Mirrors & Shadows

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝐈𝐈𝐈

Her eyes opened wide though she hadn't realized they were closed. She was suffocating, drowning. Breathing became a battle and she lay kicking and thrashing at an invisible enemy. The sound of a weight crashing at her feet could be heard followed by an indignant caterwaul. She managed to pull the oppressive comforter off her head. Her room took shape in the dimness. Her hair was wet with sweat. Her cat that she had unwillingly kicked off the bed, leaped up onto the window sill and glowered down at her owner with her yellow gleaming feline eyes. Luna sighed, watching her cat lick her paw in an exaggerated posh manner. Then she noticed that the window behind was covered in black scribbles. She squinted, recognizing her handwriting.

It was a series of mathematical calculations, arranged in such a disorderly manner (numbers almost overlapped more than once) that only Luna could make sense of it all. One formula stood out in its basic form: F=G*mA*mB/d^2 the force of attraction. By the looks of it she had been determining the force of gravity exerted by the earth on the moon now and every year in the 30 years to come (considering the moon moves 3,8 cm further from the Earth every year). In the upper left hand corner of the window, the writing was scrunched up as if she had run out of space to write. Though she noticed a new pattern of mathematical calculations which revolved mainly around the force of attraction of the center of the Milky Way. This had to do with the billion solar systems orbiting around Sagittarius A, a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. However, the writing became too illegible for her to see what her unconscious self hoped to resolve.

It had never happened that she had done math in her sleep before. She had always been conscious when her brain would suddenly wake up, buzzing with information and her fingers would quiver, desperate to find a marker and when she couldn't rest until she had put into writing all of her racing thoughts. She had always wondered why she managed to do math twice as fast at two in the morning than in daytime. But this was of a different level entirely.

Her cat jumped off the window sill and padded over to the kitchen. Luna watched the red sun rise over the irregular outline of buildings. Numbers seemed to dance on the window, in the pink sky, among the Parisian chimneys. A scratching sound followed by a pleading meow alerted her that her cat was hungry.
"Yes, yes I'm coming." she grumbled. Stepping out of bed, she already felt out of breath and either the kitchen was swaying or she was dizzy. Either wasn't a good sign. She felt exhausted though she had just woken up. Or had she? Was she unconsciously awake all night?

Another loud meow called her from the kitchen.
"I said I'm coming." Luna grumbled again, forcing her wobbly legs to carry her to the kitchen and standing on the tip of her toes to reach the cupboard with the cat food. That was the moment Michael Jackson chose to give her his usual pep talk.
"Just beat, beat it, beat it..."
"I am!" She yelled back indignantly, pouring cat food into Marie Curie's bowl to illustrate her point. Then, she set off to the bathroom telling herself she'd clean the window later.

The young professor raised her eyebrows at the person staring at her from the other side of the mirror. She looked like she'd stepped out of a coffin. Except her curly hair that stood on end, dark shadows hung beneath her droopy eyes and her recent illness made her look bony and frail. To comfort herself about her grim appearance she took a warm shower with 'Beat it' still on loop. The mirror was fogged up and the air got steamy. Though when she wanted to brush her teeth she realized her tooth brush had been mercilessly chewed by Marie Curie again for the second time in the same week. Thankfully she had a spare.

She blow-dried her hair when the mirror was still fogged up in a way that when the fog faded she let out an exclamation of surprise. Her hair absolutely did not obey the physics laws she'd spent years studying. She tried brushing it back into place but only managed to get the brush tangled in the curly knots. She sighed, watching  in the mirror as the brush dangled by the side of her head like an ugly Christmas bauble. She resigned to twisting her indomitable hair into a secure braid like her mother used to do for her when she was a child.