Mavra's Dream

"What is this?" Mavra snapped, thrusting a blank piece of paper at her reflection in the mirror. "Some kind of confession?"

The mirror pulsed suddenly, glowing red around the edges with mirth - not hateful, but not particularly friendly, either. Furious, Mavra wadded the blank piece of paper into a tight ball and threw it at the pulsating mirror, which shattered brilliantly at the impact. Mavra waited patiently for the rainfall of liquid shards to end and she stepped from the too-familiar black room - black walls, black ceiling, black carpet, red, pulsating, laughing mirror - through the jagged edges of the portal. Her feet crunched melodically upon the glass. She stepped again into her bedroom, viewing reality, but not a part of it.

Mavra awoke suddenly. She sat up with atypical violence. She always did. Once upon a time, the violent motion would have awakened her husband. No longer. He was so used to it now that he barely stirred.

"Just lie there," she growled at the top of his head, which was barely visible for the quilts. It's a wonder he can breathe, she mused perversely. She waited a moment to see that her husband obeyed her acerbic directive - as if she had a doubt - before she threw the blankets off and swung her feet to the carpet. She swept her hair out of her face, "I’m going downstairs, in case you’re wondering," she said to no one in particular. As she left the bedroom, she studiously avoided looking toward the mirror that sat on the huge dresser against the wall, just past the foot of her bed.

She didn’t know whether she was still dreaming or not - after the harsh thoughts she’d directed at her sleeping husband, she didn’t want to think that somewhere else, on another plane, her husband was frantically (not to mention dutifully) trying to wake her up from this nightmare. For now, she was comfortable hating him.

Mavra was barely aware of feeling anything until the pain rocked her to the depths of her mind. She fell to her knees as the marble statue bent its head to look at her.

"Am I blind?" she cried, weeping into her hands, her voice bouncing from tree to tree planted within the confines of a black room.

The statue silently stepped off the pedestal and walked away from her. Mavra looked through her fingers of glass at the empty clearing and one by one, the trees began to vanish, leaving a sweet nighttime without stars and an abandoned pedestal.

Mavra started when she felt a cool, strong hand on her shoulder. She woke up. "Vengeance is not a mindless thing," she whispered into her pillow, a tear slipping out of one corner of her eye. "Sometimes it needs direction."

She felt the hand pat her shoulder and squeeze reassuringly, and she turned over to face him. His cold, smooth marble eyes regarded her with silent sympathy. Sobbing, she moved into his embrace, covering her face with her hands, blocking out the sight of his ivory flesh, ivory eyes, ivory lips, and sculpted ivory hair. His embrace was cold, hard, and unyielding, but it was there, and for the moment, it was hers.

That was all that mattered.

In her mind’s eye, she could see the empty pedestal and the statue’s solid footprints walking away from her.