The Mirror of Memories: Part Three

I knew that I should have returned Kin to his parents by then, but I was just too anxious to try and get the Mirror of Memories working. The baby Ogrin was sitting on the floor next to me patiently, while I kept staring at my reflection in the mirror. The dim lights of the attic made it hard to see much, but I tried to concentrate as hard as I could.

    The book in which I’d read about the Mirror had said that you could go anywhere you wanted to if you just centered your mind on the place you wanted to go. So that's exactly what I did. I thought of Malin, though I didn't know what she looked like. Judging from the picture that was in her journal she was either a spotted Kougra or a blue Cybunny, so I just thought of those two pets as I kept looking into the mirror. I thought of twenty years ago, and how much I wanted to know what had happened to Malin, to know the rest of the story and why her journal had been thrown on the ground for someone to find. I thought it was sort of odd that it had been sitting there for twenty years -- or who knows, maybe someone had found it before and then they lost it or something -- and even more eerie that I'd found it on the same exact date the first entry was written, only twenty years later.

    I must have been standing there for five minutes, and Kin was probably getting really bored, but just then the mirror started to glow. It was blindingly bright, so I shielded my eyes from the sudden burst of light. Kin looked really worried, and I thought he was about to cry. I picked him up to comfort him, and I had him hold the tube the journal was inside of.

    Suddenly, the mirror stopped glowing. I looked at it curiously, my eyes wide, and then I moved closer to it. Maybe I could go through it now? I slowly brought my claw up to the mirror and poked at it with one of my long sharp nails. My nail went right through the mirror, which was now rippling. It was almost like a liquid, except it wasn't. I didn't feel anything at all, so I put my whole hand through. A portal. I took one last deep breath, closed my eyes, and quickly walked through the mirror, hoping that it would take me to the place I so desperately wanted to go.

    Once I was all the way through the mirror, I opened my eyes and gasped when I saw where I was. I actually had no idea where I was, but all I saw around me was yellow light and swirling colors. It was like I was in an alternate reality, a long tunnel or hallway or something. I looked down at my feet, which were still being warmed by my pink fuzzy slippers, and I noticed that I wasn't standing on anything. It was like I was walking on air! At first I thought I was going to fall, but I realized that I could walk across the tunnel as if it had an invisible floor. At the very end of the tunnel I saw a mirror, an exit, and I started to run towards it as fast as I could. I looked down at Kin, who had his eyes screwed shut and face all messed up as if he'd eaten something really nasty. I was feeling dizzy with all of the bright lights flashing around me, and I wanted to shut my eyes, too. I kept running toward the exit, but it seemed to take forever for me to get there. I managed to reach it without falling to the ground feeling sick, and I zoomed through the other mirror, hoping I'd be out of the crazy flashy place... or whatever it was.

    The next thing I knew, I was tumbling to the ground of some dirty bathroom, and Kin had fallen out of my arms. I had yelled when I fell, since it was so unexpected, and I hoped that I hadn't woken anybody up or anything. I looked around and noticed that I was in someone's house, and if anyone were home, they'd be running in wondering why the heck someone was making a scene in their bathroom.

    Sure enough, I heard footsteps, and seconds later a blue Cybunny had poked her head into the bathroom, and her big eyes looked down at me like I was a ghost. She was probably wondering how we had gotten in her house in the first place, and second, why we were sprawled out on her bathroom floor like idiots. I felt my face flush horribly. It isn't often I blush, either. Only when I'm mortified, and even that doesn't happen very often. After all, I am the one who shows up to a fancy party in pink slippers when everyone else is wearing their faerie tale dresses and tuxedos.

    The blue Cybunny -- who I was pretty certain was Malin -- screamed so loud I thought my eardrums might explode.

    "W-Who... who are you?!" Her voice was shaky and she sounded terrified. She looked from me to Kin and back over and over again, her eyes still very wide in shock.

    "Uh..." I started, looking around the bathroom. It needed to be cleaned, and I noticed that it was very old-fashioned looking. Well, duh, this was twenty years in the past! The Cybunny didn't even have a proper bathtub. It was just a very large metal bucket positioned under a faucet. Maybe that's what they bathed in back then? I spotted a box of soap that was on the ground next to the tub, and it read, 'Sepra. The soap that shines!'

    "Well? I'm waiting for an answer!" she told me, still looking very scared. Maybe she thought we were trying to rob her or something, but if I were her I'd laugh if I saw a Bori of a hideous orange color wearing bright pink slippers and a baby Ogrin lying on her bathroom floor.

    "I'm Sepra," I told her. Hey, it was the first thing I'd seen. And I didn't want to go around giving strangers my real name. "And I mean no harm! I'm not trying to steal your... towels. Or anything." I mentally hit myself in the head, hating myself because I must have sounded like a freak. I zipped my eyes back and forth, looking at the towels that were hanging from the rack. They were brown. Ew. "And who are you?"

    "I... I'm Malin," the Cybunny told me. Her voice now sounded normal, and it was very quiet. She seemed like she was really shy. She stepped closer, and she pointed at Kin, who was starting to cry. "Who is this?"

    "That is... uh... Bin," I told her. Fyora, I was stupid. Who in Neopia would name their kid Bin?!

    "Bin, huh? And Sepra... Would you mind telling me what you are doing in my bathroom?!"

    "We... got here by accident. You see..." I looked around, and was relieved that there was a window in the corner of the small bathroom, right by the toilet. It was open, too! "We were playing hide-and-go-seek, and we thought that this was our house, and we sort of came in. I'm sorry though." I didn't say anything more. I didn't know what to say. It was completely awkward.

    I picked up Kin and cradled him in my arms, trying to get him to stop crying. "Hush, Kin," I told him softly, forgetting that his name was now Bin.

    "What? I thought you said his name was Bin," Malin said to me suspiciously. She raised an eyebrow, and my eyes grew wide.

    "Did I? Well, My tongue must have slipped. I meant Kin." There, now I didn't have to go around calling him Bin.

    Malin was silent for a few moments. I was sort of expecting her to shout at us and tell us to get out, but then again, she didn't seem like the type of person to do that. She was probably expecting us to get up and leave, but I just sat there with Kin.

    The Cybunny's eyes scanned the floor of the bathroom and she caught sight of the tube her journal was in, which was just a few feet from where I was sitting.

    "Hey, what is my umbrella case doing in here?" she asked herself aloud, bending over to pick it up. "And why is it so... dirty and old looking?"

    So that was an umbrella case? Who uses umbrella cases? And who puts journals in umbrella cases? My heart skipped a beat when I realized that there must have been another one of her umbrella cases and another copy of her journal somewhere around her house, since I'd brought that one from the future. Surely she'd soon find out that there were now two of them. What would happen then? That would be awfully suspicious!

    Malin set the umbrella case down on the counter, and then frowned down at me. "Why don't I get you cleaned up?" she offered kindly, helping me to my feet. "You're very dirty."

    I nodded. I was extremely dirty. My orange fur was still damp from my little adventure of rescuing Kin outside when we were back at the party, and there were still huge chunks of mud stuck between my fur in all sorts of places, and it was now starting to dry.

    "Why don't you hop in the tub?" Malin questioned, prodding the huge metal bucket thing. She didn't wait for me to give her an answer, she just picked me up, though I was probably heavier than her, and she set me down in the cold thing. She turned the knob on the faucet, and steaming hot water splashed down from it, landing right on my foot. I pulled it away, grabbing it in pain. "Oh, I'm so SORRY!" the Cybunny apologized, frantically changing the temperature of the water so it was a little cooler. I noticed that she was really sincere and caring. Maybe a little too sincere and caring. I mean, I wouldn't offer to give a bath to a stranger that I'd found in my house.

    "It's okay," I told her, trying not to sound angry. Bin -- I mean, Kin, stuck his tongue out and laughed at me.

    "I'll be right back, I just need to go get some shampoo," Malin told me. She went out of the bathroom, taking the umbrella case with her on her way out. Uh-oh. She was probably going to put it back where it belonged, wherever that was. And the real umbrella case would be there! What would I do? If she saw that there were two of them, she'd probably open it up and see her old journal inside. Who knew what might happen if she read that, and found out what was going to happen to her in the future? I'd heard all sorts of crazy stories like that, about how if you travel in time (if that was even possible... well, I guess I knew it was now!) and you see yourself from the future or read about your future you'd explode. Well, I don't know if that's true or not, that's just what the kids in my class at school had said when the subject came up one day in class!

    I had to get that umbrella case back before she saw the journal inside! But how would I do it? I couldn't just run out of the tub all soaking wet and take it right out of her hands.

To be continued...