Sukanya Venkatraghavan

“The mirror sighed and spoke in a tone tinged with melancholy. Its language was old and not of any of the worlds known or unknown.What you dream, what you darkly desire,Find it by trial or by fire.Seek it high and seek it low,Search the skies or the realms below.Look everywhere but beware,The deepest magic, the strongest spellWill not change what the stars foretell.”

“If he slept, he dreamt of the woman with the icy white irises. She exploded planes, swallowed oceans and crumpled skiesin her palm in his dreams. Sometimes she and the green-eyed girl were one. At other times, the green-eyed girl was alone, a gaping hole where her heart should have been. At all times he could hear the woman’s cold, low laughter. It swept across his consciousness like a hailstorm.When he woke up, he thought he was going mad.”

“What is the difference between a dream and its memory?”

“Secrets are dark things. They don’t exist in the light. Theyglow faintly in forgotten corners, in mysterious mind-nooks,in lost memory maps. Secrets are the shadows of the soul.”

“Every living soul in this universe should be given a chance at love – their personal shot at having the most powerful andmysterious thing that ever existed. You could love forever, or your love couldburn short and bright for just a few moments in the history oftime. But however you did it, I supposed the idea was to make it count; to create a story worthy of a new fairytale, a poem,or a new constellation that would wind itself into an infinite thread of light in your name. Maybe that was the whole point of love – to create an eternal story of your own.”