Undying Legacies: Mirrored

10: Speak to yourself

Pride is an awful thing to have.

Teagan realizes it's the downfall of many civilizations and great rulers and people, in general. Pride doesn't allow for certain things, like asking for help, admitting you're wrong, realizing that someone is better than you.

And Teagan knows this. But still. . . It's inheritable and it lingers as she passes by Headmistress' office. She's decided she doesn't need help, mostly because she assumes Headmistress isn't helping her much.

She walks past Lila and Thad too. She doesn't look at them; this is pride and guilt mixed in together. Teagan swears she hears Lila sob at night silently against her pillow when she thinks Teagan's asleep.

All they had to do was acknowledge each other and things would probably smooth over. But Teagan won't.

Pride is a terrible thing to have.

And she's too prideful to break it.

"You know, I had more fun sitting with Lila at lunch." Chrys says thoughtfully as she chews her arugula salad.

Teagan sighs into her plain mashed potatoes. She's sitting at the far end of the Seekers table and Lila is sitting on the other end. Thad's easy to avoid because he's at the Diviners table. So she's stuck with Chrys who's been true to her word and stuck by Teagan unconditionally.

Teagan's not sure why though.

"Which house do you belong to anyway?" Teagan says suddenly, Chrys was a second year, but Teagan hadn't seen her last year. So where did she come from?

"Oh, Scalar." Chrys tilts her head in thought. "Didn't I tell you that?"

Teagan shakes her head. "No, and how come you're a second year, you weren't here last year?"

Chrys smiles widely. "Oh, that's simple, I was here two years ago. But something came up last year and so I couldn't come back. I had to start second year this year. I'm a year behind." She says in her soft voice, Teagan's still confused how she hears it over the noisiness that is the dining hall.

Teagan looks at Chrys for a moment longer. That answer was. . . Surprisingly average and vague. Which is strange in itself. She'd expected Chrys to have some fantastical reasoning but that wasn't.

"Why'd did you miss last year?" She asks suddenly.

Chrys stops chewing and looks up at the red head slowly; her large violet eyes blink at her. For a moment Teagan thinks she's offended her. "Nothing too bad. Just family things." And she goes back to eating.

Teagan sighs and takes another spoon full of mashed potatoes. So much for that conversation.

"Excuse me Chrys. I'm not hungry anymore." She pushes her plate and stands.

Chrys smiles gently at her. "I'll take that then." She proceeds to squish Teagan's left over mash into a glass bottle she pulls out of her robe pocket.

"Why?" Teagan give the girl an incredulous look.

Chrys shrugs. "I have a pet Newt that gets very hungry during the day. I have to feed him something. He likes bugs but I think that's unfair. So I give him mashed root foods to make up for it. He seems quite happy with that arrangement." She says calmly and puts the bottle of mash in her pocket.

Now that's an answer Teagan expects from the girl, nonsensical and strange.

Teagan sighs and heads out of the room, ignoring the eyes that follow her out. There are always eyes on her. She's surprised people don't outright leave when she's around.

Teagan takes the long way back to her house building and think to herself since she's all alone.

Alone and lonely.

Perhaps that what she was born to be.

She wants to send another letter to her parents.

She passes a mirror in the hall; she doesn't remember it being there, she takes a look at herself and sighs at the sight. Fifteen years old and she has bags under her eyes that could rival Inks. Her eyes are extremely dark underneath and Teagan wonders if she always looks like a dead girl walking.

She feels like it.

Suddenly her reflection winks at her.

Teagan gasps and rubs at her eyes, peers at her face again for a long silent breathless moment.

She stares back at herself. Nothing happens. Teagan's shoulder slump, must be lack of sleep. She turns to go back to her room.

"Leaving so soon? Why, we were just getting started."

The voice sounds like hers, it echoes outside her head and Teagan feels every limb go numb. She turns around with slow morbid horror and her heart thumps at a speed that she's pretty sure could kill her as she turns and sees herself in the mirror.

Smiling back at her horror filled eyes.

"What's the matter? You look like you've seen a ghost." She, herself, it in the mirror taunts her.

Teagan's suddenly thrown back into her twisting nightmare, likes she's being thrown through glass, the dragons' head flashes in her mind and she sees the bright flash of a blue curtain she's never seen in real life again.

"Wh- what-"her voice shakes, a tremor threatens to choke her as she stares at her own face twisted into a nasty stretched out smirk.

"I'm you, obviously." It says, it's tone casual and uninterested, the eyes are black. Pitch black and Teagan realizes that this thing was not her. It just stole her face and voice.

"No, you're not. . . What kind of trick is this?" She's gone insane; someone was playing games with her mind. She looks around quickly, as if to find the perpetrators.

"Oh, please, I've been talking to you for weeks now." It says, clearly annoyed.

Teagan looks back, the horror crawls up her chest like a million black spiders, she's frozen, her legs feel too heavy to move, she can't seem to find her head.

"But you wouldn't listen. So. . . Here I am. Little Mage."

Teagan smashes the mirror. She smashes it with the side of her wand. Her heart echoes in the hall and she feels like her entire body is dipped in ice, she jitters and runs. She runs for dear life. Her throat dry, her mind spinning and her legs jelly as she tries to get away.

That voice, those words... No, no, no it couldn't be.

It wasn't. There is no possible way. . . .

Teagan runs harder, her eyes dry and wide as she surprises random students and nearly knocks all of them over in her desperate clawing to get to her room.

She runs and doesn't look back.

She can't breathe, she's trying to count ten. Her mind buzzes painfully, tears start blurring her vision now, she falls, bruises her shin, she stands and grabs at her door with agonizing desperation, face yellowed with fear as she slams the door shut and throws her body against it, as if that would ward away what she had just seen.

As if she had run away from the realization of what just happened.

Her chest rises and falls and her knees buckle.

"Teagan."

Teagan gasps and chokes, whirling around to see Lila, looking directly at her for the first time in days. Her dark eyes wide with actual genuine concern.

"Teagan, what's wrong?"

Teagan looks at her wide, glazed eyes, shiny from unshed tears, face gaunt as she clutches at her shirt where her heart is, breathes coming in short desperate gasps. The hairs on her neck stand up and her shoulders hunch to her ears as she turns her head slowly.

And looks directly into the mirror on their wall.

The eyes turn black and a sickening smile stretches on her reflection.