Mirrors

The Mirror of Time was something different. Those mirrors took you to a place in your past where you wanted to be. It gives your past self all your current knowledge in perfect detail. Everything you heard, but not listened to, you remembered without fault. Yet, that was something that someone else would experience. The mirror I went through was the Mirror of Purpose.

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The Mirror of Purpose took me into a world that was not too different from my own. I would have looked for the differences if I had known about the mirrors earlier. Even so, I fell forward one day, stumbled into the glass and entered a different world. Not paying attention, I believed I had caught myself. I kept walking.
 
Weeks passed and I soon experienced the first difference. My family had found their feet. My father had abandoned his vices and returned to work. My mother found her voice again and told stories of delight. The two had rediscovered love, although not with each other. Both divorced with smiles, parting better than most would.
 
Being in my late twenties, I didn't think much of it. I only felt happy for them like they felt happy for each other. I still talk to them.
 
I also found my own feet, that is the important thing to note.
 
I decided, after weeks of surfing the internet, to pursue a dream in archaeology. You may think this a great idea, but I pursued it for childish reasons. I still believed in the curiosities that fairy tales presented to us. You may scoff at the idea of magic, but what I am telling you now should help you realise that it is nothing to scoff at.
 
My first pursuit was dragons.
 
I believed they had existed and it is only with my sheer determination that I found proof. I studied, I experienced, I earned and soon I broke laws. I went places people told me not to go and once there, I found bones. Bones I brought to the public and I soon went down in history. People thought I was the real-life Indiana Jones.
 
Fame and political standing are what kept me out of prison. It is also what earned me a pass to go anywhere in the world to continue my research. Magic was something I didn't have clear in my mind yet, but I was getting there.
 
The Mirror of Purpose soon revealed it to me.
 
I entered a jungle in Indonesia, chopping my way through till I stepped on loose ground. I fell for a long time and expected death soon. Yet, what I met was cold water, deep enough to keep me alive. Swimming to the surface, I found myself in an underground system of man-made tunnels. These tunnels led in every direction.
 
It was a maze that ran under the jungle and even the ocean. For me at the time, it was terrifying. But it soon became wondrous once I mapped it out. What guided me in the right direction was simple, blind luck. I reached an old set of wooden doors and pushed them open. I found a chamber of mirrors. There were many, but I found the chamber which held all the knowledge.
 
An array of mirrors lined the walls and in the centre of the room was a table holding a thick tome. The tome was written in an ancient language, but not an unknown one. Very little in the world is undiscovered, so translating the tome was not a problem. With the tome, I soon discovered other ancients sites and soon every mirror was in my possession.
 
I brought them to my estate and planted them throughout the house. Clean, framed in stone, bearing unique symbols. These symbols I soon deciphered and then the mirrors became tools for me to master the world. One mirror positioned me in a world that I had all the control of. One mirror extended my life. Another gave me insight that the tome could not.
 
A week later, I was no longer human. I was something else, altered by the magic of the mirrors. Yet, all that I had was in my mind.
 
With all that in my mind, every mirror used I then destroyed. After they lay in pieces, I stood in front of the last mirror. Even standing among the shards of the Mirror of Purpose, I hesitated in front of Time.
 
I tracked them all down, used them as much as I dare and thanks to my greed, I destroyed them so nobody else could gain what I had. With the Mirror of Time, I can bring them back, but in doing so, I become a babe once more in a dysfunctional home. I would be myself in a time before the mirrors changed my life. Yet, I would hold all the knowledge of the world.
 
What would you do at that moment?
 
"When you have reached the highest peak, it is time for you to come back down."
 
Those were the last words I said before stepped through the mirror of time. As I did, it shattered and my vision disappeared. I felt my body burn into nothing and then my eyes opened. I was in the hospital, crying.
 
I stopped myself.
 
"Aw, he stopped, honey," I heard my mother's young voice announced. "He-He opened his eyes! Come quick!"
 
I heard panicked footsteps as my father ran from the next room towards me. He looked down on me and my parents' jaws dropped.
 
"It's like looking into the stars," my mother murmured. "They're beautiful."
 
"I-I think there is something wrong with him," my father murmured. "Can he even see?"
 
My mother placed a finger above me and moved it from side-to-side. I followed it with my eyes, amused. I smiled and my parents smiled with me.
 
"It looks like he sees fine," my mother replied. "Those eyes...it's like he has seen so much already."
 
"It might fade as he gets older," my father replied. "But yeah, he is something special."
 
My parents were a lot happier than they were the first time they saw me.
 
I will keep it that way.