June stepped closer to the mirror. She half-expected her reflection to remain still. There was always a feeling of half-reality to what she saw, a feeling she had felt since childhood. The vision it showed her now could not be real. She ran her fingers across her hip, felt her skin tingle with the chill of a New England night. The woman in the mirror did the same, but June knew that the reflection's muscle would always be stronger, her skin always softer, the moonlight shimmering gently over her hair always more beautiful. The reflection did not have scars.
And did it always come down to that? she thought as she closed her eyes. Her dreams, her religion... it had to be something more than a search for a way to dissolve, to disappear. But the waking world was not like the sea. If you let go, there was no tide to carry you away- only a fall into unending darkness.
June opened her eyes. In the mirror, yellow eyes stared back.
"Holy- holy...!"
The wolf watched her stumble backward. She knew it, the delirious thought in her head sang, she knew it, something else always in the reflection with her-
Teeth glittered in the dark. June threw her arms over her head.
The wolf's body hitting the glass felt as if it had slammed into her body. Her bones shivered and they were going to chew their way free of her flesh, she could see them in her mind already gnawing their way out. She gulped air that burned on its way down, but of course this was all in her mind, it could not be real-
She sat up on her knees, not caring she didn't remember falling to the floor. "Get away... stay back!"
There was nothing in the darkness of the mirror but the wolf's teeth bared in invitation. It rushed forward, all fur and impossible speed, shaking the glass as its teeth ground against the barrier between them.
"Stay back!"
The wolf's eyes shone coldly, the color of cat's eye and just as iridescent. It had stopped, and June slowly stood up. Now she had time to notice the beast's primal magnificence, the brute strength it could have used so easily to overpower her.
I am coming for you, a voice in her mind that might have been her own thoughts.
She shook her head.
I am in you.
No words came to her. But then again, what could be said to something that was no more than a shadow in glass? And yet, and yet.
"No..."
I am you.
The wolf stared expressionlessly from behind the mirror. "That... that's not right," she said. There had to be something she could say. "I'm human."
Its lip curled. Human?
The wolf's word echoed in her head even as the mirror cleared and her own reflection returned. Human. She looked into her eyes but the eyes in the glass were not hers. They were colors, shapes, a glint of moonlight. They were as ephemeral and meaningless as the word, empty sounds fit for naming the woman in the mirror but not her.
June stared hopelessly into the glass. "Then what?" she whispered. "If not human, then what?"
The lips of the reflection moved, but made no sound.