smoke and mirrors

Zora awoke with a gasp, after another vivid dream.

She looked rapidly around the room, seeing nothing but her drawn curtains, finely-crafted furniture, and sleeping husband directly next to her, with arms that had once been ringing her torso now wrapped loosely around her waist. She stared at him for a long moment, watching him rest peacefully. Like the dead, really. He was impossible to wake up under normal circumstances.

After what felt like eternity, she finally gently moved his arms, tucked him back in and slid out of bed, meandering to the attached bathroom. The light nearly blinded her, both from the dark of the bedroom and from her own in-born sensitivity to light. She staggered over to the mirror, only to see a child with a Sentient arm and traces of glowing void scars beginning around the navel staring back at her. She turned on the faucet and splashed her face a few times, and the reflection faded back to normal.

Or, well, mostly normal.

The bags under her eyes seemed more pronounced tonight, and her skin paler than the normal dusky copper. Her fluffy hair was an untamed mess, and even her tattoos seemed off somehow.

She turned heel, dimmed the bathroom lights, and began to fill the tub. Momentarily, she crept out of the bathroom to grab her phone, just in case Jason happened to see the same things. She paused to look at her husband again. She prayed to whatever entity would listen that he didn’t see it. Then she slipped back inside, lit a few candles for that relaxing effect, then sorted through her collection of incense.

Maybe she would put the lotus blossom one back, tonight.

She settled on one that smelled somewhat like vanilla and lavender, lit it and put it in its holder, then fished a dark blue bath bomb out of a small bowl nearby. She arranged her phone and a particularly thick-looking book on a small tray that rested beside the tub, and shut off the water. The warm water was like the embrace of a long-forgotten friend, tender and welcoming, and the fizzing of the bath bomb as it melted into a glittery indigo bubbled away her post-nightmare stress as much as it could.

But she couldn’t fully relax, no. She knew that dream, knew that world. Knew that it would be sooner rather than later that she would be playing what she saw in that dream for herself. It was a week before Christmas, and now it would be another year where her dreams were plagued by worry and terror.

And then, there was Chandra.

It had been months since Zora and Jason had found the lost Tenno, scared and confused and wearing the skin of the frame she once used, in the woods around Southern Forest Temple. Knowing the girl’s plight, knowing where in the timeline she might be, Zora had felt there was no real choice but to bring the lost child home with her, and be the mother that she was never really allowed to have. It had taken months to build trust after the betrayals the girl had suffered, and to ease hurt that she understood all too well.

The whole time, though, it had hung over her head that eventually, she would have to send her new daughter back, to keep her iteration of her world from collapsing. She just wished she had the time to make her whole again. To ease her pain, to give her that shoulder to cry on, and teach her that the world could be better. She had come to love her like her own child, and she wanted nothing more than to protect her from everything she’d had to suffer.

But now, here it was, coming to her first in her dreams. The war was beginning, as nothing more than horrible whispers in the depths. Echoes of something terrible happening first in some far-flung iteration of a universe where she and her friends were the heroes. She didn’t know if she was ready to relinquish her daughter yet. She could die, after all, in the real deal. And she knew how much the thought pained her, of having to kill the one she thought she could trust, no matter how dire the betrayal.

Having adopted Chandra, however, had firmly placed Zora into the camp of wanting to throw the Lotus into the sun. But she couldn’t, and she knew that. This was Chandra’s mission, and she needed to make the decision in the end. Alone, with no one to share the burde…. What?

As the bath bomb finished dissolving, Zora saw a flash of silver sinking into the water, and felt something land under the water, on her torso. She reached down into the water, and lifted out an ornate set of silver jewelry, inlaid with amethyst-like stones that seemed to absorb the dim light around them. The largest one in the set contained a glimmering imperfection shaped somewhat like a set of three eyes. She ran a hand over it, gingerly, when she set them onto the tray to her side. She hadn’t seen these pieces in a while. They were the raiments of the Sage of Shadow, and she knew that they were hers in the depth of her soul. They seemed even to speak to her to put them on.

The largest piece, a necklace, fit like a glove around the curves and turns of her neck, almost like it had always belonged there. As she motioned to set the others aside until she got dressed later, she caught a glimpse of the reflection in the water. It wasn’t her, again. It was the reflection of the child, with her shorter hair and luminescent eyes. The points of electrical violet pierced the water and gazed right back into her. This reflection didn’t look scared, angry or terrified though. Those eyes burned with determination.

She passed a hand over the water, and the image changed. Instead of a child, now, she saw a massive beast. A fox-monster with a magnificent mane and teeth the size of pocket knives. In those wild eyes she saw the love for a mother-goddess she would never know, and the healing scars of a horrible and painful past. She thought about this one, how this one was a warrior fighting to stop an apocalypse, who knew she was relied on by her goddess and now, her people.

She passed her hand over the water again, and the reflection shifted once more. This time, the animalistic visage stayed the same, but the woman who stared back at her wasn’t so much of a beast as she was a half-blood, with the horns and wings of a dragon. She knew this one well. The unwilling queen who had felt that her sister had abandoned her, then was nearly assassinated. She sparked, instead, just in time for the lead-up to a war that was not her own. A war that she fought in for the people, and not herself.

A few more times, she waved her hand across the surface of the bath, and each time the face staring back at her changed. The woman who walked among mythological creatures in secret and ascended to the role of goddess on her own merit. The anthropomorphic Zorua who had suplexed a demon, burned away a plague that had overtaken another world within a world, and saved a sun god from an eternal prison. The Time player who was the only surviving player of her session, who emerged from mourning for a week or two only to find that it had been ten thousand years, and who sacrificed her godhood to save her new world.

Her mind filled with all of her deeds across the multiverse, and soon, it dawned on her what the world was whispering to her. She was needed. If nothing else, Chandra needed her. Who said that she had to do this alone? Just because that was canon, didn’t mean canon needed to be adhered to here. And before any of that? She could still give her the holiday she had deserved for so long.

Her hand passed over the water one more time, and the reflection returned to the child, whose eyes pierced through her. The image in the water nodded at her, and finally faded away to normal.

And then the phone began to ring.

“Hello?”

“Did you see that..?” The voice on the other line’s was distinctly Jason’s.

“Yeah, I saw it… I’m in the tub now trying to unwind from it.”

“It’s happening, then...”

“Seems like it is.”

“Well, what does that mean for-”

“Hey buddy. You wanna go Christmas shopping with me tomorrow?”