Kaelen and the Mirror of Salt Part 1

More about Kaelen and the Mirror of Salt Part 1

At the edge of the salt desert, the mirror stood like a cliff that had forgotten how to turn into sand. It was not glass, not a polished metal surface, but a single, towering crystal of salt, layered like a frozen wave. Kaelen felt the burn on his lips; the air tasted of metal and the distant sea, even though there hadn't been water here for centuries. The sun struck the mirror and burst into a thousand milky flames that ran over the salt veins, as if they were streaming with memories instead of light. Varaan gently placed his paws into the crusty soil. The slate-colored skin of his body shone dully, the fine turquoise veins glowing as if the salt had called to them. His horns bore threads of dry moss, which in this aridity was little more than a pale shadow. His luggage left tracks in the salt-caked earth; Each strap suddenly seemed heavier, as if the mirror revealed burdens one didn't want to bear. "They say you don't see yourself in it," Kaelen murmured. Her bow weighed familiarly on her shoulder, a counterpoint to everything that was about to happen. "But what you regret." The wind swept across the plain, picking up hardly sand, but salty dust that burned her throat. Kaelen stepped closer. The surface of the mirror wasn't smooth; it was layered, rough, with hairline cracks, as if time and light had fought and neither had completely defeated the other. When she reached out, her skin prickled as if the air itself had turned to glass. She stood so close that her breath painted tiny clouds on the salty skin. Kaelen forced herself to take a single, steady breath. Then she looked up. She waited for the reflection of her face. Instead, a shimmer formed before her, and from the shimmer, images emerged, one after the other, yet connected like the links of a chain. She saw a narrow path at the edge of a ravine; saw herself, younger, faster, too sure. Back then, she had aborted the descent because the weather was changing. "Cleared by tomorrow," she had said, and moved on. The next day, she learned that an old man had fallen that night on the same path—no one had taut the rope she could have left behind. Kaelen felt her fingers clawing at the thongs of her bow. It was only a brief stop she had saved; a flick of the wrist, a knot, a piece of time. How little was missing. The image transformed. A door, a house on the edge of the Misty Moor, the scent of tallow candles and rain. She saw herself leaving without turning around, heard in the mirror the voice that had wanted to say something behind her back then. "Stay," perhaps. Or "be safe." She had left because she believed that paths disappear when one hesitates.