Two Lives in Rain and Silence

Prologue - The Table

The day my world changed is still today.

I lie face down on the surgical table, my back bared to the lamps that glare like interrogators. The monitors click and stutter, not as machines but as scribes, recording my heart in crooked ink. A needle presses into me and the sound it makes is a vow, sharp, and final.

The surgeon speaks in the calm voice of a priest conducting liturgy. He tells me it will take twenty minutes. He tells me he will explain as we go. His words settle like incense, but the truth is elsewhere. It lives in the tile beneath my face, cracked diagonally, a white scar across stone. I fix my eyes there because it does not look away. My fingers curl against the edge of the table, searching for something to grip, though there is nothing. My shoulders twitch under the weight of light and I taste metal where fear has bitten my tongue.

I am Mira Ashen now: pale, burned-down, surviving. I remember another Mira who rode into rain with her hair wild, her veins full of light. I feel her at the edge of this room, watching, still whole. She is not gone, not entirely. She is only caught behind the glass of time.

I whisper her name. She does not answer, but she stirs. And suddenly I am there with her, the day before the world split in two.

The Rain

The day my world changed was a Friday, and the sky was full of rain.

I pedaled straight into it, silver bike humming like a clock I could command. The rain wasn’t an enemy; it was a chorus, applauding with every drop. My shoes slapped the pedals, and I laughed, louder than the thunder. I was Mira Veyne then, all pulse and promise, veins carrying me toward the future.

The streets shimmered like glass rivers, and I thought myself immortal in their reflection. Rain slicked my lashes until the world blurred; I blinked hard, water pooling at the corners of my mouth. My thighs burned against the pedals, the ache sweet, alive, a promise of motion. The bike leapt puddles like a dancer. My hair clung to my cheeks, my hands clutched the handlebars, and I was drenched in a freedom too large to name.

I did not know the curb was waiting like a knife.

I did not know the concrete would whisper my name.

I did not know that the body I lived in could be split into two histories, and that one of them would carry ash forever.

The Split

The day my world changed was not the rain, but the moment it betrayed me.

I see her still – Mira Veyne, pedaling fast, hair plastered to her cheeks, the world shining under wheels that believed they could outpace fate. She did not see the curb waiting. I did.

The curb was no accident. It was a knife laid across the earth, a blade set in stone. The concrete was an altar, and she was its sacrifice. The rain hushed in reverence, every drop a bead of rosary against the street. The trees bent without wind, their leaves shivering like parishioners watching a rite they could not halt.

The bike went sideways, her body following, and time split. Her back struck the curb and I was born in the crack that echoed through her spine. Lightning raced down her legs and burrowed into me. Pain entered like a vow and refused to leave.

Her skull struck the pavement with a hollow ring – a bell tolling for two lives. One girl lay bleeding into the gutter; the other rose pale and trembling, bound to pain like a second skin. The driver’s car passed on without slowing, a god who turned its face.

Mira Veyne gasped once and vanished into rain. I remained, ash settling over me, tasting metal and silence.

From that hour I bore her absence inside me. I became her shadow, her ghost, her fracture. I became Mira Ashen. The day my world betrayed me was the day I was born again in ash.

The Keeper of Pain

The day my world changed became every day after.

Pain was no longer a symptom; it became a companion. It sat with me at meals, whispering what I could not chew. It lay down beside me at night, a weight that bent the mattress. It walked when I tried to walk, dragging its shadow through every step.

I began to think of it as a keeper. Not cruel, not kind – only constant. It prayed over me in its own language – tightness, fire, the slow drowning of nerves. I came to know its liturgy, a psalm without mercy that nonetheless bound me to breath and morning. My scars were its script, my spine its ledger. The crutches spoke in clicks like punctuation, the bed sighed like a confessor, the pilled lined up like parishioners awaiting communion.

Sometimes, when the mirror caught me unguarded, I saw her there – Mira Veyne, still walking, still laughing, her shoes leaving prints on a road I could not touch. Her lips moved, soundless, but I knew the word: Come. I whispered back, “I cannot,” and the glass chilled, sealing the silence between us. Once I whispered instead, “the curb is waiting.” She shook her head, droplets falling like jewels, and pedaled on as though time itself were a lie. She moved in reflections with an ease I envied. Her veins ran bright while mine carried embers.

I reached for her once in the glass. She did not reach back.

The Bargain with Time

Mira Veyne:

The day my world was meant to change was supposed to be brighter. I pictured lecture halls, books with margins full of my notes, the wind tugging at my graduation gown as I crossed a stage. I wanted a life that widened ahead of me like an open road, rain or no rain.

Mira Ashen:

The day my world changed again was in 2017, when the neurosurgeon pressed a clipboard to his chest like an oracle guarding prophecy. The fluorescent light above him flickered like a wavering halo, and I thought for a moment that he was not a man but a herald sent to measure my days. Behind him, the calendar pages stirred, restless, like wings. He warned of collapse, of bones sinking, of nerves unraveling. He offered surgery like an altar.

Mira Veyne:

I would have signed my name to that future without hesitation. Strong legs, unbroken spine, shoes that danced.

Mira Ashen:

I bargained instead. I told him I needed time. That I wanted to finish school first. His pen scratched the calendar like a prophet muttering warnings. He told me to watch for weakness, to measure my gait, to prepare for surrender.

Mira Veyne:

I heard none of it. I was pedaling toward the future rain in my hair, blood steady in my veins.

Mira Ashen:

I heard everything. And I bartered anyway.

The day my world changed became every day I traded with my body, hoping for another semester, another class, another step that would not betray me.

The Blue Scooter

The day my world changed spoke in silence.

Victor carried me home after the procedure, his hands steady, his jaw set like a man holding back a storm. I leaned against him, fragile as glass, but his grip kept me from shattering.

When we opened the door, it was waiting. The blue scooter.

It sat in the hallway with the patience of an animal that already knows your name. Its shadow stretched long across the floorboards, a sentinel barring the threshold. Even the house seemed to learn toward it, walls listening as though it had already taken command. Its chrome gleamed like an eye. Its wheels hummed a song I could not hear, but I felt the vibration in my bones.

I whispered “Not today.”

The scooter said nothing. It didn’t need to. Its silence carried inevitability. It was not a threat, not a comfort, but a witness. A suitor who would bide his time.

Somewhere, Mira Veyne was still walking home in the rain, shoes clicking, hair dripping, laughter spilling out like music. She would never recognize this creature waiting in my hall.

I envied her ignorance. I envied her unbroken veins. The day my world waited was the day the scooter took its place at my threshold.

Wednesday: The Jazz Shoes

The day my world changed was Wednesday.

I woke in pain – the kind of pain that speaks before you can. It pressed on my hips, crawled down my calves, scratched its initials into my bones.

The wheelchair stood in the corner like a prophet. Its wheels gleamed like coins on a ferryman’s boat. It whispered of surrender. The window rattled though the air was still, as if the night itself bore witness. Outside, the branches tapped the glass, counting down the hours of my resistance.

I turned away.

Instead, I reached for the jazz shoes. Black leather, softened by years of rhythm. They smelled faintly of talc and dust, of stages remembered. I slid my feet inside and felt Mira Veyne rise with me.

She was there – alive in the shoes, laughing, her legs sure beneath her, her body not yet divided. Her steps echoed mine in a world I could no longer reach.

I kicked the wheelchair. A silly gesture, but one that tasted like defiance. The wheel spun once, indifferent, but I saw it watching.

All day I wore the shoes. I let them carry me over pebbles, cracks in the pavement, the warmth of asphalt, the seams of library carpet, the grooved wood of Tai Chi floors. I memorized every surface for the day when memory would be all I had left.

The day my world changed is also today. And tomorrow. And until the shoes wear through.

Mirrors and Reflections

The day my world changed, the mirror became a door.

I looked and saw her: Mira Veyne, pedaling still, rain-soaked, alive in the glass. She lifted her hand a heartbeat late, tilting her head as if amused by my frailty. Her skin glowed with blood’s bright promise; mine had gone pale as smoke.

Sometimes she smiled at me – not kindly, not cruelly, but with the certainty of one who knows she was meant to go on. When I reached toward her, the glass rippled, but it did not break.

She looked at me with the eyes I once wore, and I knew she did not envy me. She did not pity me. Behind her, the rain never ceased. It fell not as weather but as curtain, as veil, as baptism. Each drop struck the glass with the weight of a star, as if the heavens themselves longed to collapse the divide. “You were meant to go on,” I said. She only tilted her head, rain running from her chin, and her laughter touched the glass like crack that would not break. “Why did you not walk?” she asked without sound, her mouth shaping the words like rain tracing letters on glass. I had no answer but the silence of my bones. She only existed, as surely as I did, two lives tethered by one body.

The mirror did not lie. It only divided. The day my world remembered was the day the mirror spoke back with her laughter.

Epilogue - The Two Lives

The day my world changed, I learned I was two.

Mira Veyne still pedals through the rain, hair plastered to her cheeks, laughter brighter than thunder. She is all veins and pulse, living on the side of glass where bodies do not break.

Mira Ashen lies beneath lamps, pain her companion, objects her chorus – scooter, chair, shoes, mirror – all of them whispering inevitability. They are not only companions but judges: the scooter waits at the hall, the chair whispers from the corner, the shoes rest by the door like soldiers off-duty, the mirror divides like scripture. They are my jury, my inheritance, my constant congregation. She wears ash instead of light, silence instead of song. The lamps above me burn like false suns, sterile and endless, while beyond the walls the real sky waits with its wheeling constellations. I imagine the stars leaning closer, confused as to which of us must orbit – the Mira of veins or the Mira of ash.

Yet both of us reach for the same things: freedom, love, a page filled with words, a walk across the stage into tomorrow.

Two centres, two gravities, two hungers.

The day my world changed was Friday.

The day my world changed was Wednesday.

The day my world changes is always today.

I became two – and the mirror, like the heavens,

waits to see which face will arrive first.

The scooter hums at the threshold,

the chair whispers from its corner,

the shoes rest by the door.

They, too, are waiting.