Splinters

Cast your mind back several years, for this is where our story begins. It has been only months since her love was locked away in stone, and Mirror is restless, even as she walks the path she has marked out on a map. This path would lead her to an ingredient she believed may be essential to healing the wounds that had brought her to cast the stone sleep spell upon Blind Faith. Walking felt so slow. Each step seemed so much shorter than she would have liked, and she longed to run, as she had at the journey's beginning. She was impatient, for you must remember that Mirror had spent what would have been her most formative years locked away inside a glass prison, and though it had worn her down she still could not abide stillness. To be able to move her own legs freely seemed still as though it were a dream. Night had begun to fall, and though the darkness did not frighten her, she felt a certain disappointment, turning into a small town to find the inn she would stay in while she restocked supplies. She wanted to keep moving. Still, she offered the owner her bits, and took a room for the night. Her sleep was broken into short bursts, ravaged by nightmares that filled her with rage and terror, so that she might have torn away her own flesh if she hadn't grown used to them, and when morning came she had already risen. Mirror felt no more rested than she had before. She made her way down and into the market square, where she met a nice enough stallion as she waited in line. The two spoke idly to each other to pass time. She thought nothing of this encounter, and she did not even remember his name when she set off back along her path, provisions stored securely in a wicker basket she carried. Indeed it was quite uneventful for the first several hours. If only it had stayed so! She began to catch glimpses of somepony behind her on the path. At first she dismissed this, for it was after all a pathway, but unease began to build in her stomach, and then she stopped in her tracks and turned. There, right before her, was that same stallion. He was not stocked for a journey. He seemed surprised that she had spotted him, yet responded easily enough to questioning. He claimed that when they had met in the market, he'd felt a real bond between them, as though they were fated to meet, and that he could not let the chance slip away. Mirror's wary frown seemed to set him on edge, for suddenly he reached out and grasped her hoof in his and knelt. He begged her to let him travel at her side. His words turned to a dull buzz in Mirror's ears, and she could feel herself begin to tremble. Words muddied together in an incomprehensible sludge. She wasn't sure how long he'd been speaking, but she felt an overwhelming urge to cry out or to vomit. Why wouldn't he let go of her? Was this some sort of trap? Mirror grew more afraid by the second, and her expression suddenly steeled. She scowled at him, and tore her hoof away, only to strike him - hard. It surprised her as much as him. Step by step she backed away, shaking so much that she felt as though she might simply collapse, and she yelled for him to get away from her. The words she screamed tore at her throat, and all at once she found she was sprinting along the path in the opposite direction from him. Her mind felt blurry and muted, as though she'd wrapped a pillow about her head. Time felt disturbingly unreal, and she hardly noticed when the sky began once more to melt into night. She didn't stop running. Couldn't stop. She just had to get away, and everything that was pressed against her skin was suffocating, was squeezing her, trapping her, clawing at her skin. The air itself felt thick and sticky, as though it were a spider's web that was slowing her down, and the sounds wouldn't stop, and she wanted to scream, to cry, to hit something again, anything to make her world stop spinning. Foliage passed her by in a green and yellow blur. Too slow, she thought, her legs flashing in and out with such speed that she should have been exhausted. Adrenaline still coursed through her. She had to get away, she had to get away, she had to get away, her skin was on fire, her heart pounded furiously, and the only reason she finally came to a stop was a root stretched across her path. It grabbed at her, twisted her, pulled her to the ground, and now the world was spinning on the edge of dark ink. Let go, let go, she couldn't be locked up, not again, not ever again- In her right mind, she would have realized that the innocuous root hadn't meant her any harm, and that it certainly wasn't holding onto her. Mirror wasn't in her right mind, though, because she was years ago, locked in golden chains in a tall tower, and she was sobbing. Without knowledge of her thoughts, one would see only a thin mare laid upon the path, shuddering and with tears streaking her fur. Her leg was bleeding. Her basket had fallen beside her, forgotten, and she seemed unable to breathe in the air she so desperately needed. She didn't even understand why she felt all of this raw terror sewn deep into her bones. That was the worst part of all, for she had lost control of herself to an unknown brute force. Mirror laid there for hours before her thoughts cleared at all. No one could notice, for this was a road that few trod, and so she was alone and unnoticed. Her chest heaved still when she came at last to her senses, though she could not bring herself to stand still for more hours, and when she did, her legs still trembled, her eyes darted about with simple and raw paranoia. Never could she stop looking over her shoulder, even to the present, after years had passed. Fear was embedded deeply in her heart, like a shard of glass that would twist at the sight of any other creature.