Creative Corner

I've been watching this thread for awhile, but this is my first time posting! I hope you like it!

Link to the post on DA: https://www.deviantart.com/sharpjay217/art/I-Couldn-t-Stand-Looking-into-Mirrors-760719435

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From I day I was born people called me a beauty. I had skin pale as snow, hair the color of gold, and eyes that shined blue like sapphires. As I grew older some women were actually jealous of my looks, even as my hair darkened with time, turning from gold to near black by the time I was in my mid teens.
I'll admit, even though I was in no way girly – as I loved to fight like the men and longed to be in the army, as no women had before , and I wore men's clothes whenever I could instead of a women's dress – I was a bit vain. I loved to brush my dark locks of hair, admiring it in the mirror. My skin looked even paler against the dark waves of hair, and made my fiery sapphire eyes even more piercing.
After I was allowed to join the army some of the other cadets and younger soldiers started calling me “The East's dark beauty.” I tried to act like I didn't care about the attention, but truthfully I soaked it up.
Then I got my first facial scar. A rip across my cheek, going from the corner of my mouth to my ear. They stitched it up, and I hoped with all my heart it would heal completely. But I still have that scar to this day.
Over the next few years I gained a scar for every battle, far to many of them marring my once stunningly beautiful face. Over time – well, over the hundreds of years I lived – my skin tanned and my hair bleached due to exposure to sunlight. My hair became weak due to being bleached, with every attempt to brush it met by a quarter of it breaking off.
My skin was mostly scar-tissue, the parts still normal skin tanned just enough to make it look strange. My hair had bleached to a strange yellowish-brown. And my whole body was deformed by scars. Only my sapphire eyes were the same, and even they looked...colder.
I couldn't stand looking into a mirror anymore. I turned the one in my home around, and avoided looking at the ones I past. Now people don't fawn over me. They flinch.
They don't call me “dark beauty” anymore. They call me a monster.

People say being immortal is a blessing. But let me tell you, it's not. It's the worst of all curses.

I couldn’t stand looking into mirrors, because they always showed me the truth. Normally that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but when you lived in a world of monsters, it was a terrifying thing. On the surface they all pretended to be normal, but there – the reflection in the shop window showed the man on the ladder as something more; tentacles wrapped around the metal frame, suction caps keeping him in place as he climbed. Tentacles for limbs was something that I could adapt to, but he felt me watching – they always knew I could see them - and he turned his head to face me, his mouth a gaping hole in an expanse with no eyes or place to put them.

I lowered my eyes and looked at the pavement. If you didn’t look at them in the mirror, they couldn’t hurt you. It was like one of those games where you’re safe, as long as you didn’t blink. The only problem was, you couldn’t go forever without blinking, and so many things cast reflections. One day I would be standing too close to one of the monsters when I looked in the mirror. I would be too close, and I wouldn’t have any time to look away again. The monsters were going to get me.

There had been one day that had been the worst. My mother had come up behind me to help me to brush my hair – to tie it up for school. I had made the mistake of looking at her in the hallway mirror. She had seen me looking.

I don’t know how I had come to be in this world. I only hope that one day I will not look into the mirror and see the truth about myself. I am afraid that maybe I already am a monster, and the mirror shows only lies. Maybe everyone else isn’t who I should be afraid of. Maybe they should be afraid of me.

I didn’t want to look in the mirror anymore. Not ever again.

@Mypilot

I couldn't stand looking into mirrors.

Hair as black as ebony, lips red as rose, skin as white as snow. Those things defined me.

My stepmother cast me out into the snow of my namesake for it. For jealousy. Sent a huntsman with an ebony-handled knife after me, chasing me deep into the forests.

There, the dwarves took me in. As they toiled in the mines, winter turned to spring, and I learned to fight. I would protect myself, should she send another to kill me.

In the warming sun, my pale skin turned dark. I severed my black hair near its roots.

A crone came through our woods, peddling apples. We did not often receive visitors. Her fruits were beautiful, too beautiful. So, so red, like a rose.

Like the drops of her blood on my sword, red as my lips.

I no longer minded looking into mirrors. They reminded me of who I was.

@Mypilot

Prompt: "I couldn't stand looking into mirrors."

Trying to keep my stories to 100 words :)

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I couldn't stand looking into mirrors, not anymore anyway.

It began when they stopped reflecting. It wasn't that reflections had disappeared, the mirrors instead presented a blank canvas.

Many thought it was a trick of light, however, days went by as did the weeks and months. People carried on and the loss of mirrors soon became trivial.

Then reports started coming in, unexplained abductions, unexplained noises, all with a similar calling card; there was a mirror nearby.

With this clue we began vigilantly watching, waiting, to confront the unknown behind the mirror's glass.

Been sorta out of it and forgot about this and now it's late so only little responses for your prompts Im sorry I love you <3

@GreatLordHades - This reminds me of something I once read and I wish I could remember it, but you've got that same eerie feel. I like the concept of this "third eye" you've created

@Bebblesnipe - ;) ;) ;) Im lovin the description youve got goin on, it fuels me. my fav was "Their steps were like creaks of a rickety floor and everywhere they went tar sludged off them with squelching sounds, they were foul things." Maybe cause of the game I just played *cough* but this gave me some t a s t y horror vibes

@Sharpjay217 - o o f sucks to be your MC. I like where you went with the prompt tho, making ye olde beauty standards a monster to avoid. Nice timing on that last sentence, breaking it apart from everything else to give it more impact

@Egwu - Mmm now this is exactly what I was picturing with this prompt. I really loved the idea you went with, where everyone else is a monster and shes the only normal one, and maybe not even that. Raises questions and it makes me curious

@lessthan3 - Iiiiiinteresting. Iiiiinteresting. I certainly wasn't expecting a retelling of a fairy tale, but it worked! Go Snow White! Stick it to the maaan! Or, in this case, the old crone who isn't actually all that old.

@carddev - This sounds like EXACTLY the sort of story I'd wanna read. Or at least have read to me while I hide under the covers with a bear in my arms. Very spooky, very unique, and certainly leaves room for m o r e. You should, idk, write a horror novel maybe ;)

The winner of this round is Egwu for delivering precisely what I had in mind (and on a silver platter) and the runner-up is Bebblesnipe for fueling my horror-addicted night with more flames even tho she couldn't possibly of known I would be craving it right about n o w.

Glad you liked it.

Prompt: Fire
Deadline: 1 September 23:59

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Prompt: Fire

The flames flickered in my eyes, as it consumed everything I had ever known. My village, my home, my life, this wonderful opportunity... All of it went up in flames.
I lived a poor life in a small village on the outskirts of the capital of Florona. My father barely made enough for me to eat, the winter was long and cruel, and the only treasures I could call my own were my few friends, who accompanied me to the forest when I went foraging for herbs.
My father, when I was 12, died of illness, with my friends following not long after, leaving me to fend for myself. I lived this way for seven more years, until the spring came, and brought with it false fortune.
A prince came around the outskirts of town, searching for a girl worthy to be his wife, since apparently there was no-one in the city worthy enough. I was literally the only girl legible left that he could find, so he came around my shack to propose to me an offer. He offered to marry me, to take me away from poverty, from this living hell, to care for me. He offered me all these wonderful things, and the only cost being that I would become his wife. I accepted.
The day of the wedding came, and it was the happiest... And last day of my life. As we were exchanging our vows in the small chapel in our village, a fire started in my shack, and it spread quickly through the outskirts of Florona. It destroyed everything, from the forest to the village to the wedding. Everything I knew was falling to ash and dust, and, just like that, the opportunity fled my grasp, as the fires killed my husband.
I didn't try to escape the flames. I didn't see a reason to. Everything was already gone. It didn't matter. Nothing did.
And so I closed my eyes, and let myself fall to the flames.

Prompt: Fire

Warning: It's nothing too graphic but there is some emotional trauma.

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Thebis needed to move.

There was ash shifting beneath his feet, filling his nose and coating the back of his tongue. Swarms of embers burned in the air and on his scales. The low constant rumble of the volcano a background for the din of thousands of dragons roaring and screeching and clashing in unison all melding into a hellish refrain. Even the sky looked like it was burning. Some distance away an enemy Imperial was fighting it’s way towards him, black as soot and breathing white-hot flames. In that moment it became something else entirely. No longer just a dragon it was danger and death and war given form and Thebis had to get up, to fight back, to flee. To move!

Thebis lurched forward not into a world of flame, but one of white. The air was cold and soothing like a balm against his scales and there was snow, blessedly cold and comforting, beneath his claws. Wind whistled between the mountains and winter birds sang a singular melody from the shelter of the pines. Frost dusted his wings and the clouds were a cool grey. Thebis took deep shuddering misting breaths careful to note the distinctions. Repeating them like a mantra in his head.

Snow, not ash.

birdsong, not bellows.

Frost, not fire.

Home, not war.

So this is what came to mind... Others will probably have come up with much better ideas, but I decided to write it and post it anyway.
Version that might be edited more later here: https://www.deviantart.com/sharpjay217/art/Fire-of-the-Soul-761482203

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Like all of my people I knew my name from the moment the game code made me come to existence. I came to life like all the rest at spawn, and moments later I knew who I was. I was Fire.
I didn't know what “Fire” was, I just knew that was my name. None of the others knew what fire was either, but they assumed it just hadn't been fully added to the game yet and that once it was I would know.
For so long I felt useless. All of the others had their purpose. Shadow made sure the shadows and shading worked and moved as they should, Grass made the crops and grass grow, Void controlled the game code and deleted unwanted worlds, and all the others had their own task.
I was just...there. Powerless and lonely.
Finally the day came I understood what I was. I helped my fellows fight off a virus, the game updating in the middle of the fight so I could finally help! I was finally me! I had a purpose at last!
I was so sure I understood what fire truly was! I was fire in all senses of the word. I knew fire as the flickering orange and red warmth I could use as a weapon and to light the way. That was what it was, what I was.
Then when the Neos – the humans from the other world – came into ours, I learned another meaning of “fire.” A “fiery spirit.” A “fiery personality.” I heard some Neos refer to others as “fiery.” It confused me. Some tried to explain, but I just never got it.
Only when our game – my people's world – was a risk, and I saw the Neos stand up to fight beside us, ready to lay down their short lives for us, when they could just go home, did I finally see that inner fire in them. Humans had that passion for life and and need to prove themselves in them that I realized my kind could never understand. We had to much power already.
I had once known what it had meant to be powerless, with only a flimsy weapon and want to survive to push me forward. But even I had become to confident in my own strength. In my own powers.
My realization on that day, was that those humans – those powerless beings fighting with iron and wood, who couldn't touch what I knew as fire without being burned – had more fire in them I ever had.

They had a fire of the soul. While I only had what ran through my veins.

@Egwu

Prompt: Fire

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The village was burning. The sky was lit by sudden tongues of fire leaping up to reach it. Houses crackled and collapsed under their own weight-burning wood crashing to the ground and sending more sparks of fire to burn until even the ground was too hot to walk on.

The fire sprites laughed as they danced. Finally, they were free. For so long they had been kept trapped in fireplaces, blackening the bottoms of pots and smouldering out, but now, at last, they were free!

Free to dance, to talk, to go wherever they wanted, even up above where the houses whose fireplaces they had been trapped in to the very heavens.

So they laughed and they sang and they danced all over until there was nothing left but a few sparks and a smouldering piece of grass here and there. And again they burnt themselves out and were gone.