There it is, the mirror sky, reflecting all that is beneath it and throwing it back upon itself like rain.
The flowers unfurl with alarming swiftness-delicate, they are, made of shadow and moonlight, flourishing in the dusk-and the tides rake the shore with desperate fingers, wrenched back from the land as the night pulls the day down under the water. The sun sinks crimson within the glass sea, cracking it, and it shatters into a million stars trapped inside a harsh black sky. The shore is littered with a desolate battlefield of broken shells, scarred bits of wood, rocks beaten into smoothness by the unforgiving water.
Where is the moon? There is no softness here. Hard lines, the world washed black and white, and such a stillness even in motion. The sky does not see a moon, and so the moon is gone-trapped with the sun beneath the black sea? The last shards of fiery gold and red have been swallowed by unnaturally silent waves.
Where is the life? Every creature is gone, hidden away. It is not the night that they fear, but the image of themselves reflected inside it. The world does not sleep; it waits, coiled like a spring, for whatever is coming. It is as if everything is holding its breath, silent and full of tension.
The sea isn’t alive like it should be anymore. It’s been tainted, poisoned. Why do the waves shine black and blue like a raven’s feather? Where are the whitecaps and the foam? No, this sea is smooth glass, flowing and morphing, licking cruelly at the shore. Cold as ice, but not frozen, it leaches the color from the world, drawing all the light into its frigid depths. Look down inside it and there is nothing but hard blackness, as if the water is solid now but still moving. The silence is perhaps the most terrifying. Wrong, for the world to move so fast and be so quiet. The clouds and the stars all move dizzyingly, racing across the sky, growing and changing before a real form can be discerned.
Now even the stars are going dark, falling one by one into the sea, a sad parody of rain. They are swallowed instantly, their cold lights extinguished until not one is left. For one long, silent moment, everything is dark. How long does a moment in utter despair last? A day, a year, a thousand? It is impossible to tell, with the unchanging quiet.
There it is, somewhere above, the mirror sky, reflecting itself. For that is all that’s left- darkness reflected in hallways and tunnels and funhouse mazes.
Until the moon slices through, and everything shatters. Shards of darkness fall and change, hitting the ground and seeping color into the soil. The waves crash upon the shore, released- still brutal, still cold, but free and deep cobalt blue under the golden moonlight. The wind sighs, the trees rustle, the grasses bend and sway with the whisk-whisk sound of silk on silk. Thunder and lightning roar and flash as the sky hurls itself into the sea in a torrent of bitter rain. The world is awake with a vengeance, and the moon reigns, full and golden and glorious, over the deep purples and soft blues of the night.