Where to start? The least interesting first. It’s my final semester of uni. In a few months I’ll hopefully get to throw my certificate scroll up in the air with my pals, all dressed in our fancy robes and fancier clothes. It’s the getting there that’s the problem. Exams, more exams, a dissertation, and a fuck-ton of coursework. If that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve got everyone on my case about after. My pals are lining up jobs, further studying, readying themselves to become adults. What about me, they ask, what are my plans? I’m finding’ myself avoiding people so I can dodge that question. I don’t want to think about it.
Let’s move onto something more interesting, and less panic inducing. Reid’s got himself a girlfriend – I think the latest one is a girlfriend. There’ve been a few, and I don’t mean to sound judgmental, it’s just unusual that there’s any at all. It’s starting to feel like there’s a new one every few weeks. Boyfriends, girlfriends, people without labels who last a few days. It’s gotten so bad Fionn and I have a bet at how long each will last, and that’s the ones we hear about. It’s not like it’s something to worry about, which is why it’s hard to pin down why I feel a bit…uneasy about it.
Speaking of Fionn. It’s been…I don’t know what it’s been. Some days he’ll be fine, his usual cheeky, cheerful self. Other days he’ll barely speak a word, especially to me, and moves around the shop like a ghost. Sometimes he won’t even look me in the eye, let alone speak to me. If he does, he’s civil and distant, a stranger I don’t know. It depends on the day, the time, where the moon is in its cycle, who knows. Sometimes it’s a challenge going to the shop because you never know what version of Fionn you’re going to get. It’s cruel of me to complain. I did that to him, and he knows it. I trapped him in a place at times I’m happy to be free of. He has to look at the same walls, the same objects, the same faces of Norna and Chronos. He can never leave.
It’s hard to watch, to see. Did I do the right thing? And who did I do it for, me or him? Was I being selfish? Should I just have let him die? I’m too afraid to tell anyone these doubts, these questions. So, I’m telling you.
Other questions involve Fionn’s death. How did he end up there in the first place? From what I’ve learned, wyverns are supposed to be difficult to kill, to overpower. He’s lived for centuries, and yet one single person managed to corner him with a single knife and end life as he knew it. Fionn’s never brought up that day, but Reid and I are convinced he knew the man that attacked him. It’s not like it really matters now. Fionn can never leave the shop, and he can never die whilst inside its boundaries. That person, whoever they were, didn’t get what they wanted.
Fionn’s become more knowledgeable than even Reid on the objects in the shop. So much that he gets lost in them. Chronos believes it’s intentional, a form of escape from his antique lined prison. I’m starting to believe the wee shite has a point.
For a few days he’d been spending a lot of time in silence, lost in the aisles of the shop. It was during one of his darker periods, the times when he barely looks or speaks to me. I attempt to coax him out of it on occasion. It’s a different silence, it’s tense, awkward even, especially if it’s just the two of us. Reid’s rarely in the shop these days, and Chronos comes and goes as he pleases.
Feeling brave, and having a slow day from customers, I went in search of him. Finding him in a corner of the shop, perched on top of an ancient looking box, scratched and dented with wear and use, he was staring into a mirror. Fionn was a bit vain about his looks. I gathered from the occasional ogling customer that it was not without reason, but he’d never been a Narcissus about it, staring at his own reflection for hours on end. He could be staring at the mirror, it was pretty, set into a silver frame, a pattern engraved onto his edge.
I approach cautiously, half hoping he’ll notice me before I give him a fright. He doesn’t, but the creaking floorboards beneath my feet give me away. He glances up briefly, as if expecting a customer. When he realises it’s me a shadow passes across his face and he turns back to the mirror. I hate when he looks at me like that, it makes my eyes sting and my conscience scream. I breathe out slowly, clench my fists as though the physical pain will mask the emotional.
I try to keep my tone light, and I ask him what the mirror is. There’s space on the grand, ancient chest, but I remain standing. Even I’m not stupid enough to think just by closing the physical distance it’ll fix the emotional one. Reluctantly, almost begrudgingly, Fionn explains that whenever he looks into the mirror he can see different times of his life, as though he were living them again. But there’s a difference. The things he’s seeing have never really happened, rather – they’ve only happened in his imagination.
As reluctant as I was to be intruding on his space when he evidently didn’t want me to, I wasn’t sure what he meant. Did the mirror allow you to experience your wildest dreams? Did it make your inner most imaginings reflect back at ye?
Has there ever been a decision in your life, a point in time when you went right instead of left, when you went out instead of staying in, when you took the bus instead of a taxi? De you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you’d made the other choice? Fionn said it was like that. It took him back to moments in his life where he had other choices and showed him how his life would’ve played out if he’d gone down a different path, made a different decision.
His words weighed heavily on me. I’d banished him to this, only having moments to relive and not living any new ones. I’d condemned him to infinite time to dwell on his life, his mistakes, and the mirror was making the job a lot easier. I didn’t ask to see it, to take it away from him even though a voice in my head said it’d be best to. I couldn’t tell if Fionn found comfort from the mirror, or it was a slow form of torture. Was he wondering what choices he could’ve made differently that would’ve avoided his death in that alleyway? Was he trying to find a single point where it’d all gone wrong?
I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, I couldn’t think of words that were sincere without being too serious. I was about to leave him to the mirror when he handed it to me, standing at my shoulder curious to see the reflection. I looked in every direction apart from at my reflection. I didn’t know how much control you had, but I knew what I’d see. Was that why he’d handed it to me? To check if I would’ve made a different decision in that alleyway?
I wanted to hand it back, to refuse, knowing I wouldn’t be able to bear what it showed me about that day. Fionn either didn’t notice or didn’t care about my discomfort as he told me I needed to look directly into the mirror in order to see. I let my guard down, I let my eyes slip to the surface, to the reflection of my own face, crystal clear in a mirror that looked freshly polished. But that was all I did see. My ugly mug. Confusion started to draw my eyebrows together and I looked blankly at Fionn, as though he’d know how to fix this mysterious object.
As confused as I was, he took it from my hands and peered in, and right enough there was a scene from at least a few centuries ago playing out in the reflection. A version of Fionn I didn’t know, talking with people that were probably long dead. He handed it back to me and we both stared intently at our reflections, but again, that’s all there was to see. There was no image of me deciding which uni to go to, which flat to get, which parent to live with. Just two people who appeared close but felt as far apart as we ever had.
I was relieved, and when it was clear the image wouldn’t change, I handed it back to Fionn and shrugged. Maybe I was immune to its charms. He was happy to have it back and sat back down on the ancient chest and continued his journey through his memories, through the opportunities he missed, through the lives that never were.
Every time I came to the shop in the following days he’d be in the same corner, in the same position, staring at the reflection. I suppose in a life as long as his there were a lot of decisions that dictated how the rest of the time would go. I never went near him, or the mirror, thinking I’d had a lucky escape. I thought that was it. Chronos predicted Fionn would get bored eventually and the mirror would disappear back into the nooks of the shop from where he’d plucked it.
It was that same week I started to get strange emails and texts. It was funny at first, laughing at someone else’s mistake. It’d be confirmations of orders to companies I’d never heard of, for shoes, sports equipment, furniture. It never had my address on it, but it had my name and was sent to my email address. I’d show my flatmates, we all had a laugh, and then I’d delete them.
I was in a queue at the bank a few days later. A stranger came up to me and started talking as though we were pals and had known each other for years. I tried to tell them I wasn’t who they thought I was, but they assumed I was making a joke, telling me we’d gone to school together, and that I’d been in their bridal party last year. Something similar happened in a clothes shop where the manager treated me like I was an employee. I sprinted out and have vowed to never return.
I began having dreams, not unusual in itself, but these were boring dreams. Ones where I’d be a barista, a lawyer, a lorry driver, an archivist. Nothing strange would happen, I’d go about a normal day. Nothing chasing me, no cursed objects, no creatures that looked like humans, no zombies.
About a week after I’d spoken to Fionn about the mirror I was in a lecture taking notes. When I’d looked up at the board from my laptop, I found myself in an office, a spreadsheet that I hadn’t created open on my laptop, rows of numbers and equations and calculations I didn’t know how to do. I was surrounded by others doing the same, typing away, having quick conversations by an office printer, sneakily looking up cheap holidays whilst the manager’s head was turned the other way.
I blinked away the mirage, assuming I was dreaming again, but nothing changed. I was the same, my chipped nail polish was still the same colour, but I was in smart clothes, office wear. Why was I here? Where was my lecture theatre, and my laptop, and my life? I shot up from my chair, only to be back in the lecture theatre with everyone staring at me.
In the next few days, I experienced the same thing twice, being in my own life one minute and then someone else’s the next. By the third time I marched straight to the shop, grabbed Fionn, and went to see the Madam.
As I was explaining the strange things that’d been happening to me, Fionn cast his eyes away, eventually admitting that similar things had been happening to him, but that he’d been transported to different points in his own life, rather than whatever had been happening to me.
The Madam, in her silent way, listened, and when we’d finished, and the mirror was placed on the coffee table, she began to explain. Like with many items in the shop, the mirror had been created by someone who thought they’d made many mistakes in their life. What if they’d said something different, what if they’d chosen this, or that, or the other? They thought the misery of their current life would be explained by the decisions they’d made along the way. Where had it all gone wrong?
The mirror had shown them, had taken them down memory lane and given them the glimpse into how their life would be if they’d turned right instead of left, if they’d fought instead of ran, if they’d spoken out instead of staying quiet. The mirror had been doing the same thing ever since, showing people alternate fates. Fionn had been transported to the decisions in his life that he thought should’ve been different, eventually transporting him physically instead of just through a small reflection.
That left the sticky problem of what’d been happening to me. I’d seen nothing in the mirror apart from my own reflection. That’s because I had no alternate fate. No matter what I’d done, no matter what I’d chosen, I’d have always ended up at the shop. I didn’t have alternative fates, only one.
The emails I’d been getting, the lives I’d been living through, they weren’t alternate fates, they were alternative realities. The mirror was shifting me between worlds as that was the only way to show me different versions of how my life could’ve been. An office worker, a barista, a furniture buyer, a holiday maker. There was a me in some other dimension, in some other world who could be those things.
Madam Norna leaned over to the mirror and slid it into her hands, solemnly telling us that something so powerful couldn’t be left in the shop. It’d have to go in a locked box in storage. Although I was a special case, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t do the same to an unsuspecting customer. Any item with the power to merge worlds, send one being from one to another, was too unpredictable to let into general circulation.
My relief was soon followed by guilt as I saw Fionn’s face fall. That mirror had been his escape, his hobby, some kind of solace. And because of me it had to get locked up. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Why does it seem recently that I’m cursed to take away his freedoms? That my selfishness is so out of control that it backs him into a cage of my making? I’m glad that mirror didn’t work the same way with me, I don’t want to know what decision I’d have made in that alleyway given a second chance.
Scots-ish language version
Where tae start…? The least interesting first. It’s ma final semester ae uni. In a few months I’ll hopefully get tae throw ma certificate scroll up in the air wi’ ma pals, all dressed in our fancy robes and fancier clothes. It’s the getting’ there that’s the problem. Exams, more exams, a dissertation, and a fuck ton ae coursework. If that wasnae bad enough I’ve got everyone on ma case aboot after. Ma pals are linin’ up jobs, further studying, readying themselves tae become adults. Whit aboot me, they ask, whit are ma plans? I’m finding’ maself avoidin people so I can dodge that question. I dinnae want tae ‘hink aboot it.
Let’s move ontae something more interestin’, and less panic inducing. Reid’s got himself a girlfriend – I think the latest one is a girlfriend. There’ve been a few, and I dinnae mean tae sound judgmental, it’s just unusual that there’s any at all. It’s startin’ tae feel like there’s a new one every few weeks. Boyfriends, girlfriends, people withoot labels who last a few days. It’s gotten so bad Fionn and I have a bet at how long each will last, and that’s the ones we hear aboot. It’s no like it’s something tae worry aboot, which is why it’s hard tae pin doon why I feel a bit…uneasy aboot it.
Speakin’ ae Fionn. It’s been…I dinnae know whit it’s been. Some days he’ll be fine, his usual cheeky, cheerful self. Other days he’ll barely speak a word, especially tae me, and moves aroond the shop like a ghost. Sometimes he won’t even look me in the eye, let alone speak tae me. If he does, he’s civil and distant, a stranger I dinnae know. It depends on the day, the time, where the moon is in its cycle, who knows. Sometimes it’s a challenge goin’ tae the shop because ye never know whit version ae Fionn you’re gonnae get. It’s cruel ae me tae complain. I did that tae him, and he knows it. I trapped him in a place at times I’m happy tae be free of. He has tae look at the same walls, the same objects, the same faces ae Norna and Chronos. He can never leave.
It’s hard tae watch, tae see. Did I do the right ‘hing? And who did I do it for, me or him? Was I being selfish? Should I just have let him die? I’m too afraid tae tell anyone these doubts, these questions. So I’m tellin’ you.
Other questions involve Fionn’s death. How did he end up there in the first place? Fae whit I’ve learned, wyverns are supposed tae be difficult tae kill, tae overpower. He’s lived fae centuries, and yet one single person managed tae corner him wi’ a single knife and end life as he knew it. Fionn’s never brought up that day, but Reid and I are convinced he knew the man that attacked him. It’s no like it really matters noo. Fionn can never leave the shop, and he can never die whilst inside its boundaries. That person, whoever they were, didnae get whit they wanted.
Fionn’s become more knowledgeable than even Reid on the objects in the shop. So much that he gets lost in them. Chronos believes it’s intentional, a form ae escape fae his antique lined prison. I’m startin’ tae believe the wee shite has a point.
Fae a few days he’d been spendin’ a lot ae time in silence, lost in the aisles ae the shop. It was durin’ one ae his darker periods, the times when he barely looks or speaks tae me. I attempt tae coax him oot ae it on occasion. It’s a different silence, it’s tense, awkward even, especially if it’s just the two ae us. Reid’s rarely in the shop these days, and Chronos comes and goes as he pleases.
Feelin’ brave, and havin’ a slow day fae customers, I went in search ae him. Findin’ him in a corner ae the shop, perched on top ae an ancient lookin’ box, scratched and dented wi’ wear and use, he was starin intae a mirror. Fionn’ was a bit vain aboot his looks. I gathered fae the occasional ogling customer that it was no withoot reason, but he’d never been a Narcissus aboot it, starin’ at his own reflection fae hours on end. He could be starin’ at the mirror, it was pretty, set intae a silver frame, a pattern engraved ontae his edge.
I approach cautiously, half hopin’ he’ll notice me before I gee him a fright. He doesnae, but the creakin’ floorboards beneath ma feet gee me away. he glances up briefly, as if expectin’ a customer. When he realises it’s me a shadow passes across his face and he turns back tae the mirror. I hate when he looks at me like that, it makes ma eyes sting and ma conscience scream. I breathe out slowly, clench ma fists as though the physical pain will mask the emotional.
I try tae keep ma tone light and I ask him whit the mirror is. There’s space on the grand, ancient chest, but I remain standin’. Even I’m no stupid enough tae think just by closin’ the physical distance it’ll fix the emotional one. Reluctantly, almost begrudgingly, Fionn explains that whenever he looks intae the mirror he can see different times ae his life, as though he were livin’ them again. But there’s a difference. The things he’s seein’ have never really happened, rather – they’ve only happened in his imagination.
As reluctant as I was tae be intrudin’ on his space when he evidently didnae want me tae, I wasae sure whit he meant. Did the mirror allow ye tae experience your wildest dreams? Did it make your inner most imaginings reflect back at ye?
Has there ever been a decision in your life, a point in time when you went right instead ae left, when you went oot instead ae stayin’ in, when you took the bus instead ae a taxi? De ye ever wonder whit wouldae happened if ye’d made the other choice? Fionn said it was like that. It took him back tae moments in his life where he had other choices, and showed him how his life wouldae played oot if he’d gone doon a different path, made a different decision.
His words weighed heavily on me. I’d banished him tae this, only havin’ moments tae relive, and no livin’ any new ones. I’d condemned him tae infinte time tae dwell on his life, his mistakes, and the mirror was makin’ the job a lot easier. I didnae ask tae see it, tae take it away fae him even though a voice in ma heid said it’d be best tae. I couldnae tell if Fionn found comfort fae the mirror, or it was a slow form ae torture. Was he wonderin’ whit choices he couldae made differently that wouldae avoided his death in that alleyway? Was he tryin tae find a single point where it’d all gone wrong?
I couldnae bring maself tae say anythin’, I couldnae think ae words that were sincere withoot bein’ too serious. I was aboot tae leave him tae the mirror when he handed it tae me, standin’ at ma shoulder curious tae see the reflection. I looked in every direction apart fae at ma reflection. I didnae know how much control ye had, but I knew whit I’d see. Was that why he’d handed it tae me? Tae check if I wouldae made a different decision in that alleyway?
I wanted tae hand it back, tae refuse, knowin’ I wouldnae be able tae bear whit it showed me aboot that day. Fionn either didnae notice or didnae care aboot ma discomfort, as he told me I needed tae look directly intae the mirror in order tae see. I let ma guard doon, I let ma eyes slip tae the surface, tae the reflection ae ma own face, crystal clear in a mirror that looked freshly polished. But that was all I did see. Ma ugly mug. Confusion started tae draw ma eyebrows together and I looked blankly at Fionn, as though he’d know how tae fix this mysterious object.
As confused as I was, he took it fae ma hands and peered in, and right enough there was a scene fae at least a few centuries ago playin’ oot in the reflection. A version ae Fionn I didnae know, talkin’ wi’ people that were probably long deid. He handed it back tae me and we both stared intently at our reflections, but again, that’s all there was tae see. There was no image ae me decidin’ which uni tae go tae, which flat tae get, which parent tae live wi’. Just two people who appeared close, but felt as far apart as we ever had.
I was relieved, and when it was clear the image wouldnae change, I handed it back tae Fionn and shrugged. Maybe I was immune tae its charms. He was happy tae have it back and sat back doon on the ancient chest and continued his journey through his memories, through the opportunities he missed, through the lives that never were.
Every time I came tae the shop in the followin’ days he’d be in the same corner, in the same position, starin’ at the reflection. I suppose in a life as long as his there were a lot ae decisions that dictated how the rest ae the time would go. I never went near him, or the mirror, thinkin’ I’d had a lucky escape. I thought that was it, Chronos predicted Fionn would get bored eventually and the mirror would disappear back intae the nooks ae the shop fae where he’d plucked it.
It was that same week I started tae get strange emails and texts. It was funny at first, laughin’ at someone else’s mistake. It’d be confirmations ae orders tae companies I’d never heard ae, fae shoes, sports equipment, furniture. It never had ma address on it, but it had ma name, and was sent tae ma email address. I’d show ma flatmates, we all had a laugh, and then I’d delete them.
I was in a queue at the bank a few days later. A stranger came up tae me and started talkin’ as though we were pals and had known each other fae years. I tried tae tell them I wasnae who they thought I was, but they assumed I was makin’ a joke, tellin’ me we’d gone tae school together, and that I’d been in their bridal party last year. somethin’ similar happened in a clothes shop where the manager treated me like I was an employee. I sprinted oot and have vowed tae never return.
I began havin’ dreams, no unusual in itself, but these were borin’ dreams. Ones where I’d be a barrista, a lawyer, a lorry driver, an archivist. Nothin’ strange would happen, I’d go aboot a normal day. Nothin’ chasin’ me, no cursed objects, no creatures that looked like humans, no zombies.
Aboot a week after I’d spoken tae Fionn aboot the mirror I was in a lecture takin’ notes. When I’d looked up at the board fae ma laptop I found maself in an office, a spreadsheet that I hadnae created open on ma laptop, rows ae numbers and equations and calculations I didnae know how tae do. I was surrounded by others doin’ the same, typin’ away, havin’ quick conversations by an office printer, sneakily lookin’ up cheap holidays whilst the manager’s heid was turned the other way.
I blinked away the mirage, assumin’ I was dreamin again, but nothin’ changed. I was the same, ma chipped nail polish was still the same colour, but I was in smart clothes, office wear. Why was I here? Where was ma lecture theatre, and ma laptop, and ma life? I shot up fae ma chair, only tae be back in the lecture theatre wi’ everyone starin’ at me.
In the next few days I experienced the same ‘hing twice, bein’ in ma own life one minute and then someone else’s the next. By the third time I marched straight tae the shop, grabbed Fionn and went tae see the Madam.
As I was explainin’ the strange ‘hings that’d been happenin’ tae me, Fionn cast his eyes away, eventually admittin’ that similar things had been happenin tae him, but that he’d been transported tae different points in his own life, rather than whitever had been happenin tae me.
The Madam, in her silent way, listened, and when we’d finished, and the mirror was placed on the coffee table, she began tae explain. Like wi’ many items in the shop, the mirror had been created by someone who thought they’d made many mistakes in their life. What if they’d said somethin’ different, whit if they’d chosen this, or that, or the other. they thought the misery ae their current life would be explained by the decisions they’d made along the way. Where had it all gone wrong?
The mirror had shown them, had taken them doon memory lane and given them the glimpse intae how their life would be if they’d turned right instead ae left, if they’d fought instead ae ran, if they’d spoken oot instead ae stayin’ quiet. The mirror had been doin’ the same thing ever since, showin’ people alternate fates. Fionn had been transported tae the decisions in his life that he thought should’ve been different, eventually transporting him physically instead ae just through a small reflection.
That left the sticky problem ae whit’d been happenin tae me. I’d seen nothin’ in the mirror apart fae ma own reflection. That’s because I had no alternate fate. No matter whit I’d done, no matter whit I’d chosen, I’d have always ended up at the shop. I didnae have alternative fates, only one.
The emails I’d been getting’, the lives I’d been livin through, they werenae alternate fates, they were alternative realities. The mirror was shiftin’ me between worlds as that was the only way tae show me different versions ae how ma life couldae been. An office worker, a barrista, a furniture buyer, a holiday maker. There was a me in some other dimension, in some other world who could be those things.
Madam Norna leaned over tae the mirror and slid it intae her hands, solemnly tellin’ us that somethin’ so powerful couldnae be left in the shop. It’d have tae go in a locked box in storage. Although I was a special case, there was no guarantee it wouldnae do the same tae an unsuspectin’ customer. Any item wi’ the power tae merge worlds, send one being fae one tae another, was too unpredictable tae let intae general circulation.
Ma relief was soon followed by guilt as I saw Fionn’s face fall. That mirror had been his escape, his hobby, some kind ae solace. And because ae me it had tae get locked up. Maybe I shouldnae have said anythin’. Why does it seem recently that I’m cursed tae take away his freedoms? That my selfishness is so oot ae control that it backs him intae a cage ae ma makin’? I’m glad that mirror didnae work the same way wi’ me, I dinnae want tae know whit decision I’d have made in that alleyway given a second chance.