Corporeal forms of memories fluttered and beckoned – for a few seconds, the nymph believed she’d concocted a mirage, a hallucination, a flood of chimeras slinking and slithering from the reflecting glass, all a stage and her a mere audience member, tossing over the fragments of her past like a haunting, poignant bottle spun to the right degree. Over the glowing haze, amidst the mysterious atmosphere, a being emerged, stepped through the mirror, as if someone once swallowed, removed, from the world via the same void, following white rabbits and mad hatters, reappeared from the hollowed edges of holes and horrors. Her eyes widened, first out of disbelief, then, when the warm, confused stare still remained in befuddlement, out of sheer shock and surprise, guided into the cacophony of confusion. Before her, occupying the same threshold, the same cavern, the same grotto, was a form she’d only seen painted amidst her recollection, impressions of strength, of valor, disappeared and stolen by whim and capricious, mercurial pursuits. The name escaped her lips before she even thought to stop it, a soft, pieced-together croon, ravished and mystified. “Larkspur…” It was the old figure of a cerulean mare encompassed in prowess, quiet, persistent, eager to guide and help a friend (even collecting ones she’d never met at the drop of a hat, at the whisper of a request from the Mender herself, and that world seemed a lifetime ago, when peace was burned and armistices enacted; folly and triumph), the piercing golden gaze, the roaming disorientation fumbling and tumbling amidst the darkness. Without a second thought, the nymph glided further into the folds of the enigma, of the riddle, of the conundrum, pushing relieved breaths into the strange expanse, on soft, dulcet steps, either to reassure a long-lost, beloved friend, or to allow time for the ghost to escape, for her mind to christen and anoint more blinding mania. But she reached and pulled, first with her soft maw, towards the blue shoulder, and when she found it was corporeal, real, tangible threads of a woven companion, she extended her frame further, gave no thought to Larkspur’s potential discomfort, and laced her neck around the others’, pulled her into an unwavering embrace. Valorous, intrepid, staunch and refined, she gave every essence of her heart into the amiable touch, into the cordial caress, so overjoyed, so content, so delighted, elated, thrilled, and euphoric, dazzled and spellbound by what the God of Time had given and granted them in another unearthly, otherworldly entanglement. Unhesitant warmth, sweet murmurings, sweeping spirits and shuffled choreography of her vibrant incantations, the mellifluous glide of her song, of her arias, shifted into the hole, taunted the haunting sphere and layered it with quiet, remorseless beauty, tucked it into the other frame’s pelt, tender reverence. “I’ve missed you.” And the sprite, the fairy, wanted to ask so many things: where she’d been, what she’d done, how she’d been consumed by the mirror and spurned by the Time God only to be anointed again, but none of the breathy whims seemed to matter at the precise moment, and she pulled away, smiling, glimmering, so full of hope and incandescence for a returned confidante, that she only slipped a silly, delicate query to a woman who’d been thrown from a reflection. “How are you?”