Through a Looking Glass Darkly
The attic was thick with dust, like a snow of time had fallen across the piles of discarded and forgotten family artifacts. Trunks of old clothing, costumes and unused fabrics, lamps of questionable functionality, and furniture that had been replaced while awaiting cleaning or repair. Perched above the house's multiple floors and high ceilings, it was quite separate from the sounds of the house, and as the hatchway closed behind Alice, she found herself alone but for the birds just outside the round window of colourful glass.
Set at the head of the peaked room, silhouetted by the multicoloured light pouring in through the solitary porthole, stood something tall and thin, with a rounded top, hidden under a thick sheet. Set apart from the other piles, it stood with a certain importance, whatever it was. Pulling the sheet away sent cascades of dust into the air, momentarily clouding the whole room in a sooty, choking cloud.
Perhaps that's why Alice didn't notice at first that the girl standing in the mirror wasn't her … or, wasn't quite her. Wasn't quite right … or was she more right than the girl on Alice's side. She offered a smile in response to the young woman's confused stare, giving her a moment to come to terms before slowly offering her hand, as though the mirror was not what it seemed, but in fact something entirely different. Something that showed not what stood in-front of it, but that carried you quite far beyond.
The journey was less exhilarating than one might expect, like stepping through a window into the room you've just left … though this one was backward. The other Alice, the one from the mirror, offered no explanation, simply smiling pleasantly until, at the first blink, she was gone. Behind the real Alice, the mirror was once again solid, though now it showed no trace of her reflection, just the empty, colourfully lit Attic.
Quickly leaving the room through the hatch and ladder in the floor, she welcomed the return of the sounds from below, the sensation of no longer being alone in a mysterious place. Had she paused for just a moment, she might have realized that what lay below was not her home, but in fact a train, chugging along steadily through a countryside that evades description, in a land that sidesteps sense and reasonable logic.
