MIRRORLING; PART 2 You may want to go back to Day 9 before you read this one.



As Anna grew so did Elsa, as if she suddenly realized that was a thing children did. Games were played, arguments had and forgiven. Anna shared all of her joys and sorrows with her friend while Elsa did her best to soothe the younger girl’s worries and fears. Many was a night when her voice was the last thing the girl heard, a story on Elsa’s lips or some long ago song that eased her into dreams.



The young lady loved it. With Elsa she hadn’t needed any other friend. Her time was filled with fencing lessons, schooling, lessons in being a lady and how to rule an estate. Then, when she was free from those expectations she was free to join in playing the various games they had brainstormed together. All games that they could share together; like hide and seek, board games and the like. Most of her classes she shared with Elsa, who was both a great student and more than willing to help explain things the tutor couldn’t quite get through Anna’s head.

As they grew there was only two constants; their friendship and the underlying need to find a way to get Elsa out of the mirror.

In time, Elsa grew to resent her existence in the mirror. Oh she could still, with great effort, interact with Anna’s world. She wanted to do more then play chess, than tuck Anna in when she forgot to do so for herself at night. To wander the courtyard by herself without the need for Anna to carry a hand mirror. She wanted to go out and discover the things that Anna did when she was outside of the sight of her mirrors. To taste chocolate and to get little bruises and scrapes from climbing trees! Most of all, to give Anna hugs and dare she think it, a kiss on the forehead.

What good was being in a mirror if it left her out of so many things?

For all that her resentment grew, so did her love for Anna. There wasn’t a month that passed that Anna didn’t try her best to find some lead or way to free her friend from the mirror. Each of the outrageous attempts an act of friendship, of hope. It was a passion that never wavered, and Elsa learned to respect Anna’s stubborn tenacity.

And so ten years passed, like the calm before the storm. Until it came time for Elsa’s eighteenth birthday.

“The Necromancer was killed?” Elsa spoke in confusion, bringing herself closer to the mirror that was between her and Anna, who was nodding eagerly. It was the one story she liked best because she knew the hero of it. Her father just didn’t wave it about like most men would have.

“Yup. It’s why my family was made nobles by the king. I thought you knew?”

“Oh no. No one really tells me anything remember?” Most of her knowledge about the world came from observing it and what Anna told her. She hadn’t known that the war had ended, only that the young men had finally come home without being mostly dead or all the way dead all those years ago. The why and how of it had been something that everyone had seemed to know and never needed to repeat.

“Well, my father killed the Necromancer, he took his sword and sliced his head clean off!”

“Elsa? You okay? Too gory?”

“Yes, quite.”

“Sorry, I do get carried away so. How about you tell me how your day went?”

Elsa hesitated. Her day had gone like it always had. Watching other people have good or bad days while she just… waited. Most of what she brought up in conversations like this wasn’t even about her. It was her observations and it was a realization about herself that she was starting to regret. Still, she forced cheer as she tried to remember what she had to gossip about.

“Great. Did you hear about how the cook managed to burn a whole half of the biscuits?



Anna had long ago weaseled most of the details out of Elsa about her existence, but two secrets remained. The first being that it had actually been the late Necromancer that had cursed her. Then how to break her curse. She had always known for however long she had been cursed. The specifics on how she had kept to herself despite Anna’s attempts at brainstorming ways to rescue Elsa. Elsa hoped that one day Anna would be more reasonable, more patient. Breaking her curse would be dangerous and with as head strong Anna was she would rush feet first into it and likely die.

Elsa wouldn’t let that happen for anything, not even her freedom.

Besides, she could manage many more years like this if it meant Anna was safe. Eventually the pain of captivity would fall to the wayside like it had as a child. Breaking her curse would be forgotten in favor of watching people and loving Anna.

However, she pondered it almost daily since her eighteenth birthday and she couldn’t help herself.

Elsa slipped out of the side of the mirror. Instantly the world became wonky, fading quickly into this heavy murky dimness that clouded both sight and sound. She hated the in-between places. It felt like the gray murk dug itself into her ears and mouth, dusted itself against her eyes in such a way that it took her hours before she could see right again. Normally she just reappeared in the different mirrors at will, but this mirror had always been special, unconnected to the network of reflective surfaces throughout the castle.

So it was the long uncomfortable walk from the closest mirror to the dungeons.

Deep in a cell, locked away from both person and all but the most determined of light was a large mirror. It was by far the largest she had ever known and probably the largest in all the land. She hated it so. Not just for the trip that it took to arrive, but for the way it felt. It hurt, this place.

Here in the dungeons she could feel the cold. Like a leech that drained away all the warmth in the world. Her throat burned and her stomach ate at itself like some furious beast. It hurt to be here. But here was the place she had to come for only one thing.

In the room was a chest. One of the few secrets she knew about herself was what was in that chest. It was a glass orb that for all of her attempts she had never been able to enter. If it was in the light she knew there would be a small blizzard in its depths. Caught like she was. When she had the wish that she was real again, when it hurt even in the other mirrors she came here to stare at the chest. To try to see if wishing was enough to make that wish come true. All she had to do was break it. Break the orb and she’d be free of her own glass confines.

To die surely, since the box wasn’t the only remarkable thing in the dark confines of the dungeon.

She felt the movement more than heard it. Like the other times she hid in the murky darkness, only letting her eyes look around the corner of the mirror’s surface and at the depths of the darkness of the dungeon. Elsa knew what it was, but it scared her just for knowing what it was.

A skeleton rattled against the bars, its own dry bones clacking sharply against the metal.

The sight made her waver. She had hoped the years would have worn it down since she had last looked. That the magic would have died with its master. But no, it still wandered the forgotten dungeon even years after the necromancer had fallen. Sword in one fist just as rags clung still to its bones. She knew who the skeleton had belonged to, and even who it currently belonged to despite his recent passing.

“Essssssa.” She shivered at the word, clamping a hand over her mouth. It didn’t move its head, seeming to know where she was despite not having made a sound since it had arrived.

She escaped back into the murky dimness, racing as quickly as she could through the path she had long ago memorized. Not caring for once about the inability to see or hear the real world. Once she reached the mirror in the guard room she willed herself to Anna’s mirror.

The change was instantaneous, and she shivered as she appeared in the mirror. The room was dark and quiet, meaning that her friend was missing. Probably having some fun or the like in the dining room. Maybe even sitting within the library and reading.

The thought almost made her whisk herself away to the library, but she felt too tired to listen to anything today. It was a first and she hated it. Weary she pulled herself into Anna’s bed, wishing that Anna was here anyway. At the very least she could have listened to Anna ramble until she forgot about the dungeon again. Or until it was shifted aside for something else.

Hidden in the dark, warm and safe, she fell asleep quickly and deeply.

Anna blinked as she woke from a dead sleep. She had felt someone slip into the bed. At first it had made her smile, remembering how her dad used to crawl up the stairs, no matter how tired he was or how late to sit on her bed. She used to stay up for the good-night kisses, no matter how often he lightly scolded her for staying up past her bedtime.

It was a good memory until she realized her father had stopped doing that when she turned ten.

She sat up quickly and looked at the side of the bed, almost freaking when she noticed the divot where a body should be. Instantly her eyes flicked to the mirror. The image held within it made her both relax and want to laugh. Elsa had fallen into her bed, curling up with a face that held the most adorable pout. Anna had no way of telling where Elsa had come from, but whatever it was had left her sullen and very tired.

Anna reached over to the divot in her bed, sighing as she only felt the sheets under her fingers, not even warm from the being that laid on their reflection.

“Night Elsa.” Anna curled in the divot, the closest she could come to her beloved friend.