Through the Looking Glass
A looking glass never tells a lie. I know this, for I am one who looks into the mirror and sees the world in all its decaying beauty. But today I simply see myself, sharp lines and angles like a carefully designed geometric shape. At one time I would have called myself comely. Now I am not so certain.
I follow the sharp lines of my shoulders down to my long fingertips. My hands were once graceful, strong yet delicate all at once. They were the hands of a hero, able to hold my arm steady when face to face with evil incarnate and unafraid of what would come next.
Yet that was a time called memories. They are no longer graceful hands, and I am no longer a hero. There is no need for champions in this New World, no need for me. They are the hands of one who has seen battle up close, has faced death and barely escaped with their life. They are battle scarred and broken just as I am.
I can stretch out my right hand, slowly extending each finger until it appears almost normal. But normal is deceiving. I have long since learned that anything can appear the way it is made to appear. It is what I do when I walk down the street appearing to be the well-adjusted and content heroine that people expect to see. They believe I am strong and happy and no longer living in fear of unnamed shadows. Perhaps I am.
Yet none of these things encapture me entirely. Appearances say nothing of the sadness, the loss of being one of war’s victims. They conveniently forget the turmoil of being the sole surviving member of a once great family line. Once you reach adulthood people no longer call you an orphan, but that is what I am. An orphan with no one in the world to call my own. Mum and Dad were killed by insurgents; Celia died fighting for the cause. Why them? Why me?
Sometimes surviving is penalty enough. Your world ends and you’re left to pick up the shattered remains of life.
After awhile you almost get used to the world ending. It ended once when my parents died, twice when they killed my sister. The world could end a third time and I’d never notice. Not that there’s anyone else for me to lose. No one else is left. They all died, just like everyone else.
I remember my friends still living, the remaining members of the Freedom Fighters who escaped painful deaths at evil hands for equally painful lives that the complacent left behind in the wreckage of war. What is left for us now that there is no one left for us to save?
My hands are not the only things that have changed with the passing of time. In fact, the woman I see in the looking glass barely resembles the young girl I once was. A war seperates them like a chasm that can not be crossed. There is age behind my gaze; a million recollections of a time when I still existed. Pain clings to my lashes, and in my eyes I both lose and find myself, torn between two realities that I will never quite belong to.
Sometimes, when I close my eyes tight enough, I can still see a glimmer of my youthful innocence amid the scars. Still, I know it remains irretrievable, my fate irrevocable. I fought and killed and bear the consequences of my actions. Oftentimes I wonder why this hurts so little. Perhaps it is true what they say about never desiring to undo what can not be undone. Without the pain my hands would not be what they are today. I would not be who I am today.
Other changes in me are too small to notice-the brusqueness of my voice and the way I stand a little straighter when people mention the War. I am proud, proud to have come face to face with evil and conquered it-if only temporarily. My battles are not yet over, no matter what others claim, because battles never really end when the end is not the outcome you want. So I’ll fight and fight until I win or until I die, whichever comes first. This is what a soldier does. What I do.