Storytime! - The Entry Between Worlds

For this week's blog, I wanted to do something a little different. I was thinking that I wanted to include some fiction here so I decided that once a month, I will pick a picture and write a little something for that picture. Note: These are not works of great literature, but please enjoy! The picture I used this week is shown below. 

            It had been there for as long as anyone could remember, standing tall above the trees and mountains, so large and grand that it was hard to get a complete picture of it with the naked eye. But Reckah had found the one place in their world that was far enough away and high enough up to see it in its entirety. And what she saw surprised her.

            It was a mirror.

            Mirrors were prized things among her people, held to be sacred and powerful. Only the Priests and Priestesses were allowed the honor of having a mirror in their home.  And the greatest mirror of them all reached high above their mountains, large enough to swallow most of their world if it ever fell.

            Reckah could only stop and stare at the sight before her. It was not something she had ever expected to see. From this vantage point, she could also see above the mirror and into the sky beyond it. Two planets hovered close by and as Reckah strained her sight to see beyond the mirror’s placid surface, she gasped as she saw the shimmer and hint of a icy landscape, completely contrasting with the lush greenery of the jungle she had grown up knowing. Her gaze returned to the planets and for a second, she couldn’t help but wonder… But no, that was no possible. Theirs was the only world known. No other world or people existed. The Priests and Priestesses would have known, in all their divine wisdom, if such a thing were indeed possible.

            As Reckah considered these things, she felt the tug on her string tied around her wrist and sighed. She glanced down at the blessed wristlet that adorned her forearm and grimaced. The Elders were calling her home. Her journey had been achieved. The rite of passage was over. Slowly, very much unwillingly, she turned to make the long trek down the mountain on which she stood, then to the week long hike back to the village. Her foot was in its position to start the climb down, braced on an outcropping, when she stopped and looked back at the mirror. The Great Mirror, she now realized. And a thought entered her mind and took deep root.

            The rite of passage among her people was to find the Great Mirror and stand before it, an adult. She had found it, and her mind was still awash in the images she had known throughout her life of something so vast that she could not see the entire thing, at least not where her village was located. She remembered nights of clear skies and strong stars smiling down upon her people, and the sizzling, crackling lightning that ran the edges of the Great Mirror. A portal to another world.

            What if I was the first of my people to discover what lies beyond that mirror? Reckah could not help but laugh excitedly and she shoved herself back up to the top of the mountain to stare at the sight before her. There, she made a vow to herself. She would make that journey to the top of the impossibly high mountains and stand right in front of the Great Mirror. She would touch its cool surface with her hand. And she would push against it. If the legends were true, like any other mystical mirror, it would take her inside of itself and send her somewhere fantastic and great.

            Purple skies were quickly turning dark with the approaching night. Reckah kept moving. The jungle was perilous at night, but she knew enough to keep herself safe. Her mind was made up. She was going to the Great Mirror. She would stand before it, not several weeks’ journey from it. So even though darkness took over the land, she kept moving, even going as far as to move her travel up into the trees, for safety’s sake. No matter what it took, she would move as fast as possible, only stopping when she had to.

            The tugging at her wrist became even more insistent as the days wore on and as she moved closer and closer, until it began to hurt her wrist and she yanked off the wristlet, tossing it into the mud, barely stopping in her travels. She found food and water where she could, slept when her feet would carry her no more, and moved carefully to preserve her strength.

            She walked for a month. She could feel her village coming after her, but they would not reach her before she reached the Great Mirror. It took her five days to scale the mountains behind which the mirror stood, hovering up so high it was impossible to see the top of it from the highest peak. She walked a ways around the top of the mountain until she stood directly in front of the mirror’s glassy surface. As it shimmered, she could see the outlining of icy worlds and strange things that her heart desired to know. Before her rational mind could stop her, she touched the glassy surface, and was sucked into another world.