I see the woman staring back at me, swathed in a black cloak and hair indented by a crown, an exact replication of my own save for the rust between the jewels. And I know my cloak and dress are white—different—even without looking down at them; all these years they’ve been white. I raise a hand to wave at the stranger, and the stranger waves back, her tapering fingers blue-veined and wasted. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her lips are drawn back in a terrible snarl, revealing sharp crooked teeth that need a good scouring. I feel my own lips wrinkling back in a sympathetic grimace. She looks as drab as usual, but there is this hopelessness in her thinness and whiteness that I’ve never noticed before now. She doesn’t look ecstatic to see me. But then again, she never is.
Behind the woman is a narrow open window. Beyond it glows a screen of brilliant foliage, dappled with sunlight. But blackness swirls shapelessly around the hem of her black robes, and the objects surrounding her in the tower are encased in vague fog. I don’t look down, because I feel the fog rising around me too, even though I won’t look at it. I don’t have to look at it; my mind is already screaming that it’s there.
I reach behind me, like I have so many times, and my fingers brush the ledge. The woman in opposite me reaches back and touches the ledge, at the same time. I think she is trying to encourage me. But we can’t tear our eyes off of each other. We both know that there really is no sunlight, no window. Only cold stone, and our mind makes us hallucinate mirages of sun and life. The fear I feel is evident in her eyes, because I have known her long enough to realize that she is afraid of darkness. The known will suffice for us; there is enough resignation in the way she pulls back her hand and cringes into herself, reflecting my motions.
And so we continue to stare at each other. Blinking, breathing, paralyzed by ourselves.
"Angreek87"
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