NOVEL NEXT 10: Mirror Scene
I was led into another portion of the wondrously glowing forest for all of about ten meters before she suddenly stopped, pointing a wrinkled finger down a small incline. Oh! Hidden in the trees was a rock pool the size of a large bathtub, carved and smoothed to provide a place to bathe. Clear hot water poured into the bath from a small stream that wound in through the forest. On the opposite side of the rock tub the water flowed out again, continuing the little stream off into the forest.
“This is nice,” I said, giving the older woman an appreciative smile.
“Yes, yes. It’s lovely, now get in,” she grumbled back, motioning impatiently towards the bath.
I did as she asked, carefully making my way down to the edge of the pool. It looked kinda hot, so I tentatively dipped my toe in to test the temperature.
“Ah! Fuck!” I swore, pulling my foot back almost immediately. “That shit is way too hot!”
“Youth,” the old lady grumbled dismissively.
“My body is like ten minutes old!” I complained, frowning up at her.
“Fine, fine. No need to pout at me young Elias. Stupid name by the way. You ought to pick a new one,” she said with a frustrated roll of her eyes. “Let me adjust the temperature.”
She raised her arm and closed her eyes, the air appearing to go strangely still for a moment in anticipation. There was a stir, a breeze and then markings like blue glowing vines twined their way up her exposed forearm. When they reached her hand, a burst of blue light shot out and raced off into the forest, following the path of the stream closely.
“Try it now,” she remarked with the first smile I’d seen on her. It was the smile of someone showing off, but it was still a smile, so good on her!
I tested the water again with my foot and found it to be a much nicer temperature. So with an eager sigh, I slipped in, feeling the grime being almost tugged off me, like the pool was scrubbing me. Oh my, that felt strange.
“Uh, this feels weird,” I called up, then smiled yet again at how cute my voice sounded. There was actually something I liked about the masculine speech patterns funnelled through a high voice that was unmarred by the ravages of testosterone. It gave my voice a husky quality that was pleasing to the ear.
Another roll of her eyes and she nodded. “Yes the pool is enchanted to clean you, stop squirming.”
Before I took her advice, I dunked my head under and let it get my face and hair for a moment. Then when it was done, I pushed back above the surface and leaned gratefully into the rock, letting the water clean me off. It had been a long time since I just had a nice relaxing bath.
Closing my eyes, I tried to let myself just sit and process everything that had happened. Magic existed, that was fairly obvious. Magic fucking existed! I wonder if I could try to learn it? I hope this old lady was willing to teach me, because I would be gutted if she wasn’t. She seemed so grumpy though, maybe it would be best to find another teacher?
Unbidden, my last memory of Grace flashed through my mind’s eye, and I felt my stomach drop into the bottom of the pool. Fuck. I had just been pulled away from everyone, all those friends, my new family. My heart took up a dull ache as I began to worry. Would they be alright? Would I ever be able to see them again? I needed to ask questions, but there were so many— where did I start?
“Am I allowed to ask questions?” I called up to her, my voice significantly more sombre than it had been when I was still bouncing around with euphoria.
I heard her grumble in annoyance from up on the bank for a good five seconds before she finally muttered, “Fine, go ahead.”
“Where are we?” I asked, opening my eyes to watch and wait for an answer.
“Excuse me? We are quite clearly in the Nameless Garden,” she frowned, tilting her head curiously at me. “Specifically, we are in my Grove.”
“I don’t know what either of those things are sorry, is the Nameless Garden somewhere on the ring world, or is it different?” I asked, curious now.
“You are remarkably ignorant for someone who found my magefruit,” she said, really frowning at me now, like I was a puzzle to solve.
I wondered whether I should tell her where I was from. Pretty clearly I wasn’t a native to this place, wherever it was, but more than that I came from a place where magic didn’t exist, as far as I knew. How would she react if I said I was from Earth, from another place or world?
Taking a chance, I began to speak about the past week of my life. “So about a week ago, my University was taken from the city it was in and placed on the ring world. They took everyone, the buildings too.”
Her eyes lit with sudden understanding and excitement, and she began to pick her way down the small slope. “Ah! That explains many things! Wonderful! No wonder the fruit taught you my way of speech. It should work on the accent though, truly strange. Regardless! It has been almost a hundred years since the last time a new people was brought to the ring!”
Hold up, it taught me her language? Oh holy shit I
was speaking a different language. How the hell did I not notice that? Fuck, magic was pretty wild.She stopped at the edge of the pool and dipped her feet into it. I watched the water gnaw away at the mud there until it was gone, washed away out into the stream below. This bath was so damn cool!
“Tell me about the world you came from,” she said, her demeanour completely changed to one of excitement now.
“Uh, it was called Earth. It was smaller than the ring world, spherical, and it had a population of around seven billion people the last I checked,” I said, trying to think of what to say. “Despite what the— people used to say, it was a fairly peaceful world, at least by the standards of our own past. We had a good life expectancy in much of the world, entertainment and arts flourished. It was honestly kinda nice now that I look back.”
“But no magic,” she said with a smile, like she’d figured out some sort of ancient mystery.
“Yeah, no magic,” I nodded, then gave her a pleading look. “Can you uh, explain what happened to me now? Also, I have friends to get back to. I don’t know what they think just happened to me.”
“Oh, there is no just about what happened I’m afraid my dear. You’ve been in that fruit for almost forty days,” she said, showing a little compassion for the first time. Forty days? What?
Before I could freak out over that little bomb that she’d dropped on me, she kept speaking. “You found one of my magefruit. You see, when a mage reaches a certain level of power, they are able to make a magefruit. This allows them to gain advantages in the world of magic, how and why is not important at this time however. The real point is that the magefruit must be planted outside the Nameless Garden, which is the plane of existence we are currently in.”
“Right, we’re in a different plane of existence from the ring, got it,” I nodded, my mind very much not having got it, instead exploding like a watermelon that had just met a 50-cal bullet.
“I doubt it,” she chuckled, but explained further anyway. “If someone picks that fruit, it takes them and transports them to the Grove of the mage who created it. A Grove, by the way, is a pocket realm within the Nameless Garden and also the source of power for a mage. Anyway, they are then cocooned within the fruit and transformed into a mage. This is what happened to you.”
“I’m a mage now?” I blurted, excitement once again bouncing around inside me like a hyperactive bunny.
“Yes. What, you think any old human woman has bright magenta hair like that?” she scoffed, motioning to my hair. “Mages are separate from their original race in a great number of ways. The most immediately apparent manifestation of a mage's unique physiology, especially in humans, is the colour of our eyes and hair.”
I quickly reached up and grabbed at the hair in question, bringing it around to look at. Wow! It was the same colour as my pubes, a kind of dark metallic magenta colour. That was… amazing. I loved it!
“Can I see myself? Do you have a mirror? The water is moving too much for me to see my reflection,” I asked almost desperately.
Wordlessly, the woman flourished her hand into the air, and this time it was markings like silvery shrubs that whispered up her arm. They culminated in a burst of silver light in her palm, and a mirror spun into existence out of an infinitely small spark. The mirror was large enough to get a proper look at the whole of me, and what I saw took my breath away.
I was stunning. I was beyond stunning. My face was gorgeous, with high, angled cheekbones and infinitely soft skin. My nose was small and perfect in every way, my lips were full but not too full. My eyes were incredible, the same metallic magenta as my shoulder length hair, shining brightly from wide, huge eyes. I was almost scarily good looking.
My body was also amazing— lean and soft, with curves arching everywhere they were meant to be. Funnily enough, given what I’d seen so far, my boobs were actually fairly proportional to my body. Maybe a little smaller than I expected. You’d think that the horny fruit that made me look this pretty, would have given me balloon titties or something. Not that I was complaining, I liked the ones I had now.
“I’m pretty,” I breathed, my hands drifting up to my face in awe.
“You are indeed, it seems my magical essence is strong,” the old lady remarked, sounding impressed with herself and getting a confused glance from me. She responded with the shrug of someone who couldn’t be bothered explaining something.
I kept staring at myself in the mirror, tilting my head— the beautiful girl in the mirror copied every movement. That was me. That was really me. This was really, actually real, not a dream. I was a girl, through and through, my outside finally matching my inside. It was like I could breathe for the first time in my life, like I’d been struggling to keep my head above the waterline— any stray ripple or wave would send water down my throat, choking me and sending me into a panic.
It was more than that though, far more than that. My very consciousness felt unshackled from the constraints of bone-deep depression and my terrifying future as a man. I’d always fantasised, or even planned to kill myself at some point, but something had always come along to stop me from tipping over the edge completely.
Usually it'd be something small and inconsequential that saved me, like a book series that I wanted to see the conclusion to, or a movie I was intrigued by on the horizon. Recently it had been my friendship with Bray, although my new friends had been adding to that, along with the sheer excitement of our abduction.
Now though, now… I was whole and free and unbound from that final awful truth. I was a woman— a woman like those born to it, or those who'd had the courage to change themselves, one agonisingly incremental step at a time. I was… also a woman who needed a damned name. Grumpy lady was totally right.
“You were right, I need a name,” I said, turning to look at her for the first time in minutes.
“I’m sure you’ll think of one,” she said idly, leafing through the book she was reading. Wait, where’d she get the book from?
“Uh…” I hesitated, trying to think of something. I slipped further into the water in thought, frowning at my reflection in the mirror.
What was my name now? I wanted something fun, something that fit with my magical appearance. Oh, I could—
“Rynadria,” the old lady said, her eyes now strangely piercing, like her gaze was boring into my very essence.
“That’s a mouthful,” I replied, but even then something sprung out at me. Feeling another wave of euphoric rightness, I whispered, “But it can be shortened. Ryn.”
“Ryn, eh?” she mused, placing a bookmark between the pages of her book and then regarding me with a far more normal expression. “I can see it.”
“Thanks… I think I’ll keep it. How did you do that by the way?” I asked curiously. She’d totally just called out a name that knocked me flat with how good it felt.
“A minor divination spell, there were a dozen or so options, I just chose the one I liked the most,” she chuckled, standing up slowly and stretching out. “I am functionally your second mother now, whether either of us wanted it or not.”
“You didn’t want a… a mage daughter?” I asked with amusement.
“I placed my magefruit out in the middle of the damn wilderness— of course I didn’t want a damned mage daughter,” she grumbled to herself. “Nevertheless, you are here and obviously green, so I must do my duty. Don’t get comfortable though! I’m kicking you out when I feel like you won’t immediately die to a random band of thugs.”
“That’s fine, I have a cooler family to get back to,” I said with a cheeky smile.
“Yes, yes, whatever. Now get out of the bath, it’s time to put you to work as an apprentice,” she huffed, wapping me on the head with her book.
“Ow! Fine! Damn, no need to get physical on me,” I grumped. For some reason the light tap hadn’t reminded me of my past issues with parental figures and physical violence. It was more playful than anything else.
“Onwards,” she said, ignoring my complaints. “I have so much to teach you before I can throw you out and get on with my life.”
“Okay, okay! I’m getting out.”
I would get out, I would learn what I needed to, and then I'd find my way back to my friends. My family.
