The Mirror

We were made imperfect, issued into a flawed world to make what we could of what we found. What we found were the things we needed - or rather the materials to make the things that we thought we needed and so we worked hard and constructed for ourselves a life, less than perfect but good enough for us to find satisfaction in it.

But we did not know what we were until we found the mirror. The mirror showed us to ourselves, so that we could know, but the mirror was broken.

When we looked in the mirror, we saw what we were and what we did, but imperfectly; the cracks misaligning the mirrored glass so that, depending on where you looked, or how, the reflections never quite matched up and where the cracks were worse all that was reflected were shards of moving colour.

The mirror watched us but never seemed to see exactly what we did or showed us any truth which we recognised as complete or satisfying.

So we lived our lives and our reflections followed us like an unwritten testament to our actions; a crazy kaleidoscope of colours and images, showing us that we lived and made the motions of our lives, but not their value or our worth.

* * * *

Then a time came when we were all made whole and we were put together better than before.

We looked at each other in wonder and saw how perfect we were and the world was made better for us, right for us; it was a perfect world. But still we did not know what we looked like and, again, we sought the mirror and thought that, surely, it too would be mended and would show the perfect world of ours as the true perfection we knew it to be.

I found the mirror first and what I found almost took my breath away.

In front of the mirror, there stood a unicorn. You can always recognise a unicorn; they don't exist, but are unmistakable. Although the unicorn was recognisable to me, the mirror did not recognise it and showed no reflection.

There were two wonders here. I approached the unicorn, disbelieving my heart but trusting, for once, in mine eyes. The unicorn stood and let me approach. It looked magnificent; the most perfect animal you could imagine. The unicorn seemed to think so too and posed with an air of unquestionable superiority, at a slight angle to me so that I could not possibly fail to notice how wonderful a creature it was.

When I was two paces away, it turned its head slowly to look at me and I stopped. Its eyes were dark golden and its single horn spiralled to a point impossibly fine. It waited, giving the impression that it had a universe of patience at its disposal and maybe it had. It was truly an amazing beast, but it had a smug air of self-importance about it.

'You have no reflection.' I said, not really expecting an answer, not wishing to go closer, nor move further away, though needing to do something.

The unicorn spoke. It was too perfect an animal not too, I suppose; though when it spoke I had the impression that, rather than having been given the gift of speech, as may be the case with an ordinary animal, it had simply taken it as its right or, maybe, had even given it to us in the first place and was simply reassuming it. It spoke not unkindly but dispassionately, with a clear authority and words, the sound of which seemed to melt in the air.

'There was only ever one of me.' said the unicorn, as if this explained it all.

'But the mirror', I said, 'The mirror is still broken!'

'The mirror', came the answer, 'was always broken - it was made that way.'

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