My vision swam and my emotions raged as I was flung from the mirror and my body slammed against an old wooden floor, glass and debris bouncing, dust scattering after years of dormancy. I gasped for air and reached my hand upward toward the massive full-length framed mirror from which I had just been ejected. I scampered to my feet, rushed back toward the mirror, barely managing to keep myself standing. My arm outstretched I ran to it, slamming my hand against the glass. It shattered. The shards fell from the frame and turned to dust as they collided with the floor. Meredith had told me once that mirrors have a finite lifespan. Used too much, they grow thin and easily break. How many times had this mirror been used? Meredith was dead.

Meredith was dead.

Meredith.

I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, but I could still hear her words echoing from our training. Don’t scream, she had told me. Don’t let anyone know where you are, no matter how bad it hurts. No matter what you’ve lost, it’s nothing compared to what you still have to lose. Don’t scream. Don’t scream.

Slowly turning around I surveyed the room I was in; it was an attic, and old attic, the beams were solid, but aged. In front of me, at the other end I could see an octagonal window, broken, moonlight rays spreading softly across the floor and glinting softly off of the broken glass. I stepped forward, my flats crunching against the glass, the floorboards announcing my presence with a creak; the death rattle of a house long abandoned by the ages. Beside me I heard the sound of paws against the floor. I glanced down, Mr. Giggles was standing beside me, quietly. I immediately scooped him up into my arms. He was here, the last remnant of my broken former life, all smashed to pieces mere minutes ago by an intruder wielding a supernatural strength. No, no that wasn’t all. I looked down to the floor again, my bow. The bow Angela had won for me. It lay there along side its quiver.

“Don’t drop that bow,” Meredith had told me. “Don’t you dare drop that bow, keep it in your hand.”

Keep it in my hand. Keep it in my hand. Mr. Giggles climbed from my arm and onto my shoulder as I bent down and took the bow and quiver into my hand, slinging it onto my back.

“We’re alive, Mr. Giggles,” I said, trying my best to sound confident as I walked to the door, exiting the attic. “As long as we’re alive we’re hope. It’s what mommy always told me.”

Mr. Giggles mewed in response. I petted his head as I creaked down the stairs, emerging into the foyer of a destroyed home. The floor had been torn up in many places, pictures that once hung on the wall were broken in half and laying on the decaying wood planks.

“We have to find a mirror, Mr. Giggles,” I said quietly, still choking back tears. Had I really seen Meredith die? Was she dead for real? She hadn’t been in her human form, she’d taken the form of a Fae. Her true form. If she’d died in her true form, she was really dead. Her soul reset, all of her memories gone. Meredith gone. For me. Why for me? Why was I so special? I wasn’t special. She’d died for nothing.

“I don’t suppose you know where we could find a mirror, Mr. Giggles?” I asked him. He immediately jumped from my shoulder, the pads of his paws thudding against the floor as he moved silently through the foyer and looked from left to right. I followed him quietly, taking a right turn into what must have once been a living room. A rotting, overturned couch lay in the center of the room, an endtable with a broken leg. A huge stone fireplace, inert for decades. I ran my fingers across the cold stone as I made my way through the space, careful where I put my feet. This place, though dead, had once been alive. People, families had once inhabited this space. I could almost hear their laughter through the ages as they sat around a warm fire, not knowing that one day their lives, as they knew it would come to an end. Their family, like the one I had found, the one that I had longed for all my life, had been terminated, and here I was on my own. How strange was that? You spend your entire life in the shadow of someone else. Someone who teaches you, who guides you, you are them, and they are you, and one day, just like that, you’re on your own.

Mr. Giggles mewed again, I turned to him and found what I was looking for, a mirror overturned, facedown on the floor. I stepped forward and lifted it up, laying it against the wall and blowing years of dust from its surface.

“Where are we going, Mr. Giggles?” I asked, as if he could answer me. “Meredith, she said there was a pub called Howell’s downtown. I don’t know a Howell’s. I was never old enough to drink back then. I guess I may never be old enough. Well, if it’s a pub, then it’s probably in Depot Town, the historic district. So we could start by going there but…”

Mr. Giggles mewed and scratched the floor. He was right, where would I find a mirror in Depot Town? Meredith had shown me how to use the mirrors, she’d shown me that all you had to do was imagine the place you wanted to go, but it only worked over short distances. You had to know where you wanted to go, and I was having trouble remembering where a mirror would – oh yes, that was right.

“There’s this place,” I said to Mr. Giggles. “It’s called um…’Go Ice Cream’. It’s super close to Depot Town and they have a mirror in their dining room. I can…we can go there. Come on, Mr. Giggles.”

Mr. Giggles obediently hopped up onto my shoulder and I placed my hand against the mirror. I concentrated, trying to remember the layout of the dining room at Go Ice Cream. Right, it was a rectangular room, plate glass windows at the front overlooking a street. Picnic tables inside, and…a mirror, near the front of the room. I closed my eyes and allowed the mirror to take over. Just like always, the room changed around me and when I opened my eyes I was standing in the dining room. It was still open, fluorescent lights shone brightly above, and just as I remembered, the dining room was empty. I pressed forward, one foot in front of the other against a thinly carpeted floor. Yeah, it was time to get out of here, Depot Town was a few streets over and I could –

“Hello!” A voice said. I turned rapidly and saw a girl standing in the doorway to the dining room dressed in a pair of black pants and a white button-up top. The standard uniform of Go Ice Cream. Was it a girl? I squinted harder, the face had masculine features but the hair was…it was a trans woman. A trans woman like me, but human. She hadn’t had the same opportunities I’d been given but she looked good, very, very convincing. I smiled. “Are you okay? You look a little beat up.”

I smiled and nodded. “I’m okay!”

“Mmm I don’t think so,” She said, stepping closer to me and examining my face. “You look like you got hit by a truck.”

I knew that any bruises would fade within the hour, she would probably find that a little weird.

“I’m okay,” I reassured her. “Hey, do you know a place called Howell’s? It’s supposed to be around here?”

“Aren’t you a little young to be going to pubs?” The girl raised an eyebrow. I would have smirked, probably, if I’d been in a joking mood.

“I’m looking for someone,” I explained. “I need…I have to find them, like now.”

“Why is there a bow on your back?” She frowned. “And you have a cat.”

“It’s uh…a cosplay,” I stuttered. “My…friend is taking me to a convention.”

“Are the bruises part of the cosplay?” She asked, stepping forward a bit to take a look at my face.

“Maybe,” I said, smiling a bit. “My name is Jasmine, what’s yours?”

“Jasmine? That’s a really pretty name. My name is Ashleigh.”

“Nice to meet you, Ashleigh,” I said. “So do you know where-“

“You know what you need?” She said, grinning again. “You need ice cream.”

“I don’t know if I have time-“ I started to protest, only to have her interrupt me.

“Come on honey,” She laughed. “You look terrible, and everyone loves ice cream.”

“I guess you’re right,” I relented. “I do like ice cream.”

I hadn’t had ice cream in years. Meredith was dead. I was eating ice cream. Meredith was dead and I was eating ice cream.

“Stay right there, please,” She told me. “I’m going to go get you some ice cream.”

“Okay,” I nodded. As she left the room I sat down on one of the benches. Mr. Giggles looked up at me expectantly. “I don’t know what we’re doing here, Mr. Giggles.”

Sitting down was a bad idea, I had too much time to think. Too much time to think about the past, how much I missed mom, how much I missed Meredith. I recalled that first day, more than a decade ago so perfectly. How I’d begged her to dominate me. How I’d known it was wrong, but I pressed on anyway. If I hadn’t pressed on would she have still done it to me? I don’t know. All I knew though, was that in the entirety of those eleven years spent cleaning, scrubbing, and dusting, I never once hated her. Not once. Ashleigh came back with the ice cream, a single cone. I forced a smile as she handed it to me. I stood.

“I should really take this to go,” I explained. “Thank you so much, I…I think I needed it.”

“Of course sweetie,” She said to me. “Hey, if you need anything, come back here, okay?”

“I will,” I nodded. I felt her eyes on me as I walked from the dining room and toward the street, Mr. Giggles following close behind. A rush of warm air cleansed me as I crossed the threshold and pressed on to the sidewalk. The occasional rush of a passing car, the kaleidoscope of streetlights overhead, all punctuated by the diverse crowds of people crossing the streets, making their way down the sidewalks, or stopping to admire store displays. How long had it been since I’d been on the streets of Ypsilanti? Too long. It hadn’t changed much in eleven years, but it never did, and that was the beauty of it. I smiled a bit as I took Mr. Giggles into my arms and rushed across the street, darting into an alleyway. A few hundred yards and I’d be in depot town. From there, finding this pub would be easy.

As I pressed on through the alley I began to feel incredibly uneasy. I licked the ice cream cone and then looked ahead. On either side of me, a sleek brick wall, one sporting a deeply inset window, framed with a peeling green windowsill. Beneath my feet gravel crunched and I was acutely aware of the street behind me, disappearing with every single step. I needed to get out of here, I could just walk on the sidewalk without taking this stupid shortcut. I turned to leave and gasped as a shape stepped out in front of me. A man in a dark overcoat. I began to scream, but I was instantly muffled as a hood was shoved unceremoniously over my head and my hands were restrained behind my back.

“No, no, no!” I screamed, but my cries fell on deaf ears as I was forced further down the alley. I began to kick as one of them tried to push me, and then, all of a sudden, I felt a strike against the back of my head, just before I lost control of my senses and fell into a downward spiral, losing my grip on consciousness and succumbing to my fate, whatever it would be.