The cave was sealed at dawn, with a very tired Lucille gazing at the endeavor in a sour mood, irritated by the fact that now she had to walk another fifteen minutes around the hill to the next entrance.

Rosemary directed the activities with almost ceremonial gestures, pleased to have won this epic battle over the Que’d and unaware of the fact that she’d already lost the war. When the Circle was finished dumping large boulders at the entrance of the cave and the large cloud of dust started to settle, the place looked so barren and desolate that even the most acerbic opponents of scholarly knowledge felt a tinge of guilt.

There was something inspiring, something larger than life in that cave with the ancient carvings adorning the walls, and many secretly wondered if they didn’t throw away irreplaceable treasure just to quell their fears.

“Aah, Lucille!” Rosemary pinned her under an icy stare. “How nice of you to finally join us, dear! We were starting to worry that you might have gotten lost on the way here,” she commented, her sarcastic comment well padded by a sweetness that almost made Lucille gag. Since Lucille lived two blocks down from the Council Hall, the insinuation that she might not be all there didn’t escape anyone in the Circle.

“Don’t you worry about me, darling,” Lucille retorted, in an even colder tone of voice. “If I need advice on how tie my shoes, I’ll be sure to ask you. You’re the best resource, all things considered,” she smiled at Rosemary. The latter turned beet red and threw a bitter stare in her direction, sharp as a dagger. Everybody remembered the incident from decades ago, when a young and enthusiastic Rosemary, who was in the running to become the Maiden of the Harvest and lead the produce parade through the main streets of the village, stumbled on her shoelaces, that had come undone, and fell off the wagon, face first in the dirt. Nobody, not even her best friends, managed to banish this incident to oblivion, as they were all reminded of it annually.

Lucille returned after dark, and to her shock, she found the new cave completely transformed: a console had been installed, as promised, but also furniture, personal accommodations and storage modules. She saw what looked like a kitchen towards the back of the cave and set down the basket of food on the table.

Mary wasn't there, and Lucille started to panic, prompting the one in the mirror to provide an explanation.

“There is an underground stream two caves down, Mary got bored and went to get some fresh water. We thought she would be more comfortable if the place looked more like home, do you think you could bring her favorite things from her room? We tried to offer her food, but she seems reluctant to eat it. Maybe it would be best if you brought her home cooked meals for a while, at least until she gets used to our fare.” He stopped for a second, to give Lucille a chance to reply, then, upon noticing the latter seemed at a loss for words, he asked. “How did things go with the Council?”

“Answer him, girl!” Mrs. Gentry prodded a very confused Mary, whose young heart oscillated between shame and terror. “Mary! Her name is Mary!” the lady clarified.

“Who are you?” the grumpy guy retorted bluntly, making Mrs. Gentry recoil with indignation.

“I believe it's untoward for you to address me, given that we're not related, nor have we been properly introduced,” she protested, ready to leave.

“Suit yourself!” the man cut her off. “I only care about the girl anyway.”

“Jim!” the other man protested. “Would it kill you to be nice?”

“She wasn't supposed to be involved in this to begin with!” Jim replied.

“Why don't you go finish what you were working on, I'll take it from here,” his friend recommended.

“Real nice! After all the time I spent slaving over this monitor,” Jim protested, but left.

“Hi, Mary,” the one in the mirror looked at the girl again. “I know how scary all of this must be for you, but I need you to stay with me for a while, so I can explain. You have no idea how excited we all are to have found you, we almost lost hope, we thought someone faked the rumors of your existence. Are there any more people like you in the village?”

“Now what!?” Mary thought.

“Oh, I knew it! I just knew it! It had to be!” Lucille couldn't contain her excitement, and all of a sudden she looked much younger, an echo from the care free days of her girlhood, when, much like her niece, she was willing to take on the world, no holds barred.

“Do you think we can order the mirror to do things?” Mary asked.

“Probably,” Lucille said thoughtfully, “if we knew how... Did you make any progress with understanding the language?” she turned towards her niece.

“Not really,” the girl confessed.

“No matter, we have time to figure out what we can, later, I'm late for the meeting, we'll talk when I come back.”

Lucille and Mary spent the following week trying to learn more about what the mirror could do. There was one aspect of this endeavor that none of them could shake: as exciting as it was to communicate with the magical object, the Que'd manuscript beckoned from the chest where it had been carefully stashed, wrapped in linen and strewn with lavender buds to ward off the moths.

Lucille couldn't let go of the thought that the truth remained hidden somewhere underneath that black water the playful symbols were floating on, the way sunken treasures sleep undisturbed in the depths of the ocean. From somewhere inside that dark water the ancient words of the Que'd called out to her, she could almost hear them, remember them from her childhood, although she would have chastised any person for lacking seriousness if they brought this up to her.

“I think I speak for everybody when I say that bringing this curse into the Council Hall is a disrespectful and irresponsible act one hoped not to expect from a member of your standing!” Rosemary hissed at Lucille, who had just walked in, holding the object of contention.

“Naturally,” she thought, “who else would be the first to find out about the black mirror but our sweet Rosemary! On second thought, I wonder how she knew what I was holding?” 

Understanding the old language became increasingly challenging over time, and the hopes of making heads or tails of it diminished, even for Mary, who, despite the unfortunate circumstances of her birth was an unbridled optimist. She spent endless nights, risking her aunt's chastising, trying to decipher the meaning of the fragments they had translated, and it felt more and more like trying to mend an intricate tapestry after it had been torn to shreds, its big picture forever lost.

A puzzle with a million pieces, no two alike, without recognizable match lines, color themes or continuing patterns. As adept as she was at weaving together seemingly incompatible snippets into a cohesive flow, a skill she had mastered early in her childhood, she had to admit defeat after a while: what good does it do one to reconstitute something one can't possibly understand?

The cave find became the focus of attention for the entire village. Their community hadn't had anything exciting to talk about since most of its members could remember, and the discovery of something both fascinating and inaccessible kept everybody on the edge of their seats with anticipation.

Public discussions about mirrors became so commonplace that even Mrs. Gentry gave up protesting eventually. “One can't squelch public curiosity, especially that of young people, it's a sad state of fact,” she thought, sighing with nostalgia for the good old days when even a mention of mirrors or reflections would immediately draw community shunning.

“We're never going to figure this out,” Lucille said, dejected. “Not only don't I know most of the words' equivalents, but I don't understand their meaning, either. Even the short sentences I translated make absolutely no sense to me. What on earth is ‘meta property vr canonical content’? Why are we doing this?” she looked at Mary, exasperated. The girl, as always, donned a perplexed gaze.

The look in her niece's eyes helped Lucille remember that time allocation for this research had been recommended by the Circle, and as such, she didn't need to justify it to herself.