Mirror Inversions

She came back from the shops and the sunshine, and stared into her silvered mirror at the expression on her face. What she saw must have startled her, for the glass slipped from her hands and broke, and she fell through the cracks herself. Things look the same on the other side, only inverted, she reassured herself. But what she found was a twisted likeness of her world, a Picasso painting. This was a strange and fascinating realm where the things that she used to mock as feverish hallucinations had fled to seek refuge, and thrived in their new homeland. Fairies sprinkled pixie dust on young men yearning to fly. Dwarfs lurked in the shadows beneath garden toadstools. Men in capes leaped off dizzy skyscrapers to do battle with warped, larger-than-life arch-villains. A leprechaun rushed past beneath a painted sky seeking his pot of gold. The air was crisp, the ocean clear, the butterflies free of fear. Magic, having been sacrificed to science in her own world, hummed and throbbed in the veins of the mirror-world. She stood in the midst of it all, and sensed magic tugging at her soul, compelling her to heed its decree and stay to obey. She felt her resolve weakening, her self dissolving until she would become a joyous wraith in this sacred land, leaving a mere reflection beyond the glass on the other side. She dragged herself away with a heroic effort, forcing herself to be reborn in her own land. Smoke fumes wafted through the windows, and her unshaven neighbour slouched past on the sidewalk below. Magic must be brought back, she mused. Then she noticed the shattered shards at her feet, and the duality of magic and science struck her – two empires enthroned in their separate worlds of wonder, perfect inversions of the choices mankind has to make. Images of one in the other would never come closer than the thickness of the broken mirror.