Once upon a time, there was a girl who was playing in the woods. She collected sticks, pine cones and empty snail shells. On a clearing, she found a wooden crown in the shrubbery. She sat the crown on her head, pretending to be the queen of the forest.
First it was fun, but soon she felt strange. Like the colour was fading from her existence. Something slowly went missing, the sounds became numd. Behind what seemed like a glass wall next to her, she could see reality. In this reality, there was a girl, looking like her, standing in the forest, wearing the crown - self-confident, while she herself was frightened.
As the girl on the other side moved, so did she. Without control over her movements, she followed and mirrored. Picked up a heavy, very old stick with mysterious engravings by time and weather. Wandered through the forest and her glass prison wandered with every step.
She arrived at a wide clearing, where no shrubbery grew and spots of light fell through the treetops to build patterns of foreign letters on the ground of the forest. The old Dwarf Beeches stepped aside as the wooden crown grew. More and more twigs and branches grew from the wooden spikes until it had become a colossal bird's nest that fell down around the girl.
The girl now looked down from upside down, hanging atop reality. As she tried to touch the glass that separated her from reality, she feld that she could, on her part, make the other girl move against her will, though it took all her few fellings left.
She tried to defend herself against her hand moving towards the world over her head, she could feel it and focused all her forces. Her hair began to fall down and fly high, her feet took her off the ground, towards the glass surface.
When their fingertips touched, the two girls' hair began to intertwine, glass and reality collapsed into one, the wooden bird's nest and its mirror image crashed into each other. She only heard and saw chaos.
When their fingertips touched, the two girls' hair began to intertwine, glass and reality collapsed into one, the wooden bird's nest and its mirror image crashed into each other. She only heard and saw chaos.
She felt sleep coming over her, exhausted from her trying to escape the glass prison, protecting herself from the glass fragments that were broken reality. Only the mirror world was left behind, while the small pieces of reality melted into a a string, thin as a needle that soon was too thin to be seen anymore.
She awoke in a great, empty glass house. The roof and walls were made of reality's fragments that filled the room with bright light. Now she was on the other side of the glass wall. She could see her mirror image on the other side.
Still she felt her confidence and will. She had taken that other part of her and it seemed she only left for her what she could not use, taking all the other useful pieces. Left over there was a strange gathering of fear, doubt, hope and compassion.
But she realised that the colour was back on this side of the glass. And she remembered the other side was the prison, not this one. She was free here, even if this room was only a dream, a reflection of reality's leftovers.
She turned her back to the glass wall, slowly stepping nearer. She curled down on a bed of scrubs, taking her other part into her arms. Whispering: Fearful hope, doubtful compassion, they cannot exist. Neither can your fragments of our former self.
They embraced and they slept, side by side, on the ground. She was wondering: If I fall asleep in a dream, where do I go? Is there a deeper place in another layer of dreams? Is a dream in a dream reality again?
When she awoke, she had no answer. Sitting on a tree that reached from what might be dream or reality into the glass world of her mirror image, her feet were dangling into a lake. The water was green and blue and it had the sound of millions of small glass fragments, but they did not cut her skin.
She did not feel anymore where there was the prison. Was it her side of the glass wall or the other girl's? Both moved and skew the other, mirrored world. She turned the glass around, so it was laying on the surface of the water.
Let us fix reality and dream again, dear sister, she said to her mirror image. Slowly she was moving and balancing the glass surface exactly on the water. Bit by bit she slided from the tree into the water.
The small glass fragments formed a new glass surface, right on the glass prison wall. She felt her body and mind falling into place again. Hope had hate again, fear had confidence again. The old opponents were reunited in her again. Only one her. No glass walls anymore.
Model: Katja Kemnitz
