"A Mirror Between Worlds"

There’s a mirror in my grandmother’s attic—old, brass-framed, slightly cracked in the corner. It was covered in a dusty white sheet for as long as I can remember. I never asked about it. Some things in her house just seemed... off-limits.

But the day she died, everything changed.

I was alone in the house, sorting through her things when I finally lifted the sheet. The mirror stood taller than me, and when I looked into it, something peculiar happened. My reflection didn’t move. It blinked out of sync. It raised its hand after I did. It smiled... when I wasn’t.

I took a step back.

Then it spoke.

"You were never meant to be like this."

I stumbled. My breath hitched. This wasn’t a dream. My reflection—no, the thing in the mirror—was still smiling.

"What are you?" I asked.

It tilted its head. “I’m what you were before the forgetting.”

It touched the glass from the inside. I found myself mimicking without meaning to. My fingers met its at the barrier between us.

"The forgetting?" I repeated, heart pounding.

It nodded. “When your kind traded wonder for wires. When silence was replaced with constant scrolling. When the stars were forgotten in favor of screens.”

I blinked. "You're saying... you're a version of me? From the past?"

It frowned. "No. From the path not taken. The you who never needed validation. Who remembered how to listen to trees. Who could feel the rhythm of the earth."

My mouth went dry. I wanted to laugh. Dismiss it. But something in me stirred—like a dusty piano key finally being pressed after decades of silence.

"What happened to us?" I whispered.

“You disconnected.”

It showed me images—not with words, but feelings. Flashbacks surged through me: childhood days where I lay on the grass and felt the hum of the world. Evenings spent talking to the moon. Laughing without recording. Loving without filters.

The mirror pulsed softly.

“We were meant to be light,” it said. “Curious. Wild. Whole. But now... you survive instead of live.”

A silence fell between us.

“But we had to change,” I muttered. “Life is faster now. There’s no time for all that.”

It looked at me like a mother would a child who doesn’t know they’re bleeding.

“Time is a man-made leash. You wore it willingly.”

I fell to my knees.

“I don’t know how to go back.”

It smiled again—softly this time.

“You don’t need to go back. You need to wake up.”

The mirror flickered. My reflection started syncing again. My fingers tingled. For the first time in years, I felt my heartbeat—really felt it. I could hear birds outside. I noticed the way sunlight painted the attic floor.

And just before the mirror faded, it whispered:

“Remember. Just... remember.”

The next morning, I deleted half my apps. I walked barefoot on the grass. I sat under the old oak tree behind Grandma’s house for hours. No music. No headphones. Just breath and breeze.

It didn’t solve everything. But something shifted.

Every now and then, when I pass a mirror, I pause. And sometimes—just sometimes—I swear I see that other me... watching. Waiting.

Hoping I’ll remember again.