Mirror of Words

1.
“Is there any reason why a person must understand another individual?”
“What does the world look like in your eyes without the capacity to understand another?”
“I cannot tell the difference.”
“Between the living and the dead, or between reality and fantasy?”
“Fantasy is the pathway for me to escape—”
“From your remaining flesh in the secular world?”
“All writers are dreamers who have brought forth fantasy into the mundane.
​That is their mission, the only reason I see myself living in this world you have loved dearer than your own life.”
“Why can you not develop a plot, then?”

2.
You are a talented young girl who sees everything besides your own image in the mirror.
It is a small house where the young dreamer lives. A tiny house within the red-brick alleys, just beside the railway station. Up on the seventh floor of the railway road, where the birds surround the red-brick walls, the sun shines down onto her bed. It is the seventh day of the year. Winter has passed, and spring has arrived. She opened her light-brown eyes and looked into the sunrise, where the contour of the golden sphere brightened before her eyes. The ink cranes flew by in flocks for seven cycles.
Time is nowhere to be seen.
She sat up, brushed her light-brown hair with her long fingers, and sat in front of the ancient papyrus sheet. She took out her ink-blue pen and started to write.
First, she searched, with all her talents and the music of the sunrise, for the language out of a thousand blowing winds that had touched her heart with its form.
Then, with the voice of her heart, she chose from the twelve singing muses that had shown her their love through the gliding birds, the style of the symbol.
She called out for the cycle of the stars, which had slept for seven cycling years with the earthly fairies, and planned the scale of the story.
As the birds surrounded the fourth cycle, she blew all her life into the ink cranes for blessings and goodwills.
And then, with the wind of the blowing seeds, she sang the ancient spells that called out the faith of her ever-living breath.
It was the seventh cycle of the birds when her paper cranes began to dance with the glowing sun that had risen into the clouds.
It was a story about a sheep beside her bed, who told her his stories until she had fallen asleep, and about a little girl in a magical city whose protector and guide was an owl, and about a little boy in a cold basement who dreamt that he had turned into an ogre. She started to write about the scenery and the senses she had felt in the adventures.
But she could not recall the plot. She tried again, and started to write about the characters that had entered her dreams, talking to her about their lives and giving her their advice. But she could not tell how these people were seen as images in her mind. Was it the mentor figure? Was it the villain? How should I portray them?
What was the adventure?
She sank back into her little bed as the birds left the house after their seventh cycle.

3.
The sun started to fall dark.
Once upon a time, it had seemed that a person had told her in her dreams that she must observe more carefully before she could truly understand the misguiding languages that floated in her mind. She looked into the sun that had slowly dropped into the linear ocean in front of the little alley where she had lived. And then, she recognized the shadows casting on the red-brick walls; they were the shadows of long-lost human beings. Old and young, tall and small, chattering, clattering, ever moving onward toward the ever-cycling god of truth.
Was it the seventh time I did not finish the story? She thought.
She had lost track of time. It was not a good sign when the lost ones sing. When she started to write and set off the ink birds for stories, the stories became an alley of protection that kept the house away from darkness. Stories are the only reason that had kept the lost ones away from reaching toward the red and away from singing their swan-song. And then she started to recognize the song, louder and louder, clearer and clearer, as they seemed to approach the gold and the red like marching soldiers trying to take away all the colors from her little alley.

What is your given name,
O ancient fair-haired fairy?
Why should you sing of flowing honey
in the forgotten red-brick alley?
If time has sneaked away your memory,
Leave your words of image,
and whisper the spell towards your home-returning.

The human figures sang. Altogether, louder and louder they sang, as if mourning prophecies they transfigured into beasts, both malice and benevolent, hunting after each other, splitting into parts, forming into branches that started to reach out toward the red. The young dreamer was terrified. She clutched her bed and looked at the shadow that started to consume the red-brick walls. And then, when the darkness started to reach her windowsill, she heard them whisper in a chorus:
“What is your name?”

4.
“I don’t know.”
She stared into the pure darkness that was now right in front of her, deformed, ugly, with eyes as large as bowls and hollow as holes.
“You do not have a name?”
The ugly beast spoke again. She sensed the danger in the air, and in his eyes, she saw green for jealousy and red for murder. She gulped and started to walk backward as the red-brick walls began to fall apart and the beast started to approach.
“Let me put it into better language—”
“No.”
“Where do you come from? What is the place like where you live? What are the people you have met? What do you usually do? What do you usually eat? When? What is the relationship between you and the others around you? Can you sense them? WHAT ARE YOU?”
“I do not know.”
“Then I shall have you—”
With the words spoken, she started to run. The stars had fallen apart and the sun had left its orbit. She started to run toward the darkened skies, stepping on waters and hiding in shadowy trees, trying to escape the vengeful monster that had been preying on her like a huntress waiting to leap for her prey. It laughed wildly as it jumped and flew over the many debris of the forgotten red-brick alley.
Then she stopped.
The cypress trees were dancing around her, the cycling stars were surrounding her.
She looked back at the harpy.
“What are you?” she asked.
And then it disappeared.
In front of her was a green hospital room, ghostly-lit. She looked at her own image crouching beside the hospital bed, reading to an old woman who was sitting under a sheet of blankets. It was a stern and quiet look that flashed before her eyes.
Why can you not develop a plot then?
The question that once had needed to be answered so urgently had turned into a mere blessing of ‘You will find yourself a place in the secular world.’

5.
It is a warm April morning.
There are no red-brick walls nor ancient ink cranes, just a young schoolgirl with a book she has just begun to read, sitting in front of her little wooden table, with a sense of humidity in the air. With the ring of the school bell, she took up her book bag and ran for the bus. Her shoes got wet in the mud as she fitted herself into the dark-grey bus, chattering, clattering, filled with schoolboys and girls, getting out of school and returning home just like the little girl herself.
The harpy had stolen her name, and to regain her name, she had to retrace her life in the secular world. On the way, she sang to herself the song from her diary:

What is your given name,
O ancient fair-haired fairy?
Why should you sing of flowing honey
in the forgotten red-brick alley?
If time has sneaked away your memory,
Leave your words of image,
and whisper the spell towards your home-returning.