Selena and the Mirror of Dreams

Selena woke with a chill like silver threading through her veins, the kind of cold that slipped through the bones of a house and whispered to the furniture. Morning had arrived, but it was a sickly, colorless thing—more of a memory than a light. It felt like the sun was trying to shine from somewhere too far away, perhaps another century. The silence was suspicious, the kind of quiet that holds its breath before the scream.

She was fourteen, or so they had told her. Every night she dreamed herself into someone else. Once, she was a woman with hair like snowfall, lips cracked with prophecy. Another time, she was a barefoot girl watching from the dark corner of a room that did not exist. But this morning—this heavy, ash-colored morning—Selena knew the dream wasn’t done with her. It had followed her out. It wanted her to remember something she had never known.

There was a tremor in her, like a windowpane on the verge of shattering before a storm that refused to come.

She dragged herself from the bed, exhaling dust, and shuffled to the window. Outside, the forest was not quite itself. It stretched on like a map of someone’s forgotten sorrow. Its trees were too tall now, their branches curling inward like fingers mid-convulsion, reaching for something warm and terrified. She had always feared the forest—but in the way one fears a childhood secret, half-remembered and whispered into pillows.

But it called to her. She could never say no when she called.

Today the forest had changed its dress. It wore fog like a veil and held its breath as she stepped inside.

The path narrowed, folding in on itself. The air thickened—something between steam and static—until it clung to her skin like second thoughts. Her hands felt wrong, as if they’d aged without her permission. Her thoughts dissolved into strange geometries—like trying to count your own eyelashes while falling.

And then, deep in the tangle, she found it.

An old mirror leaned against a knotted tree, the kind of tree that had seen too many births and not enough deaths. The mirror’s frame was laceworked with rot and dead butterflies, its edges curling like the wings of moths burned too slowly. It wasn’t waiting for her. It had always been there. It had simply remembered her.

Selena stepped closer. Her breath smelled like rusted coins between her teeth. .

She looked into the mirror. Her reflection twisted before her—off by a millimeter in every direction. The face staring back was familiar and foreign: pale, swollen-eyed, mouth warped in a grin much too wide. Not her face. Not quite. And yet…

Was this her true self? Or was something wearing her like a wedding gown?

She tried to look away. But her eyes had been caught—hooked on their own reflection, like fish that had forgotten the water. Time snagged. Past and future folded into each other like dead leaves in a closed book. Something deep in the forest pulsed in answer, something that remembered her name before she was born.

And it whispered, from behind the glass:

“You were chosen, Selena. Do you like this face? Or does it taste like fear?”

Before she could lie, a white hand slipped from the mirror—paper-pale and crumbling at the edges. It gripped her wrist with a lover’s intimacy, and she screamed, but her scream folded in on itself, a sound swallowed by silence.

The hand was not touching her. It was becoming her.

She looked again—and the face in the mirror no longer belonged to another. It was hers now, fully. And that grin—the one that had once been wrong—fit perfectly.

“You looked too long,” murmured the mirror.

“You slipped too deep. You let the other you in.”

She broke free with a shudder and fell backwards into the leaves. But when she stood, the forest had already shifted. The trees had opened wounds in themselves—splintered trunks leaking sap like old blood. Her footprints behind her were no longer damp, but crimson.

She ran. Not toward home, but away from the place that had always waited beneath her skin.

The mirror did not stay behind. Its reflection was now inside her. Every window, every puddle, every spoon threatened to reveal that impossible smile.

When she returned home, the walls had changed. They leaned closer. The floor whispered when she stepped. Her bedroom mirror was already awake. The face inside blinked before she did.

Each night before sleep, Selena stared at her reflection—not to admire it, but to check if it had blinked out of rhythm. And each time, she knew more of her had been left behind in that forest. The part that still dreamt. The part that still remembered not being afraid.

Now she lived between blinks, between dreams.

Sometimes, when the world is draped in twilight and the edges between night and dream blur like smoke in the wind, Selena feels the mirror’s breath brush against her skin. It is neither cold nor warm, but something ancient—like a secret long buried beneath the roots of the forest, waiting patiently through endless time. She can hear it calling her name, soft as a whisper, yet heavy with promises that ripple beneath the surface of her mind.

The voice is not kind, but it is familiar—a lullaby sung by shadows that cradle forgotten fears. It speaks of a place beyond the glass, where reflections have no end and faces shift like shadows caught in the flicker of a dying flame. Each time she blinks, she feels the weight of those watching eyes, waiting to cross over, to fold her into the endless maze of their own haunted existence.

Selena knows she cannot look forever. But sometimes, in the stillness before sleep, when the line between herself and the other blurs, she wonders if the mirror waits not to trap her—but to set her free. Free to wander in the dark, forever caught between this world and the next, where dreams never end and the mirror’s grin never fades

And in the deep dark roots of the forest, the mirror still waited—for her to forget again.