Turning of the Leaves

Magic is bound inextricably with suffering. It is sought only by those who either have naught else to turn to or hunger for more than they have already. Whichever seed begets it, magic grows only when nurtured by intent, and will take on a form horribly true to the deepest crevices of the mind of its wielder. If the intent is kind, so too can the magic bloom into something kind and lovely. If the intent is wicked, the heart cruel... then the magic will become a story passed on in whispered warnings to children at bedtime. Magic is not itself good or ill. Magic is honest. The secret of forging great magical artifacts has long been kept by time. Few live now who could create such a thing so powerful as Jonquil's magic mirror. Trinkets are easy. Any sacrifice will do: dried herbs plucked from their earthen bed, beautiful stones gouged from far below, even time is enough to power spells or charms. To create true, lasting power, however, is another matter. A thing like the crystal heart or the alicorn amulet needs the sacrifice of innate magic, of a living being which can will its own survival. Here arises the primary difficulty: now two beings at the least must have earnest intentions in their creation, for if either strays, the end result is tainted. Queen Jonquil's mirror never had a chance to be a kind thing. It was commissioned by a mad king whose only ambition was the affection of an empress in the making. It was forged by those who knew what would be done to power it and cared more for the payment they would recieve. It was powered by the destruction of a child's world.  None who had a hoof in its creation had any intent save selfish ambition. Here was something that would advance their goals; Hebe's suffering was only an unpreventable side-effect. Thus the mirror was by nature a glass which showed to each person the world that would benefit their ambitions, tempered into honesty by the little girl within: she had no ill-intent when she was bound. She had nothing after her family, her friends, all that made her world was stripped away. She only longed to return home. When she forgot her home, her yearning turned to freedom more generally.  Eventually, all that she wanted was for someone to remember that the mirror had a person in it and to speak with her.  Without her, Jonquil's mirror could only be a malevolent sheet of glass embedded in precious metal and studded with gems. That remained true on the day that Mirror, as she came to call herself when she forgot her first name, was finally freed by the Empress' own daughter. Blind Faith struck the glass with a deeply enchanted golden shell, an artifact crafted by one who had no other choice and hoped only that the magic in it would save others from the fate to which they were already condemned. The thing shattered into shards and dust that exploded out in all directions at the instant that Mirror was separated from them. Each fragment of, however miniscule, retained the properties of the whole mirror without the influence of its prisoner. If only Faith had retained the instinct to blink at sudden motion in the years since her blinding. It had felt only like faint pressure on the surface of her eye. She never remembered the sensation after - the surrounding moments were of such intense emotion that a mild discomfort was nothing. For the first years that the two spent together in the woods, Faith had no sight to be marred by the glass. It could not mar her affections, could not twist her heart or shift her ambitions, and so they were happy. Alas, fortune is a thing with more teeth than feathers. Vision was restored her as death grew nearer, just as Jonquil had laid out in her curse, so that a terrible change began. The shards of glass in Faith's eye altered her perception, chilled her heart nearly to ice, and brought out the worst of her.  Only one eye was affected. Rather than cruel, she became fickle, swayed easily by what last had caught her gaze. The artifact wrestled against her nature for control. Imprisoned in stone to survive whilst Mirror sought to cure the curse which Jonquil had inflicted, Faith slowly became more lost to herself, more beholden to a new way of seeing the world. A new way of seeing the woman she still sometimes thinks she loves when the night grows dark. Many other fragments exist out in the world to this day, finding their way into eyes, tongues, even hearts. The largest shards which remained in the frame were melted down. Mirror reshaped them into the glittering glass beads she wears strung on bracelets to this day; in this way they have become benign - even pretty. She never thought to wonder if another part of her prison had followed her home.