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In the unending dark of the Inkwell, there’s no reflection to speak of. And yet, even without being able to see themself, Mir knows the first few beaming rays of dawn have burned away the other. 

They kneel at the edges of that pit of black and pitch, knees encircled in the vibrant orange of fallen leaves and kissed by whorls of smoke that still rise from the deep, staring into nothing with the echo of raucous laughter in their mind. Every sound from the night before sticks in their sense memory – the noise of their own heart thudding in their ears, the frantic swell and rush of bodies colliding in senseless dance, the chaos and confusion and simple violence of it all. 

They can still hear the howl of prayers offered to the moon, the pounding rhythm of a thousand hooves and paws and claws against cracked earth, the angry shudder of drums shaking thunderously through their ribcage, the cacophony of voices cackling, crowing, coalescing into a singular, infinite noise. 

It’s quiet now, in the daylight. Quieter than their own thoughts, quiet as the unchanging surface of the Inkwell in which they see nothing but oilslick sheen. 

Last night had drawn nothing from them that wasn’t already there – shown them nothing of themself they hadn’t seen and known time and time again. Inevitable as death, that missing piece of them came free – reveled in its fleeting freedom, seethed with the anger of being locked away, mourned the wholeness of their personhood, miserably fought to stay… that they might finally be as one, like they were meant to be. 

Their eyelashes flutter shut, head lowered in contemplation. One day – they think, with thick clouds of bangs falling over their eyes – I’ll be as whole as I must have been before…