Mirage

It looked solid but my hand passed through it like it was water. I was in the desert standing before an enormous mirror, at least fifteen feet high, decorated with intricate glimmering lights and exquisite flourishes all around the frame. It was unlike any other mirror I had seen before; this mirror reflected what it saw. It pulsed and glowed and blinked, peering out with its giant rectangular eye into the infinite darkness of the desert night. Others passed by and I watched them change inside the reflection. One man, a rather old gentleman, scantily clad, with red hair and large furry boots, was transformed into a youthful red mare as he passed - or galloped - by behind me. There was a woman who came to me, moving toward the mirror, holding a small basket of dead flowers painted gold. I watched her reflection as she approached and saw small thorns sprouting out from her skin, which now took on a leafy shade of green. A deep red spread across her face, and by the time she was next to me it had petaled outward like a rose in bloom.

"Why aren't you changing," she asked, staring at our reflections.

I looked at her quizzically. I didn't know. I'd been standing there for several minutes now and couldn't discern a change. At first I'd thought that maybe I had been standing in a poor spot, one that the mirror couldn't see, or that I'd been standing too close, or too far, but no matter where I stood I remained the same.

"I'm not sure," I told her. "It's strange."

She touched her reflection on the mirror and gently ran her thin fingers across the soft petals of her face. Those yellow eyes painted on her rosy cheeks almost looked like butterfly wings. Her reflection carefully plucked one of them off and turned to me, extending it as if I were to take it. When I turned to look at her beside me however, no such offering was made. I looked at her confusedly and through our silence we each seemed to say:

"Do you see that?"

Turning back to the mirror I saw that it was beginning to tremble violently. The flat silver surface had become marred with turbulent waves that swelled and crashed into its frame. The lights started pulsing to an unknown rhythm, one familiar yet unrecognizable, like some alien morse code. It drew the attention of other passerby's and soon a crowd of dusty revelers all stood gazing at the glass where the woman stood handing me her face. In the distance the sound of hooves boomed toward me like an echo in reverse. From the shaking mirror emerged a golden horse with the head of a dragon. It leapt whinnying out of one reality into another and stood before me with its head lowered in supplication. The creature's mouth and throat glowed as it inhaled, as though it had swallowed a star.

There was the dreamlike feeling of something out of place. The moment began to feel nightmarishly mercurial, swirling around me capriciously, threatening to capsize. A strong wind caught the clips of a nearby flag, jingling them against the pole, sounding out like a collar on a bounding dog. There was the smell of fire and burning sage, gypsy hymns igniting the silence like matchbooks.

The woman beside me bent down to touch its head but her hand passed right through it, like it was water.

It looked up at me, rubbed its face against mine and purred.

Now I understood.