Another journal

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Emily perched on the broad stone windowsill of her room, smoking. After the mirror had run through a brief history of the twin kings’ civil war she’d asked it to go into more depth on several points. The mirror was a good storyteller, showing stills and scenes smoothly integrated into its narrative. The basics matched what she’d pieced together from her aunt’s books, which was reassuring. When asked, the mirror had admitted that some faction of the Sidhe was always fighting, but this particular incident had been notable both for one twin killing the other and because the woman they’d fought over had been a human.

The mirror showed Emily a portrait of the the two kings and their bride, laughing with arms around each others’ waists. The woman was Janice. Emily tried to comprehend the ramifications of this. If Janice was human, then she wasn’t family by blood, which made her decision to raise Emily all the more meaningful. How did she first get to the Sidhe? Where was she from, or when? It must have been so difficult to be shoved back into the mundane world after having happily escaped it.

Emily had asked the mirror about her parents, but since she had no real information about who they were it couldn’t help her. They’d looked at a list of those killed in the twins’ war, but even if she confined her search to those lost right before the end she wouldn’t know which two people they were. Her aunt had admitted to Emily that the picture of her parents in the living room was a snapshot she found in a thrift store frame. Emily couldn’t pick her parents out of a line up, let alone a bare list of names.

It wasn’t that she had a driving desire to learn all about the people that had made her. Janice had been all the family she’d wanted or needed. But it would be nice to know who and what these people were so she could figure out her birthright. It would also be nice if she could do magic.

Emily moved to a chair and balanced the writing desk in her lap. She rolled another cigarette, fumbling after she lit is for somewhere to ash. She ended up dragging the chair to the window and staring out at the night sky’s unfamiliar stars instead of the blank sheet of paper on the desk. If she wrote her aunt a letter Emily was uncertain if she’d send it. There wasn’t a point if she wouldn’t get a reply. She looked at the two photographs of herself in the Sidhe, holding them up to catch the moonlight.

When the hare came to visit Emily in the morning, he found her staring out the window, feet tucked up into the chair, writing desk abandoned. There were a dozen cigarette butts crushed out onto the sill and she was still staring at the pictures.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.