❛ mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the realest of us all? ❜
in which little aya spector doesn't
recognize herself in the mirror
( COPYRIGHT! - aka - DO NOT STEAL! )
illisius Ⓒ 2022
& , moon knight
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ACT ONE, chapter iii : there goes my mind 'cause there's magic in my bones
☾
AYA ELIAS SPECTOR WAS DEAD.
Or, at least, the name was dead, and Aya really wanted a new one. Freaking Lagaro wouldn't give her one. She had been trying to get a fancy alter ego for months—something cool like 'Diatrice' or something, but the forger always shot her down. Lagaro had made her birth certificate, her passports, everything that had ever identified her, but she wouldn't give her this.
The girl was pretty sure this was punishment for the whole accidental fire—starting thing.
Aya had known the forger her entire life, for as long as she could remember. Whenever her parents went on adventures that she was too little or sick to go on, she'd been left in the care of Lagaro, who was an old friend of her gedo's. Every time her parents left, she was under strict orders to not cause too much trouble. Inevitably, Aya always caused too much trouble.
'Too much like her father,' Lagaro always sighed.
So, yeah, she was definitely still a little mad about the whole 'setting fire to her shop' incident.
The thirteen year old sat boredly at the desk beside the forger, cheek smushed against her palm, swinging her sandaled feet. She already had her picture taken (which she hated), and now she was in charge of the camera, clicking the remote as her mother posed between explanations.
"And then we found him, with the scarab, living twenty minutes from our old place—,"
Flash!
Dropping her smile, Layla shook her head and kept explaining, "Now, he's probably going to get himself killed running around Cairo..."
Flash!
At Aya's side, Lagaro dragged their two pictures across the computer screen and set it into place over the passport design, "That's why you look so unhappy to be going home."
"Anxious, maybe..." Layla would concede to that, "It's been thirteen years."
Lagaro smiled sympathetically, reached into the drawer, and pulled out an all too familiar tub of marshmallows. Her mother's eyes lit up and she quickly darted from her spot in front of the camera. She unscrewed the blue lid and popped one in her mouth.
"Ooh." Aya leaned closer, "Can I have a marshmallow?"
Tapping a few buttons on the printer, Lagaro tsked, "Marshmallows are for people who don't burn down people's shops."
The thirteen year old groaned and collapsed back in her squeaky swivel chair.
"You're so overreacting." No, she was not. "The fire wasn't even that big." Yes, it was. "The fact that the fire brigade showed up was completely coincidental." No, it was not.
