//------------------------------// // (Magic Mirror) // Story: Atychiphobia // by Ice Star //------------------------------// everything about You from Your crown to your castle and everything between is filled with secrets of every kind from the parlors where You stashed my presents for birthdays and hearth's warming to the closed doors and dim hallways filled with the artifacts belonging to legends' legends and i found them my foolish Sun, teacher of all and none i found them You hoard like a dragon just more daintily with everything like trimmings to Your castle den i spent years studying in quiet spaces You only went after i had left and i only went when shadows had replaced You and dust swirled where You had stepped to stare at a herd of portraits from Celestias long past mares in oils and marbles with faces hawkish patriotic plump motherly demure and all other things from this past galaxy of Celestias to make fragments of You into the whole of the Goddess i thought i could know i dared to touch Your old telescopes and the relics that were Your discarded tea sets and found the knickknacks of a mare of centuries and power that i had tried dying to be a candle to You had archives full of tomes and treasures guarded from me telling me that i didn't have clearances to touch the scrolls of centuries barely younger than You until i was older and calmer i was Your faithful student You always said so and i spent the times not studying with all my plans alone but for the things You seemed to discard not knowing i would join them imperfect things thrown away once their perfect Goddess used them ages ago i found Your mirror the one unlike any other the kind tall and crystalline yet no crystal i knew this wasn't the mirror You tried on gala dresses in clucking at me to keep my chin up my curtsy deep and my best smile on this mirror never fogged when i breathed on it on the rim, the gems always gleamed even when i stubbed my hoof, the pedestal never cracked the surface of Your mirror was colder than neighagra falls in winter once i threw a bottle of hoof polish (the pink one, from Your birthday kit to me) right at the glass in the smoldering aftermath of one of our fights (later i told You i lost it) and saw it hit the surface with a ripple hanging there, on the edge of collapse that my thoughts were in my breath hinged and then fell my bottle did, too some time after i stood in that mirror like it could reflect desire and at first i imagined a world where You really loved me like the daughter i should have been the second time i stepped through and lived for years letting that part of me burn this third time the air tastes different colder i need to find a library i am no longer the filly of thirteen lucky years yearning to be closer to the Sun that only ever spurned me i look in this mirror that has Your coolness and wonder what kind of Goddess needs to see Herself through another world's eye and still lock it away unless She who is most perfect is afraid of something i never knew or feels the hate She can never admit to like i feel the old fires tear right back up at me knowing You could have given me wings