El Camino

Thousands of years ago, a girl living in a vast, dry, desert had not seen rain in many weeks. Her family members perished one by one from dehydration until she was the only one left. She cried for the souls of her family for they had nowhere to go. Where did they travel to when they left their homes, their shells, the bodies we identify  with?

Mourning and fearing for the loss of her own soul she began to wander through the hot blazing sun and the cold starry night. She walked until her feet bled and were burned from the hot desert sand. She did not know what she was searching for but she kept on walking. She vowed to walk until her feet gave out, until she met her death. She prayed as she walked. Her parched throat was as dry as the desert sand. Her skin was cracked, burned and brittle. She became disoriented, hallucinating the moonlight and stars were guiding her to a home she could forever call her own. She imagined the sun pounding down on her as if it were testing her faith, her strength. She was determined with the help of the moonlight to not lose her faith and pass the test of the sun in hopes of gaining an immortal soul.

She did not want this life to be all she would ever know. She did not care for her body but she wanted her soul to become one with the earth, free from the prison of her body which kept her soul chained to dying flesh. She pleaded to father sun and mother moon. She counted the stars, named them and promised them that everything would be alright because she was there to gaze upon them with love and that they too would shine every night for all of eternity with her.

Surprisingly, the little girl did not die of thirst, she continued on for many months. Walking hundreds of miles through a desolate earth with her only friends being those she always knew of but only just met after losing her family. Her new friends consisted of the grains of sand that burned her feet, father sun who continued to test her faith every morning as he rose from his slumber, mother moon who soothed her overheated, tired, burning body with a cool breeze and a path of guided light every evening as she rose into the sky and the stars who shined on as beacons of hope. They were her loyal friends whom she talked to every night and prayed to unite with for she had grown to love them all.

 

 

Click here to read Chapter One: Missing Person of The Genesis of The Looking Glass Short Story Series

Missing Person

I awoke to discover a missing person. This discovery was not made by an amber alert, an announcement on the news, or even a flyer freezing away as the lost soul began to fade into the noise and became overpowered by something more recent, more relevant.

The discovery was made when I passed by a reflective surface and did not recognize the person staring back at me. Who was it that I saw in the mirror? Whoever it was, it was not the self I had come to know. Where had I gone? What had happened? I did not know.

I became frightened and began desperately searching the streets, chasing my own shadow to where I was convinced I was hiding. Every mirror I passed I stopped and looked longing to see myself staring back at me but I was disappointed time and again.

This looking glass did not faithfully reflect my soul. It did not prove worthy to reflect the depths of my psyche. It must be broken, it must be lying. I started to question my own sanity as time passed for the fear of losing myself and the thought of forgetting myself began to overwhelm my being. I panicked. Anxiety overtook. My hands began to shake, the world looked unfamiliar and began to blur together.

As I looked in the mirror I asked the person staring back at me “Who am I?” but no response was given. I stepped closer, my voice raising “Who are you?” and still, no answer. ” Where did you come from?” I said as my voice began to tremble and my eyes began to water, covering the pores of my cheek, drowning them in sadness. “Who am I?” I finally said with my hands pressed up against the mirror, my voice raised, cracking and pleading for an answer.

I became overwhelmed with the idea that the mirror had stolen my true reflection, my soul and had replaced it with the soul of another. I feared I would become no one if I could not find my soul and reunite it with the body I was born into. I feared my memories, my life and my being would slip away into the void without my own reflection stitched into this body. I feared I would disappear.

That led my thoughts to travel to the origins of the mirror. What was a mirror? Where did it come from? What was the story? Everything has a story. In the search for my own soul, I would have to dive into the past and discover the story of the creation of the mirror.

And so my frantic search began. My pilgrimage to discovery and understanding of the self, myself and the mirror began and I was immersed in the legend of the origins of the mirror. My journey, to reunite the broken parts of myself that had escaped me and gone missing without my awareness, began the moment I failed to recognize myself.

Click here to read Chapter 2 : El Camino