When Lily Met Elora

A glimmer of light streams through my curtains as my alarm starts ringing. I grab my phone and quickly turn it off, exhaustion riddling my bones. That mirror kept me up all night. The knowledge that it shows the truth... the truth of who you were. I’m not ready to know, but it calls to me. That’s why I put a cloth over it years ago. The last time I gazed into it was when I was still carefree. Now I see no reason to remember a time of joy. I lazily pull myself out of bed and toward the bathroom—another mirror, but this one is covered in paint hastily put on. I haven’t had a usable mirror in years, but that doesn’t bother me as much as knowing the person who would be staring back at me is a failure. That’s all that reflected back for years. I shake my head, removing the thoughts from my mind.

Once I get dressed and ready for the day, I turn back toward that cloth. “Do you really show who I am? Who I was? Do you really show the truth?” My words echo into my room but fall onto deaf walls. I begin to wander out to my living room, but something soft calls out to me. “Come back… this isn’t you.” I freeze in my tracks and glance back toward my room. “What..?” I walk back in and reach out my hand. A soft tremble begins as I rip the cloth away from the mirror. A small girl—the one who used to carry snails and stitch clothing sloppily, the one who giggled as the rain ran down her face—lets out a soft sneeze as dust floats into the air. “Bless you? How is this… can you hear me?!” I try to keep my voice steady, but I’m startled by this sudden vision. She motions for me to sit down as she stands on her tiptoes, trying to be the same height as me. “It seems that we no longer see eye to eye,” she giggles as I still tower over her. But as I move to sit down and our eyes meet, she bursts into another stream of giggles. “Now we see eye to eye!” I smile softly as I settle onto the hard floor. Then I take a moment to really look at her. Waist length brown hair, sticks stuck from the woods, bare feet with only half the toes painted, soft green eyes, and the biggest smile.

“What happened to us? You look so tired...” she tilts her head with the question. How do I respond to that? I am tired. But how do I explain to this version of me all the hardships and exhaustion we’ve been through? Or do I even tell her? I put my face in my hands and let out the kind of sigh that’s been held in for years. “We… I’ve been very busy. Life hasn’t been easy for us. But we’re slowly getting back up.” My face is still in my hands. My hair is now up to my shoulders, none of my nails are painted, and my green eyes are slightly sunken from the weight of the world. A complete opposite of the one staring at me. She puts her hand up against the mirror as if trying to reach out to me. “It’s okay to be tired. Maybe a nap would help?” Her voice is innocent and full of good meaning. I look all the way up now. “A nap?” I ask. “Yeah! A nap and then a snack. That always helped me when I was sad,” she grins and looks around, producing our old childhood stuffed animal. “Oh, and Barky! Barky always made me feel better. Do we still have her?” she asks. I look over at the now ragged and well-loved stuffed animal sitting on my shelf. “Sorta? I mean… she’s sitting on the shelf…” I hesitate to tell my younger self. She squeals and looks at the stuffed animal in her arms. “You hear that, Barky?! You’re still with us!” Something about her enthusiasm stirs a calm in me I didn’t know I still had.

“We go by Elora now… I stopped using our name a long time ago. It supposedly has something to do with hope. Our name carried too much hurt… But Lily, you look so happy. There’s so much I wish I could have told you, that I could have warned you of.” I ramble. She smiles and looks at me. “My God is my light.” “What?” I ask. “Elora. That’s what it means. ‘My God is my light.’ Didn’t you know that? Yeah, it’s about hope… but it also means strength and everything else that came from our faith,” she tells me. Is this what hiding the mirror has done to me? I’ve lost everything, and yet this girl in front of me has hope that we’ll be okay. If the mirror is showing me this version of me… that means she isn’t lost yet. “Elora… do we still paint?” she whispers, a glimpse of heaviness in her eyes. “No… but we’re starting again.” With those words I pull out my old paint supplies, forgetting about the plans I had for the day. I start with old and familiar brush strokes. “We’ll get through this, Lily. Together.” And with those words, I finish my painting with a stroke of white, a lily with a holy light surrounding it.

Elora and Lily, one again.