Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror

Postby Dulcie » Sun Feb 24, 2013 2:13 pm

There was a clatter in the streets of Myrkentown late in the night. A carriage that had been passing through, hoping to reach the next town by morning had suffered a broken wheel and the driver and his assistant had required time to stop and repair it. Unfortunately in the process the carriage tilted and tipped and into the streets spilled one of the trunks that held their goods. Mirrors went crashing from the unsecured trunk, cracking and breaking in the middle of the street.

The driver cursed, the mirrors would do him no good broken, the place that they were taking the mirrors had wanted them whole, and now their profits would be reduced. Not wanting to further injure their profits however the merchants made no move to clean up their mess, the mirror pieces left scattered in the street, some larger than others. Abandoned there as the carriage drove off again in the night, only pausing to stop at one lonely lantern far outside of town, dropping off a smaller order.

In the morning the light would dance on the mirrors that were left in the street, and perhaps some of the people of the town would come to pick up those mirrors. The people might find that when they looked in the mirror they would see things that they longed for or desired. Other people might find that the mirrors were difficult to look away from, making them feel as if they wanted to primp and preen infront of them for the better part of their day.
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Re: Mirror Mirror

Postby Jirai » Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:41 am

Lately, the scarred girl had been venturing into town more often than she usually did. There were reasons for this, some better than others, but as this night edged nearer to dawn the young woman was simply pacing the town's streets on her own. The glitter of mirrored glass was impossible to miss, but not particularly of interest to Niall - so she had no idea why she bent down abruptly and picked up a shard. Without thinking, she slipped it into the small pouch on her belt. She would look at it later.
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Re: Mirror Mirror

Postby Rance » Tue Feb 26, 2013 3:20 am

"Bags! Bags for your smokeleaf," she entreated one man, scampering alongside him, a long, thin pouch fluttering in her hand. "Bags for your seeds. Bags for -- for your all-monds."

He slipped into the crowd a moment later, vanishing. Clutching her stitched bags in her hands, she turned, and saw a woman with a chin like a roast and a belly like a keg.

"Bags, menna," the seamstress said, holding them aloft. "Stitched bags for salts and herbs. For buttons, for a sniffing-powder, if that is your interest -- for whatever you might find of use."

But it was as if the world was silent, or penniless, for want of poque bags was particularly short, and her skirt-pockets were as filled with nothing as they had been at the crest of the morning. She had tried being more aggressive, as Cherny had suggested, but no luck, no luck. Perhaps she was not a saleswoman. Perhaps she was just meant to stitch things, and--

With a small bit of frustration, the seamstress threw her remaining three bags down into the mud, and thought to crush her heel onto them when something caught her eye. A glimmer. A reflection in the mud. A sliver of mirror-glass beaten into the snow and offal by so many passing feet.

She squatted, retrieved her bags, and plucked the shard up. The seamstress polished it on her skirt-hem and smiled.
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Re: Mirror Mirror

Postby Dulcie » Sat Mar 02, 2013 5:22 am

"You are late." The man said as he watched the carriage arrive at the edge of Golben, where the small tent city that had been during the hot months of summer, now an abandoned waste of snow and ice. "I do not tolerate lateness." The candlelight from the lantern that he held flickered over Berdini's face as he looked at the men who had been sent to deliver his mirrors.

The men stammered their apologies, talking non-sense about a broken wheel in the town, and a trunk that hadn't be secured properly. It wasn't their fault, no, no, not their fault at all. The Councilor simply watched and listened impatiently.

"You are lucky that I am a kind and generous man. You've just confessed to losing half of my shipment, but none the less it seems that the fault was not your own. I shall be paying in full, however your lateness results in a lack of assistance. I've had to let my own people go home to return to their wives and children you see. And now there is no one left to help me to carry the mirrors into the pit." He referred to the giant crater that was Golben, motioning a hand towards a ladder where another lantern rested.

"The mirrors are for a project I'm working on for the Governor. It will be an incredible artistic attraction, bound to be just the thing that will bring people to Myrkenwood from all over. But I can't carry them down myself. A bad back I'm afraid. But since I'm paying you in full, despite your terribly inefficent job at bringing me my shipment, I can assume that you will help carry them down for me."

The men seemed relieved that they would still be paid in full for their delivery. It wasn't turning out to be such a bad day after all, they had lost nearly half the mirrors and yet they'd still receive the same very generous payment. Their eyes turned to the ladder that led to the pit. It seemed to be deep, but the ladder looked stable enough and they nodded their agreement. A few hours worth of work and they would suffer no loss in profit at all. A good honest day's labor.

The Councilor held the lantern for the men as they carried the mirrors down into the pit, taking multiple trips to carry them down safely. It was a strange place, this pit that the man insisted would be a place of art and beauty, already cluttered with a strange assortment of grotesque sculptures, strange metal pieces and now a stack of mirrors piled away in one area. They had only begun to comment to one another about the strangeness of it when they heard the scrape of the ladder being pulled up from the edge of the pit. They ran to where it had been, screaming and hollering up at the man above, pleading for the return of the ladder.

Amidst the screams the Councilor turned over to his servants that had appeared in the darkness, a pair dragging the ladder away, far far away, while he spoke to another in that strange foreign language. The dark skinned man nodded and moved to the carriage. The horses were set loose, and the carriage toppled precariously close to the pit. An accident, an unfortunate accident it had all been. Men come to deliver the mirrors, only to have broken their wheel so close to the giant pit. Surely they never survived the fall. it was such a shame that the ladder had been pulled up months ago to keep vagrants from setting up homes in the pit. A horrible tragedy indeed.

The Councilor approached the pit and called down to the men.

"I told you that I do not tolerate lateness." He turned on his heel then, gone back into the night, perhaps to return to the warm arms of his lover.
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Re: Mirror Mirror

Postby Cherny » Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:36 am

A chunk of fallen sunlight, caught in the frozen slush of a Myrkentown gutter.

Briefly dazzled, the boy squints and stumbles before peering closer at the source of the sudden flash, the glare - a patch of silvered glass the size of his palm, now reflecting the blue late-winter sky in its dirt-smeared surface. A glance each way before he darts down between one rumbling cart and the next to seize this unlikely treasure, struggling to pry the fragment from its tomb of grey ice before slipping it into a pocket and hurrying on his way.
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Re: Mirror Mirror

Postby channe » Sun May 05, 2013 2:17 pm

When Dominik Kaczmarek picks up his mirror, the thing he sees is -- oh -- it is incredible, it is magic, and for a moment, he wonders if he's going insane.

In the end, he puts the mirror-shard in a piece of leather and puts it in his pocket. Because he has found a way to see his wife again, smiling and playing with the children like she used to do, and if he has that, he doesn't care if he's mad.
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