The Mirror of Memories: Part One

"Aina! Come on, we're leaving!"

    I sighed, setting down the book I was reading, which had unfortunately been When the Wind Blows. In case you didn't know, When the Wind Blows is probably the most boring book in Neopia. I had been forced to read it for this stupid school assignment, and I have got to tell you, it's hard to read a single sentence in that book without losing interest. I had to practically hold my head in place so I couldn't look away from the book just to help myself get through a few pages. I don't even know what the point of reading a book about the wind is, anyway. But apparently it was a classic, a book that our parents read when they were our age. Or so my teacher said. But who cares about teachers? I think they're stupid.

    "I'm coming," I replied, not nearly loud enough for my mom to hear, as I hopped off of my bed. I slipped my feet into a pair of pink fuzzy slippers. My family and I were going to our neighbor's house for a fancy party, but I didn't really feel like making myself look presentable. After all, we weren't exactly the richest family on the block, so I guess it didn't matter. Our neighbors were sympathetic people, and they knew we couldn't afford to buy gorgeous dresses and all of that junk.

    Our neighbors are extremely wealthy. They have a huge house, which I guess you could call a mansion. Well, yeah, you could call it a mansion. Anyway, even though my mom, dad and I live in a tiny one-story house with three rooms, the house we were going to is only two doors down the street. Some people think it's weird that there's a gigantic mansion on the same street as my pathetic shack, but I guess that's what you get for living in Neopia Central. There are all sorts of different people here. There aren't really any streets with only huge mansions on them. There's variety everywhere.

    I went out of my room and made my way into the kitchen, where my mother, a thin-faced blue Bori, was tapping her foot against the floor impatiently. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she was giving me a dirty look. I almost burst out laughing when I first saw her. She was wearing a really, really ugly orange dress that had tiny rhinestones on the edge of the collar, and worst of all, it had little frilly sleeves. I couldn't believe my mom was wearing that. Luckily, I kept myself from cracking up, and kept a straight face.

    "We have to leave now. We're already late," she told me. My dad, also a blue Bori, came out of the bathroom and nodded. He was wearing a nice black suit that actually didn't look too bad. "And what in Neopia are you wearing?!" my mom demanded, pointing at my pink fuzzy slippers.

    A smirk spread out on my face. "Come on, Ma. No one will care if I wear this to the party. My friends are going to be there, anyway. They'll think it's great."

    Ma looked thoroughly annoyed, but I kept smiling. My dad didn't seem to care, though. So we left our lame excuse for a house, and started down the street to the neighbor’s. Their house was so big and bright, it was almost blinding when you got close to it. The walk was short, and soon we were at the front, where a pink Lenny, the maid, opened the door for us and let us in. There were tons of people crowding the house, and I immediately ran upstairs to try and find some of my friends who I knew would be there. Some people stared at my slippers as I climbed the huge staircase, but I really didn't care.

    I finally got to the top of the stairs, and panting, looked around the huge hallway. There was a room with the door closed and the lights on, and I figured all of the kids my age were in there. I went inside and saw all of my friends laughing at a green Nimmo, who was on the ground, twitching in a disturbing manner.

    "Hey! Aina!" called one of the pets, which was my best friend, a disco Chomby named Lawne. All of the other pets stopped what they were doing and turned around, grinning madly at me as I stood at the doorway. "Come over here! We're playing charades!"

    I made my way over to the couch and squeezed in-between a fat Elephante and an Acara. The Nimmo was still twitching around on the ground like a freak.

    "Oh, I know," someone said. "You're a Flightning Bug! A Flightning Bug that's been stepped on!"

    The Nimmo nodded and stood up, looking glad that someone had finally guessed what he had been acting out.

    Lawne suddenly stood up. Being my best friend, I knew from the look on her face that she had an idea. Lawne was always thinking up crazy ideas, also known as stuff to do that would probably get her in trouble. I instantly knew that this would be trouble. Everyone became quiet and looked up at her, wondering what she was going to say.

    "I have an idea," Lawne started. "Let's go into the attic and see what we can find!" She looked to her side at a faerie Peophin, who was the daughter of the people who were throwing the party. "Is that okay, Nera?"

    The faerie Peophin pondered for a bit. "Well, it is my house..." she said, a grin forming on her face. "And I think that's a great idea! Let's go!" Nera shouted. She stood up and flew out of the room, the rest of us stampeding after her. She led us up another flight of stairs and then into a small room, which contained tons of cardboard boxes. It must have been used for storage. There was a door on the other side of the room and Nera went over to it and opened it up. "Come on, let's go inside!" She switched on the lights and flew in excitedly. Lawne and I stayed back and waited for all of other pets to enter first.

    "I like your slippers, Carrot," Lawne told me, giggling a bit. She smiled and then gave me a little hug. She was wearing a gorgeous light pink dress and a diamond necklace around her long Chomby neck. She and her family were also pretty wealthy. I think I was the only kid there who wasn't extremely rich, actually.

    "Don't call me Carrot, Lawn," I reminded her, rolling my eyes. I called her Lawn whenever she called me Carrot because she hated when people mispronounced her name like that. When someone would say her name like Lawn, she would tell them, "It's pronounced law-nuh, not lawn! I'm not a bunch of grass, you know!"

    And Carrot was a nickname she had given me when I had been painted orange. The whole thing was an accident, really. I actually hate the color orange.

    Lawne and I had gone to the Rainbow Pool one day. It was the day she'd been painted disco, and she wanted me to come with her. After she had gotten her new coat, we were messing around, laughing, that sort of thing. Well, she pushed me into the Pool after I had jokingly told her she was ugly, and when I came out, I was orange. That sort of thing normally doesn't happen, mind you. It was a total mistake. If someone were to jump in the Rainbow Pool without a Paint Brush like I had, nothing would have happened. But for some reason I turned orange. Therefore, I was angry. Very angry. First of all, orange was and still is my least favorite color, and second of all, I felt like a huge carrot, and carrots are my least favorite food.

    You can feel my pain, can't you? I felt like a huge fat carrot, and what made it even worse was the fact that Lawne started to call me Carrot. I was absolutely disgusted, and even more outraged when my parents said they couldn't even afford to buy me a Blue Paint Brush to change me back to how I used to look.

    "Sorry," Lawne said. "Let's go in the attic now." She stepped inside first, and I followed right behind her. It was pretty dim inside, and there were all sorts of old junk lying around. An old dusty piano that looked like it was fifty years old, a broken telescope, and a ripped portrait of a Peophin, most likely Nera's grandma or something. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust and looked like it hadn't been touched in years. The attic was huge, and soon Lawne and I met up with everyone else. They were crowding around this tall large mirror with a dark wooden frame. Nera was standing right in front of it, appearing to be inspecting the old thing. She looked at her reflection, and then tapped the mirror a couple of times.

    "What's going on?" I questioned. Nera turned her head around at me, frowning.

    "This mirror..." she murmured, looking back at her reflection. "When I was a kid, I used to play in this attic all of the time, and once I remembered that I was running away from my brother, not paying attention to where I was going, and I ran straight through this mirror. Then, somehow, I fell through another mirror, a different mirror. I had transported to Faerieland, and had appeared in Fyora's room! I had no idea how it had happened, but I remember seeing Fyora, and I was so terrified that I ran straight back through the mirror, and I was in this attic again."

    I cocked my eyebrow, looking up at Lawne, and giving her a weird look. Was Nera telling the truth? I suspected that she was, because Nera was an extremely honest person, and I had never known her to lie or make stories up. Besides, who would make up a story like that?

    "Are you serious?" Lawne asked suspiciously.

    Nera nodded her head. "I'm totally serious. Why would I lie to you guys?" She was grabbing onto her long white dress, pulling it up a bit so it wouldn't drag on the dirty attic floor. There were already brown stains on the bottoms of the gown from dragging across the floors of the house, anyway, so it didn't really matter.

    "I dunno," the green Nimmo said. "That's really weird though. So you can't get it to work anymore?"

    "No..." Nera murmured, sounding disappointed. "I don't know, maybe it was just my imagination, or a dream or something. But when I was young, it all seemed so real. After that one time I went through the mirror, I got so frightened that I stopped playing in this attic. I sort of forgot all about it until now. This is the first time in years I've been up here," the faerie Peophin explained.

    "Let's go do something else," someone said. "I'm getting bored of this."

    So all of the pets filed out of the attic, but I stayed behind, just staring at the tall mirror. I dusted its wooden frame off with my paw, looking at my reflection. I grimaced at the sight of my hideous orange coat. I tapped the glass mirror with one of my sharp nails, wondering if it was really magical like Nera said it was.

    I didn't really believe in magic at all, but it was intriguing. For some reason I believed Nera when she said that this mirror could transport you places, and a little light bulb went off in my head after I had been staring at the mirror for long enough. I remembered reading about a mirror like this in a random book I had been looking through one day while I was at the Neopia Central library. Now, I hate reading, but I was looking for a book because I needed to get one for English class, and well, that's a different story.

    Anyway, in this book I had just grabbed from the shelf, I was reading about a mirror called the Mirror of Memories, and there was a picture of it in the book. The mirror looked exactly like this one, and I mean exactly. The frame of the mirror was the same color of wood, size of the mirror was the same, and everything. A full-length oval-shaped standing mirror, whose frame was made of dark ebony wood. There were tons of details carved into the wood frame. Little swirl patterns, some words in another language, and some other things.

    In the book, it said the mirror had once belonged to Queen Fyora a long, long time ago. Hundreds of years, probably. But it was stolen from her, and it fell into the hands of a commoner, and was eventually sold, and now no one knew where it was or who owned it. The book explained that if one concentrated hard enough, they could walk through the mirror to any place or any time they wanted to.

    My train of thought was suddenly interrupted when I heard someone calling my name.

    "Aina! Aina! Where are you--?"

    I immediately recognized that voice to be Lawne's. My ears perked up, and I quickly scrambled out of the attic to see what she wanted. I closed the door softly behind me as I stepped back into the storage room with tons of cardboard boxes, and I saw the disco Chomby poke her head in.

    "What are you still doing back here?" she questioned. "Anyway, your parents wanted me to come and get you. Apparently it's very important."

    I sighed and thanked her, then started downstairs to see what the heck they wanted to bother me about.

To be continued...