Tina's Unwavering Light

The air in Liora’s room, usually thick with the scent of lavender and the quiet hum of forgotten lullabies, now felt charged, thin. Tina sat across from her, her brow furrowed, her fingers tracing the worn leather of Liora’s favorite armchair. The incident in the hall, the fleeting glimpse of a woman in the gilded mirror who bore Liora’s own features, had lodged itself in Liora’s mind like a shard of glass. It pulsed with a question she couldn’t yet articulate, a gnawing certainty that the reflection was more than a trick of the light.

“It was like… like seeing myself, but older,” Liora whispered, her voice barely a breath. “And she looked so sad, Tina. And then she was gone.”

Tina’s eyes, usually bright with mischief, were serious. She had always been the steady one, the anchor in Liora’s often turbulent inner world. “A reflection doesn’t just *appear*, Liora. Not like that. Not with such… presence.” She paused, her gaze drifting to the window, where the late afternoon sun cast long, distorted shadows across the manicured lawn. “This whole memory trade business… it’s not always clean. Sometimes, they say, the lines blur. Especially when someone wants a memory buried deep.”