“Mirror, Mirror on the wall” she joked.

“Yes Mistress?” Came the reply.

She froze. Did that really just happen? She turned back toward the mirror, its surface shimmering now in a way it hadn’t before.

“Umm…………” she was at a loss as to how to proceed.

“Did you have a question mistress?” the mirror asked.

“Yeah, why do you call me mistress?” as soon as the words left her mouth she realized there were at least a dozen more relevant questions she could have asked. Starting with, how on earth the mirror was talking.

“Because you are my mistress,” it answered, “you have fulfilled all three requirements, you have physical possession of the mirror itself, through which we can communicate, you have the power to summon me and the ability to scry.”

“Scry?”

Did she hear the mirror sigh?

“Yes, mistress, scry, the ability to see visions in reflective surfaces such as water, glass or obsidian.”

Well she had to admit that her interest was piqued now. This overly large and ornate mirror had been left to her by her grandmother. It had arrived on her doorstep, with a simple note attached.

“For Esmerelda, who holds the power.” She hadn’t understood it then but it was starting to make a bit more sense.

Ok, so scrying is one thing, but this mirror is talking to me, she thought to herself. Out loud she asked, “Who and what are you?” Yes, that was definitely a more sensible question. She had about a million questions about her grandmother now, but one thing at a time.

“Let’s just say that I exist in another dimension and this mirror serves as a portal for the purposes of communication for those who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.”

She wasn’t sure if the mirror was being overly simplistic or outright cryptic, she was sure the mirror didn’t mean physical eyes or ears. She was equally sure that she wasn’t living in a fairy tale; this was rural Texas for the love of Pete! Well, she might as well play along. What could it hurt? Maybe she was on a hidden camera show!

She leaned forward and reached out to swipe her hand across the mirrors surface. It responded, the surface shimmering as if she had disturbed a pool of tranquil water. Through the shimmering surface she could just glimpse the other side, just glimpse her future.

I had always known I was special. People always treated me differently, even my parents. I never knew why until one day when I was nine years old. I stood in the middle of my bedroom, facing the bank of windows that dominated the east wall of my upstairs bedroom. There, along the top of the row of windows hung dozens of stuffed animals, out of my reach.

Stretching my arms up and out, I focused on the one I wanted and out loud I said, “Come here!”

In amazement I watched as the stuffed bear detached itself from the wall and floated lazily down and into my waiting arms. I turned to find my mother watching from the doorway. She didn’t seem surprised.

Later that day, I overheard her on the phone telling someone that “The experiment is working.” I had no idea what she meant. It wasn’t until much later that I figured out she had been talking about me.

I began to move small objects first, retrieving a book or a pencil without getting up from where I was sitting. Eventually I moved onto larger objects, like moving the couch without touching it so my mom could vacuum under it. I kept my friends entertained for hours moving objects they requested.

Eventually we figured out that I could move my friends themselves. It was fun until I accidently dropped Jimmy Watkins into a pile of lumber and he broke his arm. It was an accident, but after that most of the kids weren’t allowed to play with me anymore.

Without my friends around, I practiced on myself and found that I could levitate! I went out in the front yard and practiced and practiced until I had it down so well it was indistinguishable from flying. I could fly! This was fabulous and I whiled away entire days flying around my neighborhood.

It was fun until one day I flew too high. I don’t know what happened but it was terrifying. At first, it was fun, I was soaring! Then, as I got really high, it was like I could feel the earth letting of me, gravity gradually subsiding. That wasn’t the scary part; the scary part was when I felt something very much like gravity pulling me the opposite direction, up! The higher I got, the stronger the pull and I felt myself zipping up, up, into space, the air was getting thinner and the earth was rushing away from me. I was in a state of pure panic, struggling to get back. I fought and thrashed my arms around like I was swimming, trying to thrust against the force pulling me upwards.

Finally, gradually, I was able to push myself down a little, then a little more. Eventually I passed some kind of threshold where the force of gravity pulling me toward earth became stronger than the force pulling me up. The problem with this that I began to fall, truly fall. I was plummeting toward the ground, heart pounding, sure I was about to be squashed. Again, I thrashed my arms around like I was swimming, this time pushing against the ground that was rushing up to meet me. I managed to slow myself enough that I didn’t splatter when I hit but it knocked the breath out me.

I lay on the ground unable to breathe or move or scream for what felt like an eternity. Petey Grayson from across the street rushed over and was staring down at me with wide eyes yelling my name. I couldn’t answer at first. Finally, the air rushed back into my lungs in a huge, gulping, gasping shudder. I sat up, panting and sucking in air. Something had tried to take me and I had no idea what it was or when it might strike again. This though kept me grounded for months but eventually the urge to soar through the air was too great to deny.

My mother was hysterical when she heard the story, I overheard her sobbing to my father that, “They are trying to take him from us!”

I didn’t know who she meant until one night about a year later when I woke up to a soft pulsating glow coming through my bedroom windows. I ran to the window that overlooked the front of the house and there right outside my window, hovering just over the roof of the front porch, was a small, silver vessel. It was humming softly and there was an alternating blue and green light bathing the roof of the porch just beneath the ship. I quickly slipped out of my room and ran downstairs to my parent’s room.

I expected my parents to deny the presence of the ship, as they had always denied the existence of the monsters that I clearly knew lived in my closet, but instead they went up the stairs and I heard all kinds of banging’s and angry voices.

The next day we packed up and moved several states away. I learned to hide my powers and I managed to fit into my new school, blend in as a normal sixth grader. Years went by with no one the wiser. I graduated from high school and went to college.

But I always knew they’d find me again someday. As I sit here typing this, I can hear their footsteps, see their ship hovering outside my window again. This time, I’m going with them. I have questions, I want answers. I hope they have good intentions and I can learn from them. But just in case, I have a backup plan. I have developed other powers over the years. I can create and hold onto then project balls of energy. I have been practicing, at first it was just a small amount of energy, but now I can hold quite a bit. I’m sure I could hold and expel enough energy, at this point, to approximate a small nuclear explosion if I need to.

I realize this will be the end of me as well, but I won’t be held prisoner, I won’t be experimented on and I won’t be used as weapon to hurt others. I have to know what was done to me and why and if there are others. I will get answers or I will get vengeance, but I will not stay hidden any longer.

The cougar stared into her eyes. Sara stood stock still, so close to the cat that she could feel it’s breath on her face. She stood without fear, tall, straight backed and staring right back into the cats eyes.

After a few tense moments, the large cat yawned and looked away. The wolves that surrounded her relaxed as the cougar turned and walked lazily back into the forest. Sara herself drew a breath of relief and stretched her back and arms. She felt completely exhilarated!

Leaving the human village behind her had been the best thing she had ever done. She felt at home here in the forest and it wasn’t just because of the wolves. It was the freedom! The lack of humans and their judgments, their silly rules, their inexplicable hatred and fear of the things they didn’t understand, of her.

Yes, this was her world now and she was happier than she had ever been.

This is a continuation, see the original here.

The villagers were afraid of her, she understood this. She had always understood this. From the time she could walk, people crossed the street to avoid her. It had something to do with the wolves.

From her earliest memories, she remembered wolves. She remembered her mother, the sound of her voice, the smell of her and she remembered the smell and the feel of wolves. The first time her mother had walked in and found a wolf standing over her cradle, she had gone into hysterics, so she had overheard her father say, but she had been unharmed.

The wolf had left the house peacefully but returned a few days later, taking up a watchful post at the edge of the woods near the house. Other wolves eventually joined the first. Her parents had been fearful at first, but eventually came to accept the wolves’ presence as normal. They were always there, but never threatening.

When she was old enough to play outside, that’s when the wolves came right into the yard. Again, the first time this happened, her mother had been first terrified, then amazed when she saw that the wolves weren’t threatening in any way. At least twenty wolves had surrounded her and there she stood, in the middle, arms flung wide, head tipped back, twirling in circles, with wolf pups dancing and jumping next to her, laughing!

Her parents tried not to show that they were afraid, but the villagers were openly frightened. No one wanted to be her friend, other children weren’t allowed to play with her, but she didn’t care. She was happy and content to run with the wolf pups and nap in the woods, snuggled up against a mama wolfs fur. Her parents stopped worrying about her safety. Indeed, what child was ever safer? The few times other children turned from taunting to trying to shove her, a circle of snarling wolves drew tight around her. After that, the other children just ignored her.

She had heard the whispers though. That her mother was a witch and her father was a werewolf. Or that her mother was the werewolf and her father a powerful warlock, or that she wasn’t their child at all, but a changeling or a fairy child found abandoned in the forest.

But she knew the truth. The truth that the real monsters were the normal humans. The ones that watched her with fear and loathing, the ones that would hurt her given the chance and for no other reason than they didn’t understand her. They didn’t understand the wolves or her affinity for them, with them. So the feared her and what they feared, they hated and what they hated, they would kill if they could.

But she knew things they did not. She knew the wolves’ secrets, their wisdom, their ways and she knew she could live with them if she chose. She would never feel afraid in the forest, surrounded by the pack.  There was only one sensible thing to do. She had to leave before the villager’s fears drove them to do something horrible.

Standing at the edge of the forest, one had draped across the mother wolfs neck; she stared down at the village full of people that would never be her pack. Never be her people. As the sun edged up over the horizon, she exhaled into the chill morning air, drew in a deep breath, then turned and disappeared into the forest.