Mirror Image

[Faith Augustin]

24th Ymiden, 717

Sleep came slowly that night, and Faith did not really understand why.

Padraig had fallen asleep some half-break before. She knew this by the steady rise and fall of his chest as she lay nestled in his arms. The way that he breathed changed as sleep overtook him, yet as she shifted slightly his arms tightened around her. Her smile at that was one born of contentment and yet, somehow, she was not tired. She should be, it had been another busy trial, but she was not. So, she closed her eyes for a moment to think about how to get up without waking him.

And in that slight movement, that brief moment, Faith tumbled into sleep and fell into her dreams.

She was standing and looking into the mirror. Not a mirror, not this one. This was the mirror, and in it she could find all the answers, if she only looked into it from the correct angle. Faith knew that, as surely as she knew that the wheat which she stood in grew on her farmland on Scalvoris.

The tips of the wheat tickled her bare arm and Faith stopped trying to find the answer in the mirror just for a moment in order to look down at where that irritation came from. She was wearing a lovely dress and she wondered if it was the dress she would get married in. Maybe. But she hadn't made that yet, so maybe it wasn't.

The wheat was tall and Faith was, as always, short. That meant that the individual blades danced and tickled up her arms and against the beautiful silk gloves she wore. The gloves were black and the dress a light cream which was almost white. That was her. Almost white.

"White is for freedom." Faith lifted her head and looked in to the mirror. Her own eyes looked back at her but Faith knew, without a doubt, a simple truth. "You aren't me, you just look the same. I'm Faith, although I was Vesna. Augustin, too, but Nardovino so they tell me. I used to be not-free, but now I am. In all three places."

Looking at the woman in the mirror, Faith wondered. "Are you the magic mirror? I looked in one once and I was blonde. I didn't have more fun, though. Can I ask you questions? Truth for truth and lie for lie? Isn't that who we are?"

[Leech]

Leech lay in her bed in her tiny, bland apartment above the toy shop. She recalled coming up after tidying the store one last time to do the basics of her life. She had to wash her face, wash her outfit, hang it up for the evening to dry, and then eat a little morsel of something. Had it been bread? She couldn't quite remember. Leech had elected to go to bed early instead of dinking around with her peg toys. This day had been a bit topsy turvey with the arrival of a letter from Tristan Venora. Now, in several trials time, she would be on a ship bound for the Eastern Settlement to deliver a parcel of cat toys. What would the world think of next.

Unable to get to sleep - or so she thought - Leech rolled herself upright and placed her feet on the cold wooden floor. There was too much on her mind for her to sleep. Maybe she would mess with her peg toys. Working with her hands always calmed the soul. She went to her desk where her carving tools normally lay. Instead, it was barren. Maybe she had picked up this evening? Leech mumbled grumpily to herself as she went towards the chest at the end of the bed. This was the only hiding place she would think to put things in. Aside from the few clothing items she had, it was mostly empty. She pushed the lid up. To her shock, a gust of wind pushed itself out of the now bottomless chest. Leech leaned in, reaching a hand into the blackness. To her dismay, something grabbed her and pulled her into the darkness.

Leech landed with a plop in a field of wheat. She spat some golden kernels from her mouth and tugged a strand from her hair as she straightened herself up. Well, this was new. Looking around, the girl saw a floating object only several paces behind her. What a strange place for a mirror. She wore a black dress, oddly ornate and silky. It was not her customary garb to say the least. Leech made sure to crush the wheat in front of her away before she stepped forward. She did not want these golden shoots to touch her if it could be avoided. The wheat bent easily, making a golden carpet for her as she walked up to the mirror.

It showed her her mirror image; however, this woman wore white instead of black. How could a mirror change the outfit she was wearing. Leech looked down as the replicant spoke. White was for freedom? This image then went on to spout more absurdities. Who was Faith? Why did she insist that she was a Nardovino. This woman may have looked like her, but she could not possibly be her.

Could she?

"Black is beautiful and clean. White can be dirty," Leech commented, seemingly arguing with herself. She was not capable of understanding that this strange reflection was not some form of herself. Instead, she thought it was a confused form of her mind. "No, you are not Faith. You are not an Augustin. You are Leech. You are me. I am Leech."

"What would I ask myself? That is stupid. If you truly are me, you would know what I know. That makes you a lie."

[Faith Augustin]

"They can both be beautiful." Black and white, white and black. Them. "When I was a slave I wore black. Sometimes grey, usually black. Now I'm not a slave, so I wear whatever colour I like. Padraig likes red, he always has." Faith grinned at the mirror, wondering why it was showing her, herself, but talking like not-her. "But that's because loves me. Toes to nose and dimples."

She wasn't Faith? What a silly thing to say. "I am. It's the real me name. And I'm not Augustin yet, but I will be once we're married. Though, I am alredy, really. You can't be me, I don't say things so silly." Considering that for a moment, she shrugged, "That's not true. Sometimes, I do." A frown of concentration took her face for a moment and Faith felt her forehead crinkling in thought. "I'm not Leech, that's an animal. You're not Leech, you're the mirror."

The mirror wasn't really being very sensible, Faith considered and she lifted the apple to her mouth, taking a bite and then holding it out to the hummingbird which landed on her fingers and ate the pips, spitting out the apple as it did.

"So, if I'm you, I'd know things. I don't know things about you. You, it seem, don't know things about me." The hummingbird looked up and nodded in agreement, then got back to eating. "So, we can't be each other. Maybe. Maybe I think you look like me because you're in the mirror?"

That made sense to Faith. Or, precisely, it made sense in the chaos that was her dreaming mind. "So, ask me a question and I'll prove I'm not you but me." The hummingbird sat on her shoulder, looking at the girl in the mirror. Why didn't she have a hummingbird, Faith thought.

Surely, if she was the mirror, she'd have a hummingbird? How strange. Maybe she was Leech, after all.

[Leech]

"I was never a slave. I do not understand color." This replicant was talking nonsense. She only ever wore black because it was all she could afford. It was simple and professional. She need not worry about dust and tears could be easily hidden with black thread. Who was Padraig anyways? She would never be caught in red. Red was the color of prostitution in her opinion. Was this woman implying that she enjoyed tantalizing night treatments beneath the covers? Disgusting. Never had Leech considered the act.

"You are Leech. You do not love and no one loves you. You are not an Augustin. You never will be." Leech was obstinate. She was firm in her statement. This reflection was ignorant and crazy. Didn't she know who she was? She was the forgotten Nardovino, a fraction of a woman. Who could love a broken doll? "I am no mirror. You are."

The first intelligent thing that came out of the replicants mouth was the acceptance that they were not each other. That seemed like a reasonable conclusion. Leech watched the hummingbird act in a human way. Did little birds nod like that? She had never seen it. Leech looked over her shoulder. There was no bird to comfort her. Nothing but emptiness. As it always had been. So, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a green apple. The other girl was eating a red one. Gently, Leech pressed both of her thumbs into the step. The apple was soft, rotten from inside out. Leech showed it to the other her before dropping it.

"You are not me," Leech stated. "Why? You talk to much. I talk little."

[Faith Augustin]

"No, I was a slave." The mirror really didn't seem to understand the simple things. Faith frowned, though, when the strange person who was living in the mirror and hiding in her reflection spoke about not understanding colour. What was not to understand about it? Even someone who was colour blind understood that colour existed. What a strange person this person was.

No wonder they lived in a mirror.

"I am Faith. I love and I am loved. You don't know me. You don't even understand colour and I am full of that." No, she'd had enough of being told what was an what was not by the monosyllabic creature in the mirror. Just because it looked like her, Faith was coming to the conclusion that it most certainly did not know her. "You speak as though you know. You do not know."

Yet, suddenly, the mirror-creature seemed to decide that it realised it was not her. Faith sent a prayer to Famula in thanks that this foolish mirror-thing was finally understanding what she had been saying all along. She watched as the thing that looked like her, but really wasn't, took out a rotten apple.

"I am not you." She smiled and looked at the girl in the mirror. "I understand, you do not. I was born Vesna Nardovino. They made me a slave the trial I was born and then I was not a name anymore. Then I was Faith and now I am Faith Augustin. You are Leech and your apple is rotten."

She looked at the mirror and Faith frowned, examining the reflection that was not her. The reflection looked physically exactly the same, but her eyes were different. Her movement, her stance. She had not been a slave, Leech said and Faith thought that was probably true. There was not the way of standing which spoke of the training she had been subjected to.

Leech did not, Faith knew, understand. So, she waited for the question she had invited. Leech could ask or not, that was up to her.

[Pash Raj'oriq]

Thread Rewards

I am so sorry that this thread got abandoned! I was very excited for Faith’s twin sister as a PC. I enjoyed just a little snippet of their potential interactions, even though it was all just a dream in Emea. They became very different people, which was quite fascinating to watch all of those realizations unfold.

Faith

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