain her current situation.

Instead of waking up in her bed, like most people would expect, Alice woke up in a strange place she never saw before. The first thing she saw was that weird statue, as tall as a house, of a woman holding a sword in her right hand and a shield in the other. The statue looked like it was made of glass, and Alice felt uncomfortable looking at it for too long...

Very uncomfortable.

Around the intimadating statue and the young girl, there was a forest. But not a normal forest. For some reason, the trees here, just like the statue, were made of what was, or at least looked like, glass. Where it was supossed to be wood, it was glass. Where it was supossed to be... actually, what are leves even made of ?, there was glass. It was all glass, glass and glass.

"Am I dreaming ?"

Nobody answered. Alice reapeated her question, just in case, but, again, no answer.

Alice waited. If this was a dream, then just waiting was enough for her to escape this mysterious forest.

She waited for several minutes before coming to the conclusion that this was probably not a dream. That possibility wasn't entierly impossible, but it was unlikely.

Dream didn't last for that long, and this all felt way too real. If this was really a dream, something absolutly unexplainable would have happened already.

But if this wasn't a dream... then what the hell was happening ?

Alice had no idea, but she was determined to find an answer.

She got up, threw glances around to verify she hadn't miss some small details, and breathed deeply.

Anxious, Alice begun to explore the forest of glass.

Who knows ? Maybe there was somebody here, to help her. But Alice found nothing of the sort.

There was nothing in this damn forest, exept trees made of glass, the statue, and dirt. There was no hint of grass, no insect.

There were no deer, no bushes, no traces of civilization whatsoever.

This place was beyond strange now. It was... creepy. Very creepy.

It wasn't like there was something inherently terrifying about the forest of glass, but the fact that there was nothing was somewhat more stressing than the precense of something.

After all, nothingness could kill. Alice was feeling kind of thirsty already, and if she really found nothing to drink, she could potentially die of thirst.

Besides, Alice also felt... alone.

After almost twenty minutes of walking without actually finding anything, Alice saw something that wasn't supossed to exist.

She saw the edge of the world.

There was no other way to put it.

At one point, the ground behind her feet just... stopped. In front of her, there was just the sky, and nothing else.

It was as if Alice was in some sort of flying island randomly floating in the sky. Well actually, the "It was as if" was unecessary.

Alice was on a flying island.

The young girl took a step back.

Where was she ? Why was she here ? Was this even Earth ? If that wasn't the case, was she... dead ? And if she wasn't dead, was she going to die of thirst here ?

Alice somehow managed to stay calm despite all of these questions running in her head. Panicking when you knew next to nothing about your situation was always a bad idea, anyway.

Alice breathed in and out.

"Everything is fine"

Alice explored the dreadful forest once again.

For hours and hours, she walked in that unchanging place, searching for... well, anything that could help her.

She was getting more thirsty and scared with every passing second. Alice cried several times without really understanding why, and she even begun to spoke to herself on occasion, to make it seem as though someone was with her.

She thought about herself, about her life. It wasn't a really happy one, but it was better than the nothingness of death.

At some point, she tried to climb on top of one of the glass tree to have a better view of the island, but she failed reapeatidly.

Alice was slowly losing hope.

But finally, somewhere near the south edge of the island, she found something interesting again.

It was a very large mirror, laying in the forest beetween two of the tallest glass trees.

The mirror, like everything in the forest, wasn't anything like Alice saw before. It was just too big to be a normal mirror.

Alice saw herslef on the mirror.

She was a black-haired and green-eyed teenager. She was small for her age, and looked younger than she really was. Many people would have called her cute.

Alice winked. Her reflection winked. She flicked her head, and so did the reflection.

Alice felt heavily disapointed. For some reason, she half-expected her reflection to do something weird, like winking with the wrong eye or something.

"What is this mirror doing here ?" said the young girl.

She inspected it with curiosity. The mirror was huge, bigger than any mirror Alice ever saw. The frame used looked beyond fancy as well, so this thing was probably expensive. Not that it was useful in Alice's current situation.

After a while, Alice came to the conclusion that nothing here was really important or useful, so she decided to leave.

But just when she threw a last glance at her reflection, the Alice in the mirror winked and flicked her head.

Then, she slowly approached... and phazed through the mirror as though it was nothing.

The mirror broke into pieces, to the dismay of the one that passed through it. A glass shard almost hit the daredevil in the head.

Then, Alice and the... being that passed through the mirror looked at each other for a long time, with expressions that were very hard to read.

And then, finally, the being that passed through the mirror begun to speak:

"Hello... I'm Alice... Are you human ? What's your name ? What's this place ?"