Shattered Mirror (teaser-prequel)

by Miriya Valentine

Authoress' Note: I'm apologizing now for not telling my good friends, all of you, of my...
curse, and I'm offering this explanation as retribution. I would like to dedicate this to  
my sister, my host, Sara, who kept me for so many years until her untimely death....
~miri

*the familiar presence, the spirit of Sara, descends on the reader, who feels a sense of 
comfort and hope within the great sadness she keeps, as they read this story...*

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~*~
...the heat is so great
it plays tricks with the eye
turns the road into water
then from water to sky
there's a crack in the concrete floor
that starts at the sink
there's a bathroom in a gas station
and i've locked myself in it to think...
~*~
~shy, by Ani Difranco

I have no memory of my...birth, if you would think to refer to it as that.  At the 
beginning of my consciousnes...I just was.  Sometimes I wonder what did happen, for me to 
appear-I'm assuming there is a reason, and I wonder if there aren't more like me.  But, I 
am most definitely *not* human. I am mystral.

I was given consciousness in the dark.  Cold, unfriendly...the only thing I remember is the 
rough hands that molded me...

~~~~~~

She was born nothing. Created as a slave, something supposedly perfect, she was entirely 
dependent upon her master for everything. Her first clothes were the scant garments of a 
mystral slave, her first steps towards the throne of the master. There had been others
before, all emotionless monsters with no conscience, no need for such a burden.  All had 
gone before the master, each bending wholly to his will.

But this female was different. For unlike the others, she was an empath, one who fed off 
the sensations and emotions of others. With eyes of pale lavender, hair of crimson, she was 
the nothing-child, the girl with a myriad lives...

Miriya.

And this was her life, for a thousand years; maybe more-she held no concept of time. It was 
only her memory that gave her any idea, and those memories were as terrifying and haunting 
as any nightmare. Often, her companions were destroyed for pleasure, brutally ripped and 
shredded apart for her master's enjoyment. And as his handmaid, the mystral, she was forced 
to sit by his throne, pretending to find joy in such monstrosities, knowing that even though 
she was indeed his favorite, a replica was easily made. Defiance was death.

As a mystral, many things were integrated into her consciousness, even before her training. 
She could kiss as delicately as she could kill, and it was many a bedchamber she left, 
knowing she'd taken the life of some unfortunate soul, simply because her master willed it.
She knew of nothing else, even though she felt the sorrow, the pain, as each soul left its 
body, leaving only the hollowed shell.  The pain was great...but she could not disobey.

At all times, Miriya was by her master's side.  During the light, she sat at the foot of his 
throne, his prime dancer, his bodyguard...but when it fell dark, that was when the true 
nightmare began. Her master had a voracious and sadistic appetite in the bedchamber, and it
wasn't a rare occurance for her to leave his bed, bruised and bloodied, to await the dawn 
for the next day's horrors to begin.  It seemed an eternity that she lived this way, unable 
to block the intense sense of guilt and anguish she held dear in her heart-the one thing 
that proved she was indeed not a monster.

"Miriya..."

She turned in her sleep, whimpering softly, her nightmares once again taking hold of her 
mind, claiming the last shards of her sanity.  She murmured some obscure reply into the 
forbidding darkness, willing the exhaustion of her previous ordeal to bring her to the 
comparitive solace of nothing.

"Mystral child....Miriya..."

This dream seemed different. There was no numbness...there was light, and another presence.  
Miriya curled up tighter in her sleep, still unable to awaken.  She seemed to realize the 
importance of this, and her mind sent out careful tendrils of questioning thought.

"Do you want to live this way?"

The question burned at her mind, and a thousand years of guilt poured down on her like a 
rainshower.  She whimpered again, shivering, scared-of what she didn't know.  "No...but I 
have to..."

"Would you be free?"

This voice was male, and gentle, the tone itself drawing back that unforgiving guilt...she 
saw a new world. People laughed...there was no blood, no tears...  In her sleep, tears of 
pain and wonder trickled down her cheeks, falling silently upon stone long ago stained with 
blood.  This was hell...she only wanted to be free...   "...yes..."  Deep within the 
recesses of her mind, something screamed, a banshee howl of rage...

"When he finds of your treachery!!" the voices screamed, laughing, a racous orgy of pure 
insanity.

"You will surely die!" They lilted, creschendoing, breaking down her fragile barriers. 
Madness stared her in the face, but like a countermelody, that voice from her dream soothed, 
wrapping her in a strange sensation-something she'd never felt before-and she was scared.

Warmth...love...

"You will be free."

She awoke the next morning, still in her master's bedchamber, her cheek pressed against 
bloodstained, tearstained marble, knowing it was but a dream.  The sorrow remained, for she 
knew, if only for an instant, a whole new world of light and sensation had opened up to her.

~*~
Rising up, the night is done the bright lights glare
And now the time has come
Held back in my pitied world where everything's undone
A cold wind blows right through me made a hollow shell
There's nothing left just ash remains enrich the soil,
No soul, no soul,
Someone calls there in the shadows
There's an end to the dark,
There's someone out there
Someone like me
The hours pass so slowly, the life's slipping out of me
No way's the right way is there a way out for me?
The hours pass so slowly, the life's slipping out of me
There must be a way out for me....
~*~
~Out of the Shadows by Sarah McLachlan

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