The magic mirror showed him the nothingness of emotional indifference eating away at his reflection, editing a little at a time, replacing the innocent boy with a cruel monster who held the mask of a man.
The magic mirror showed her two faces; the one that love built and the one fashioned from emotional indifference. It showed her how she switched between them, never willing to acknowledge that she had more than one face. Then it showed her a knife and a soft silk scarf. She could take the pain of removing the face of indifference or accept the comfort of the silk scarf that hid the truth from the eyes of all. To heal, to become a better person was painful. To continue this decay into a world of selfishness and vanity was easy. The magic mirror never gave advice, that was not its purpose. It was there to show the truth so that the person could never say they didn't have a choice over their direction. It had been explained and thus they were either praiseworthy for improving or culpable for deterioration from whatever point of health they were at.
The magic mirror showed the beauty within, and so for the pure of heart they watched their faces take on a new glow and broad feathered wings stretch out behind them.
In their world the deadly sins had become their virtues, might was right and vanity was beauty. They used lust as a scape goat for everything else, morality became bound to bizarre notions of chastity and sexual propriety - love became a longed for memory of the collective soul whispered upon the wind. And so the creator of their world gave them a magical mirror, a sentient mirror of golden heart, and she would see right through their communal and personal self deceptions. They were so far south of beauty that the mirror had to become their moral compass and guide this necrotic zombie hoard home.
The magical mirror showed not your form, but a representation of what you truly had built yourself to become. For the greedy who had entire libraries of justifications for their splendour and the terminal squalor of the poor, they were a sort of Tolkien's Smaug with cold dead eyes and necrotic skin.
Keep track of your favorite writers on Descriptionari
We won't spam your account. Set your permissions during sign up or at any time afterward.