a story by Farzana Moon

Olga, seated at her cherry desk cluttered with stack of unfinished stories was gazing at the gilded portrait on the wall, vacantly and thoughtlessly. A cloud of gossamer mists was rising in her head suddenly. She could feel it piercing into the very void of her inner silence. And tearing the old lace of her memories where the gluttony of death had swallowed the last morsel of her friendship, leaving behind a terrible vacuum. On the top of the clutter lay her real labor of love and grief, all clothed in words, yet naked at the dawn of tragedy. Her last story! she was thinking, the dagger of truth cutting her sanity. This story was meeting her gaze and flashing one mockery of a challenge. It was demanding her attention, and goading her to look into the eyes of Doom, Death and Inevitability. The Truth! her thoughts were weaving despair, as she snatched the pages with the intention of devouring them in all entirety.

"Oblong Mirror" - by Michael Lackner
Inspired by this work of Farzana Moon

The rain and sleet were beating on the mullioned windows, as Mohagan stood gazing out into the very face of this pelting fury. Down below, the battered garden lay mute and shivering. Beyond that stood a large mansion, its Greek columns rising and its shuttered windows polished and gleaming. This mansion belonged to Lord Lombroso of Bloomsbury, who had several employees, including Mohagan's parents installed comfortably in one of the small annexes. This particular rainy, dismal day, Mohagan was standing in his workshop on the second storey of his parents' home, from where the hamlets of the workers against the towering mansion could be seen without much effort.

"A monument of ugliness," Mohagan's thoughts were lashing epithets at the large mansion, as he stood there inert and brooding. The memories of his happy, carefree childhood were flooding into his head, along with this recent painful affliction of the body and soul. Some fatal, nameless disease was gnawing at his youth of barely nineteen summers, confounding not only the physicians, but the Masters of Science and Medicine. Mohagan was devastated. He knew only one thing that he was dying, and he was overwhelmed with fear and grief. Sickness and death were Mohagan's grandest of fears ever experienced by him during his young life. To him, they were as intolerable as his savage dislike for decay and ugliness. Right now those fears were rising to his throat like a swollen lump, and his heart was gathering the claps of thunder and lightning.

"I am going to die...so soon, so soon. Actually die? Is my body really going to rot and decay in some unmarked grave?" Mohagan whirled around, almost staggering over his worktable.

The large, oblong mirror with its mahogany frame arrested his attention, along with the violence inside his heart. He had carved this frame in the semblance of delicate vines, where morning glory blooms were yet to be chiseled and polished. This frame was his love and obsession, demanding his attention at all sleeping, waking hours of the day and night. But right now he was oblivious to the masterpiece of his own exquisite design, only gazing at his own reflection in this oblong mirror. His dark eyes were bright and feverish, accentuating his pallor and his cherry-red lips. He seemed to be gazing into the soul of this mirror where dreams, mysteries, continents were frozen inside the profound depths of his own soul. His thoughts were breaking free of these icy deeps within him. Dawning upon his awareness like the crackling, splintering mantras. This loud babel was repeating names, but he could catch only the name of Lord Lombroso. Lord Lombroso, who was to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, receiving this exquisite frame intended as a birthday gift from his own father, Mohagan's thoughts were holding flint to ice.

"Sixtieth birthday...and I a poor wretch will probably never see the first bloom of twentieth?" a wild cry escaped Mohagan's heart, as he began to pace in some stupor of pain and misery. "Why do I fear death? Is death so very terrible and loathsome? Is it cruel and painful..." his thoughts were caught in the roaring furnace of a wildfire. "Yes, I will die! And this mirror with its exquisite frame will live forever and forever. No seasons will steal its youth, nor mar its beauty. No fair maidens can break its heart, no desires wanton corrupting its soul. No fears, no desires, no passions unslaked, it will live, live and live for centuries to come..." he was lured to the mirror once again, gazing at his own stricken face as if bewitched. The violence of agony inside him was muttering a soundless prayer.

"My sweet mirror, arrest my body and soul in your sparkling youth. I will live forever, in you...God, I will live forever! Let me live..." Mohagan's lips were breathing fire and madness.

Three weeks after this prayer, Mohagan had died, leaving behind his gift of love in carved frame. As intended, this exquisite frame housing the oblong mirror was presented to Lord Lombroso on his sixtieth birthday. Lord Lombroso was so enamored by the beauty of this unique gift that he had ordered it hung over the hearth, replacing a family portrait which had occupied this wall since decades. He was rather fascinated by it, as if it radiated some light of youth and eternity which poured mysterious rhythms in his own Being. Though not very perceptive, he could feel some sort of connection with this mirror where spirituality could be viewed as sane, and reality the product of illusion, if not of insanity. He was growing senile, Lord Lombroso would think, gazing at the mirror hours on end, rapt and transfixed. To him, the Artist who had carved this frame was immortal like the gods themselves, and communicating to him alone in the Light of Silence. He was to live another quarter of a century before his own death could open the gates of mysteries, of which he had a few glimpses here and there.

Mohagan, in renewal of life after death, knew those mysteries to be true, way before Lord Lombroso could explore their depths and silences. Mohagan was alive as he had never been before while living. He was encased in the shining tomb of his own Masterpiece. A living, breathing, throbbing entity with the wisdom and knowledge of the Time changing and changeless. Mohagan had become the Soul of this Mirror. The soul eternal, the soul everlasting. The soul undaunted, the soul unsuffering. Yet he was a prisoner inside his own beautiful Creation. A prisoner! who wished no escape, knowing only the bliss in living, and suffering not the fetters of life and death in continual cycles. His mind could journey beyond the valleys of ether, unfolding the voids, the heavens and the constellations as if they were nothing but the gossamer mists suspended inside one cosmic bubble. He himself could pierce the heart of that bubble, swinging on the cradle of time and timelessness. Gathering the ripples of awe, and sailing on a boat of oblivion, where Posterity was the bride of Existence.

Mohagan-Mirror was endowed with a youthful heart, as ardent and vulnerable as a lover's, its boundless depths concealing passions blind and terrible. But most of the time, his heart was peaceful, knowing only the surface-calm and discovering not the dark, abysmal depths. It was untouched by the reflections of the faces ugly or beautiful, but catching the evil and corruption in the souls with disgust as violent as hate and revulsion. Paradoxically, he was content in his abode of 'monument of ugliness' as he had named it during his lifetime. So fascinated was he by the masks worn over the human faces that he was tempted to reach over and rip them open. His sight alone was enough to do that, for he could see the souls of the human beings bleeding through their lips and eyes in rivulets of lies blanched and truths corrupted.

The hours and the vicissitudes were gliding past on the ever-marching rhythm of time, to which Mohagan-Mirror had remained heedless. He was luxuriating in the bliss and purity of his own life. Living metaphorically, and enjoying the sense of invulnerability. His existence was free of pains and sorrows, and no fear of death or sickness could ever tarnish his sparkling essence. He had outlived Lord Lombroso, welcoming peace and silence with as much passion as his passion to live and brood. While brooding, he would court the knowledge of his own immortality like a bridegroom courting his bride, wanting nothing but life and contemplation. Right after Lord Lombroso's death, this 'mansion of ugliness' had been unoccupied for a few years, and Mohagan-Mirror's heart had suffered a change. Besides, the house was locked and the drapes hermetically drawn, and he had begun to long for sunshine and companionship.

Mohagan-Mirror must have had longed with all his heart and soul, for within a year after the inception of his first longing, the doors of the house were thrown open, and voices booming loud in the parlor and hallway. After so many years of silence, he could hear his heart thundering with a volcanic fury, as if the day of doom had landed over the very hearth above which he sat resting against the wall. With the aid of his honed perception though, he knew that this was no Day of Doom, but the Eve of Rejoicing. Lord Lombroso's son and family had returned to occupy this 'monument of ugliness'.

A little girl with face as white as lily and eyes as bright as the stars had arrested Mohagan-Mirror's attention. She had bounced into the drawingroom like an angel, her blue eyes twinkling and absorbing all which came her way. The flaxen gold in her hair swept back in a ponytail was bouncing along with her merry frolic of a stride as she went exploring each little article with the passion of a tourist.

"Sweet heavens! What perfection in that small, white face? What purity? What innocence? Dear God, let this girl live...live in my soul. Let me cherish and worship her beauty, perfection, reflection. Let her live...let her live--in me," Mohagan-Mirror's heart was on burning, the flames of love and agony awakening in him like wildfire. He was renewing his link with God, courting the mad, mad prayers of his youth when he wanted to live forever. His prayers were answered then, bestowing upon him the curse of immortality, was Mohagan-Mirror's one bitter, bitter thought. Now his prayers were wordless, and as mute as death. His soul too was dying, it was smoldering in some familiar torment he had not felt in decades.

"Mind you, missy, you ugly witch! You look quite silly in looking at yourself like that in the mirror, it won't make you pretty," one boy with a cherubic face had stolen behind the girl, laughing into her face.

"Bully, bully...nothing but a bully, and my own brother," the girl sang dreamily, trying to catch her reflection in the oblong mirror by standing as far as she could. "Mamma is going to box your ears if you tease me," she flitted away, the bully of a cherub following her.

The flight of time into months and years had been so swift that Mohagan-Mirror had not had the time to explore the rivers of his own agony. He was in love, profoundly and wretchedly in love with this child of Beauty and Perfection. Cassandra was the name of this child who was transformed from the bud of childhood into the flower of maidenhood. Since childhood she had been fond of this mirror as if it was the only thing in this mansion which befriended her. It was her nearest and dearest of friends. She was wont to confide her little secrets to this mirror with all the purity and innocence of a young girl who had no confidante. Little did she know that this fantastic mirror knew all her secrets even before she could put them into words. As she grew older, she felt otherwise, discovering some sort of nameless kinship with the mirror and herself. She would gaze at her reflection, at times, rapt and elated. Those were the times when no one was around, and she would feel giddy and delirious, thinking to herself that this mirror worshipped her--paid her compliments. She could not fathom her attachment to this mirror, neither her sense of pain and sweetness when searching the fever and sparkle in her own eyes.

All-knowing, like God, Mohagan-Mirror could catch all moods and nuances of this beautiful flower, called Cassandra, and would sigh to himself. Unlike God, he had no power to command what he willed, and his will was to behold her beauty forever and everlastingly. When Cassandra was away, his heart would sob and weep, gathering tears of blood which he could not shed. In the evenings he would gather the saddest of sunsets and send her fond kisses. And in the mornings when she came too close to him to view her reflection, cold sighs would escape his heart which he could not stifle. Inexplicably and astonishingly, those were the times when he could feel and taste the mists of his own despair and longings. And those were the only times when a thick mist would sit on his sparkling entity, blurring his vision, and frightening the young girl.

"Beloved! Dearest, don't be frightened! Don't leave me, don't ever leave me," Mohagan-Mirror was praying. He was trying to control his sighs, while watching Cassandra recline against the tapestried chair, dreamily. She was waiting for her fiancee, Maillol, he could not fail to surmise quite profoundly and painfully. Besides, he had seen them quite often, sitting together on the same sofa, talking and laughing. But this very evening, he was suffering the agonies of a million deaths, longing to crush her young body into his glazed arms.

"Awfully silly, what strange dreams, what insane thoughts?" Cassandra was thinking, unable to tear her gaze away from the mirror. The passion and longing in Mohagan-Mirror's heart was reaching out to her, tingling each nerve in her body and soul. "This mirror is no ordinary mirror. It lives, thinks, yearns, breathes, I can almost feel it. I can hear it sigh...oh, what sheer madness? Yes, it knows my thoughts, it forbids me to leave, it chains me to its compliments..." she was swooning into one of her opiate, blissful moods. "What gender, if this mirror is alive? He? He is watching me. He is mad, pleading, devouring? Stop staring at me, you bright bully, you are making me feel naked..." she was closing her eyes. Trying to banish her own maddening soliloquy.

"My love, it's hopeless, helpless..." Mohagan-Mirror was groaning, as he espied Maillol sail into the drawingroom with a patrician stride. "Is this life worth living? Yet, I had always wanted to live. What is life? Without love, it's nothing but a vacuum. A deformed, crippled lump of nothingness. I cannot stir, I cannot speak. I cannot feed my hungers and longings. Dear God, release me, release me from this bondage of life. Tear out my heart from my glazed bosom, let it bleed, let it bleed! Let me love, just once, just once? Then I will welcome death. Oh, I must be mad, raving mad, to wish death? Just for one moment of--Love!" he was trying not to watch his Beloved and her lover saunter out of the room, arm-in-arm.

Maillol and Cassandra were strolling in a public garden outside the precincts of Bloomsbury. The Spring with all it glorious colors was wafting the scent of life and laughter. Despite the abundance of bloom and fecundity, they could feel the hush and peace of this early afternoon, as if nature itself was taking a siesta. So absolute and awesome was this ocean of silence all around that Cassandra's heart was missing a few beats, and lurching toward swoon. She wanted to scream. Though usually buoyant and profuse, even Maillol was affected by this aura of hush and quiet, his heart constricting and churning.

"This hush and peace, isn't it unnerving, my love!" Maillol demurred aloud. "This cloak of silence! one almost wishes to tear it to rags," he laughed. A sweet, buoyant mirth in conformity with his handsome features. His sherry eyes were spilling love as he tossed his head in denial of some inner conflict which he could not fathom.

"Maillol!" Cassandra murmured softly, almost dreamily. Her wish to scream was dissolved in a pool of fear where words could be seen swaying like the reeds under some spell of swoon and giddiness. "I wonder if everything around us have a life of their own. I mean, the plants and the trees, in a sense similar to our own? If we could hear them talk and think? Do they know fear? Are they aware of the caprice and uncertainty in nature..." some sort of chaos and confusion within her were goading her to levity in ideation. "The stories we hear as children. The stories which haunt us in the sleeping, waking hours of our youth and adulthood? The trees groaning and shuddering against the blasts? The birds and the beasts sharing wisdom and knowledge? Look at these willows, Maillol, even the streams, and the blades of grass? Don't they all have minds and tongues. They are talking to us, what are they saying, is this absurd? Yet, I can feel, if we wanted we could hear their voices, we could fathom their mysteries!" one little ripple of mirth trembled on her poppy-red lips, her thoughts gazing into the eyes of the oblong mirror.

"Mankind, my dear, have a jolly rough time catching the sounds in their own souls, how could they ever tune in to the rhythm of words in nature?" Maillol joined her in her mirth. "Silence is the only tool worth exploring, but then we have to be deaf to the symphony of our own essence in body and soul," he kicked one stone, planting his feet right on the spot where the raw earth cradled a few pebbles. "How beautiful you are, my love...more beautiful than ever before, if possible," he murmured abruptly, his look warm and shining.

"Unpredictable as usual, Maillol! Always evading the subject of life, and courting the illusion of beauty in all thought and argument," Cassandra's eyes were kindling to blue flames of reproach and mischief.

"Life is beauty, my love, and beauty, life, how could they ever be separate?" Maillol intoned rather soberly. "Beauty is the soul of the universe, and life without beauty can never claim to have soul. Likewise, a soul without beauty can never inhale the breath of life," he added doubtfully.

"My turn to evade this subject now!" Cassandra exclaimed capriciously. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. "I have a little secret to share...no, it's too silly, too bizarre," her poppy-red lips hugged one delicious smile.

"Anything you share with me, my love, is worthy of reverence, not tainted by words like silly or bizarre," Maillol murmured passionately.

"It's really absurd, Maillol, awfully absurd," Cassandra murmured back.

"You trust me, don't you?" Maillol pleaded.

"Well...then, answer me first, truly," Cassandra began reluctantly. "Do you think everything inanimate, visible or invisible might have a life of its own?" her thoughts were touching the hem of some cosmic awareness, bright and sinister like the oblong mirror.

"Only my blind love, though invisible, it is very much alive and ardent," the wine of love and mirth in Maillol's eyes was some sweet libation escaping his lips.

"Love and trust, another illusion," Cassandra murmured to herself. "If you are laughing now, how can you not help laughing what may sound ludicrous to you," the blue lakes in her eyes were profound, yet turbulent.

"I will laugh with you, my dear, only if you are, not otherwise," Maillol responded contritely.

"Now, you are mocking," was Cassandra's feeble protest.

"Love never mocks, my love, it only cherishes what..." Maillol could not continue, catching the saddest of reflections in the blue lakes of her eyes. "You are...serious? Why this sadness all of a sudden? I promise I won't breathe a word, and listen most attentively, please tell me," he murmured tenderly.

"Don't know where to begin!" Cassandra chanted with the violence of hopelessness.

"End, middle, beginning, it doesn't matter where one starts. They all run the same course of everlasting cycle where one point is indistinguishable from the other, or all appear to be one," Maillol slipped his arm around her waist, making her walk with him.

"Have you noticed the oblong mirror in our drawingroom, Maillol?" Cassandra murmured, as if confidentially.

"The one with the beautifully carved frame, of course! How could one miss noticing the delicate vines, and morning glory so exquisitely designed as if plucked fresh out of the garden?" Maillol murmured low.

"Yes, the very same one," Cassandra reminisced aloud. "As far as I can remember I have been fond of that mirror. That's not the right word...that was the only object in this whole mansion which had arrested my childish imagination. I was drawn toward it, rather attracted, will-lessly, it seemed. I used to imagine that this mirror was my only friend, some handsome boy, and I madly in love? I would tell all my little secrets to this mirror, crying and laughing with it...with him? At night when everyone would be sleeping, I would tiptoe down the steps to be with the mirror, even kiss it, dreaming away dreams. Thinking, that I was sitting with some Knight of the Round Table, drawn toward him, possessed by his charms. Those days, I was reading Cervantes, perhaps...yet, I had this feeling of restlessness? Silence itself speaking to me, luring me toward the mirror, the air charged with the threat of a storm, something awesome, something awful..." she could not speak, as if the oblong mirror itself had barred her torrent of confessions.

"Dreams and illusions, we all welcome them at times, more so the children," Maillol began thoughtfully. "Little girls talk to their dolls, and most boys pour out their hearts to their pets. I too used to talk to my Irish terrier when I was barely six, but later I stopped. I got busy trying to learn everything, to know everything...curiosity became my foe, it marred my innocence of trust," he slipped his arm around her waist. "Talking of trust, don't you trust me? Do you know that I love you madly and absolutely? If you like, I will hang myself up against the wall on your mantle, wearing that oblong frame as my only garment of love and fidelity," he began to laugh, deliciously and uncontrollably.

"Maillol, we must return home before you catch the fever of dementia," Cassandra joined him in his mirth, retracing her footsteps.

Another mood, another season. Against the wet, balmy mantle of summer, the spring was lost in oblivion. Cassandra, a fresh graduate from the Royal College of Arts, was celebrating her freedom in the heart of London. She and Maillol were seated in a dark tavern after their endless wanderings on the Piccadilly Circus. In the dimly lit booth, they sat sipping the nectar of love and wine, when Maillol whispered with a sudden caprice and passion.

"Darling, will you marry me?" Maillol sat gazing into her eyes rapt and stricken.

"How very unromantic, Maillol!" Cassandra exclaimed. Mischief shining in her eyes as she continued. "You had to choose this dull place, of course, to make such an interesting proposal?"

"Sorry, bloody sorry," Maillol murmured one flustered apology. " It's just that one of my friends loaded with all the fuel of romance...wine, candles, flowers, had no luck in winning the consent of his girlfriend to marriage. So I thought...well, let's leave this dismal place, and find a quaint spot suitable for proposals both dear and romantic."

"But this place is so very warm, rather charming..." Cassandra could not continue, espying her long-neglected friend approaching close to the booth.

"What a friend you are, Cassandra? How long it has been...never mind," Olga slipped into the booth beside Cassandra. She appeared to be ignoring her friend's greeting, but snatching the introduction much too quickly. "Maillol, such a handsome name, Cassandra, complimenting his looks! He is much more charming than the dream-man in your letters," she teased, barely heeding Maillol's thanks and acknowledgment.

"You are mistaken about the dream-man," Cassandra laughed.

"Yes, my thoughts are collecting the moss of illusion these days," Olga joined Cassandra in her mirth, her own dry and brittle.

"What in the world did you do to your hair, Olga? Might as well shave your head, and go begging for alms!" cried Olga, as if she had just noticed her strange hairdo cropped close to her ears.

"Nothing short of pulling my hair out of its roots will satisfy me," Olga quipped brightly. "But my will is weak and my courage weaker, and my heart weaker still. Something inside me is simmering...some rage, despair, madness perhaps?"

"You are in love! I know you are," Cassandra flashed a bright, puzzled look at her friend. "You are hibernating, you never visit, never write...yes, that's true, you are in love?"

"In love!" Maillol murmured to himself, feeling completely neglected by this sudden reunion of the two old friends.

"In love! Dear God, no!" Olga spewed forth a flaming denial. "My dissertation on the World Religions, it's driving me insane. I am lost in a flood of parables, illusions all. And yet, I want to dive deeper, deeper, into the heart of each Faith, each Belief, each Mystery to glean some sort of Truth."

"Oh, the wandering Muse, my poor, dear Olga," Cassandra teased her in the familiar vein of her past sarcasm. "You will be swallowed in the flood of your own quest. What a wild, restless spirit you have, do you know? Your spirit, seeking no rest, courting no comfort or pleasure. Only feeding itself with the dry crumbs of curiosity, where there are no truths but lies," her very eyes were shining reproof.

"Religion and intolerance! Virtue and goodness are gone from each Faith, and we are left with the dregs of zeal and bigotry, that's how I feel," Olga began with a zeal of her own. "Goodness rendered defenseless against the locusts of evil..." she could not continue, choked by her own vehemence, rather confusion.

"If we live to see the unveiling of Armageddon, maybe, Truth will be revealed," Maillol ventured another comment, unheeded by the ladies.

"Horrors of hell, glazed with the seeds of sin and perdition, are those not enough to make one abandon the Commanding Faiths? I must leave before I spill the seeds of my own ignorance," Olga got to her feet as if stung by her own thoughts.

"Oh, Olga, how intolerable you are!" Cried Cassandra. "You are not leaving us so soon, are you?"

"I must, Cassandra, I must. Faiths are calling me to the fields of damnation, where I must labor and gather the fruits of ignorance. Hoping to find one tree of wisdom, some day," Olga elicited one enigmatic smile.

"When will I see you again?" Cassandra protested hopelessly.

"Whenever you find the time to rescue me from the hands of my dark fates," Olga flashed her a bright, teasing look.

"Look, who is talking! You are the one shackled by the chains of time. My time is at your disposal," Cassandra's eyes were shooting blue flames of accusations.

"It doesn't seem to be," Olga quipped, stealing a quick look at Maillol. "After the finals, yes, we must go out to dinner as we used to," she added rather absently.

"Where would your highness like to dine?" Cassandra resorted to humor, noticing her friend's distant look.

"Anywhere between Mars and Jupiter," Olga was earthbound, becoming aware of Cassandra's perceptive look in return.

"My place then, it's right on the way," Cassandra laughed.

"Oh, not that dull, mysterious drawingroom of yours!" a ripple of merriment kindled in Olga's eyes. She turned to Maillol quickly. "Nice to have met you. Take care of my friend, she is much too naive and adorable," she waved an exigent farewell, and flitted away.

"I should not tell you this, my love! But the only excuse which can keep me away from you is, if you needed it, to tell me that Olga is visiting," Maillol heaved a sigh of relief, his eyes gathering mirth.

"Oh, Maillol! In protest, I am leaving," Cassandra got to her feet laughingly.

"I will take you to the moon for a real romantic evening where Olga can never join us," Maillol held out his arm, escorting her gallantly out of this dismal tavern.

The hush and warmth in the drawingroom, in contrast to the bustle out into the garden in preparation of Cassandra's betrothal party, was casting gloom and sadness. Mohagan-Mirror was watching Cassandra with the mute agony of a condemned prisoner. Cassandra herself was in some sort of painful swoon, gazing at her reflection in complete oblivion to her own fever of illusion and anticipation. She thought she heard a crackling sound and stepped back startled. She was all alone in the drawingroom, and the violence in her heart was witness that the sound came from the mirror. Paradoxically, the sound did come from the mirror, but she had no way of knowing or believing in such truth-absurdity. Mohagan-Mirror was feeling alive as he had not ever felt alive before? The centuries of pain inside his heart from the cycles of life and death and renewal everlasting, was now one billowing surge of torment. He was drunk by the agony of his own living, suffering soul. So terrible and savage was the fire of love in his heart of glass that he himself thought that it was breaking. The crackling, splintering sound was the agonized lament inside his own heart and he knew it. Cassandra heard it too, and so profoundly frightened was she that she dared not breathe. She was suspended in Silence, the chasms of mysteries and reflections drifting right into the core of her psyche. So stunned was she by her own thoughts vacillating in the scale of belief and disbelief that she didn't hear Olga steal behind her.

"You are quite charming as it is, my dear! This narcissistic pose doesn't compliment your beauty?" Olga declared. Some sort of delicious rebuke shining in her eyes.

"Olga!" Cassandra whirled on her feet as if stung. "How awfully thoughtful of you to come early," she managed a low comment. "I thought you would break your promise as usual," her look was dreamy and nonchalant.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Olga laughed. "Promises are meant to be broken, and my apologies for making an exception to this rule."

"Atrocious as ever! You should be punished by the law and virtue of your own mischief and neglect," Cassandra tossed her head impatiently. "Look at this mirror, Olga, and feel its power and mystery," she chanted under an abrupt spell of joy and delirium. "Look into its eyes, hear it speak? Can't you see, it is watching me, devouring me, paying me compliments? Listen to the river of silence in its great soul, it is commanding, imploring, pleading with me to stay..." she drifted closer to her friend as if sleepwalking.

"Heard of cold feet and cold hands on one's wedding day, but not of such delirium and rambling!" Olga blinked disbelief. "And it's not even your wedding day yet?"

"Look into the eyes of this mirror, Olga, and you will see your soul reflected in there," Cassandra murmured heedlessly.

"What soul, my delirious friend, what soul!" one snort of a laughter escaped Olga's lips. "We have no souls, but vacuums inside us. Just like this mirror, beholding nothing but illusions!"

"We have souls, Olga, we do. I know I have one, I do, but it's driving me insane with all the shuddering mysteries inside it.

"You are naive, Cassandra, naive and innocent and beautiful. And beauty is sane, it can drive men insane, your beauty, I mean," mirth and mischief were fading from Olga's eyes.

"This mirror lives, Olga, believe me, it does. It speaks to me, I can hear it sigh and groan," Cassandra confessed rapt and spellbound.

"I am beginning to think you are growing insane...or, insanely in love?" Olga began doubtfully. "Pray, marry Maillol as soon as you can, to break the fever of madness in your head...if you know what I mean?" she herself was not sure of her own advice.

"No, I don't!" was Cassandra's wild, startled response.

"Neither do I!" Olga elicited one sad ripple of mirth. You should know, you are the one in love?"

"You are right, I don't have a soul. Blind vacuums, as you say?" Cassandra sang dolefully. "What is love?"

"Some sort of pain nurtured by meaningless words! This pain, gathering wonders and thunders? Catching claps of lightning, if not flames of wildfires from the very..." Olga's mad inspiration was truncated as the guests streamed into the drawingroom in a flood of billowing colors.

The colors of Fall, cleansed by the purity of Winter, were now colored afresh in the heart of mid-summer madness. Several long, dreary months had crawled past the advent of engagement celebration, and now Cassandra was shopping for her wedding trousseau. This particular afternoon was damp and sultry, and for some nameless reason she was feeling sad and lonely. Her mother had sent her to the boutique to pick up her wedding dress, but inertia and fatigue were following her all the way from her home to the Picadilly Circus. She had a few more items to purchase before collecting the dress, but as soon as the big box with white gown sealed inside was handed to her, she was overwhelmed by a longing to return to her oblong mirror. This longing was not new to her, she had been pressed by it for the past few months as if condemned, if not bewitched. She had become a slave to her moods and whims, surrendering her senses to the commands of the oblong mirror, which she alone could receive and perceive. The afternoon hush was making her giddy, and she was bounding homeward, oblivious even to the astonishing sense of pain and bliss inside her.

"I am going to pack this oblong mirror as a wedding gift for Maillol," Cassandra was thinking, even before she stepped into the drawingroom.

The hush, the giddiness, the longing were still Cassandra's companions, as she flung herself on the davenport. The knots of pain and bliss inside her were unfolding, and catching the flames of rage and restlessness. But she was closing her eyes, and feeling some sort of loss and grief which she had not ever known before. Her eyes were hermetically closed, shutting out the world and throwing open the shutters of dreams inside the valleys of sleep. Peace was returning to her, almost sublime and ethereal. She could feel its Presence...some sort of wordless music, the hymns of silence!

Mohagan-Mirror was watching his Beloved, his glass-heart broken and shattered. The flames of pain inside him wild and hungry. He could not endure this agony supreme, cursing his Love and Life and voids of Separation. His very soul was bleeding, he could feel its white horror inside the vortex of prayers and supplications. It was welcoming death, embracing surcease.

"Dear God, take this Life, let me Die...let me love but once! My Bride, my Beloved, Cassandra, Cassandra..." the rivers of agony in Mohagan-Mirror soul were churning.

Cassandra was awakening to another world of bliss-oblivion, where there were no pains, no doubts, no sorrows, but absolute surrender to the Light of Love. Her very senses were inhaling the scent of love, perfumed and soaring. She could hear the strings of her own heart, singing and throbbing.

"Perfect bliss in love comes but once, to the ones who truly love! If you ever catch that moment, hold it, hold it dearly. Love that moment, dearer than life? Never let it go! Know, that Love is sublime, eternal, everlasting..." Cassandra's hands were reaching out for the white box wistfully, will-lessly.

Cassandra's eyes were blazing with the fire of love. She was suffused with light, wearing only the gown of her own stark naked beauty. Her hands were reaching out, snatching the wedding gown to her breast, and hugging it fiercely, almost maddeningly.

In her fever of bliss-madness, Cassandra could not hear the cry of agony from the sparkling depths of Mohagan-Mirror's own soul. A thousand splinters were piercing her flesh with kisses sweet and ineffable. She was swept into the arms of pain so intense, that her psyche had no name for it, but joy supreme. Some sort of cosmic awareness was lapping over her body and soul like the waves pure and chaste. And her wounds were like the red, red roses, wafting the scent of bliss-union in death.

Olga's eyes were brimming with tears, as her head dropped on the lifeless script with despair gnawing inside the pit of her very stomach. She could feel the beauty of her friend, Cassandra, floating, drifting, looming over the very chaos in her inconsolable spirit. Somewhere out there Maillol stood wailing, the lament of a suffered man who had hoped to be the Absolute Bridegroom.

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