Movement Nine — What Waited in the Glass

When Iris and Flora had both gone from the room, a figure appeared in the mirror they'd left behind them.

Wrapped in something too dark to properly be called shadow, because shadow at least implies a light source it's being cast away from, and this had none — a silhouette that resisted being known the way the rest of the Between's silhouettes resist being known by strangers, except colder, and older, and entirely uninterested in ever being seen at all.

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The glass shattered. Not from any blow. Not from any hand pressed against it. It simply broke, all at once, into more pieces than the eye could properly count, the particular fracture pattern of something that has stopped being able to hold what's been asked of it.

The world, I think, could not tolerate its existence a moment longer than that.