Illusion ~ A Short Story

In the Beginning

The Gods often work in mysterious ways, that much was understood by the humans on Earth. They made decisions and interfered with the humans' lives as if they were nothing more than insignificant chess pieces. One might think that this would cause the humans to be wary and less trusting of the Gods above when in reality, the humans viewed this as motivation to do whatever it took to remain in the Gods' favor. Providing hospitality to anyone who came to you and asked for it quickly became one of the most widespread practices by the humans as the Gods were known to frequently make disguised appearances amongst them in order to get a gauge of the current dynamics and to test the humans they encountered.

Mira and Aziza were twins who were born to parents who strongly believed in providing hospitality to anyone who appeared on their doorstep out of the kindness in their hearts rather than only providing it because it could be a God in disguise. This mindset of theirs was only reinforced when they chose to settle down in the middle of the Desert Sea, knowing that the next closest settlement was several days' travel away. Thus anyone who did happen to come across their home was desperately in need of the kindness and hospitality their family was known for providing.

Shortly after the twins' birth, Mira began to show signs of being able to manipulate the visuals of the world around him. Small, insignificant items occasionally developed an almost shimmer around them, and when viewed from a different angle, the item appeared to have disappeared entirely. At first, their parents weren't entirely sure what to make of these strange occurrences, as they certainly couldn't be coming from their young son. However, it didn't take long before more and more items of increasing size around Mira's location developed the shimmer effect, stunning both of the parents. It was without a doubt, Mira had some kind of ability to manipulate the visualization of objects around him. As neither of the parents had any idea where Mira could have gotten an ability like that, they could only assume that it must have been a gift from the Gods. They recognized the Gods wouldn't just randomly anoint abilities like this onto Mira without logical reasoning, even if they weren't aware of said reasoning. Immediately, they encouraged Mira to strengthen his abilities so that he would be prepared if the time came for him to truly utilize his abilities.

As the twins continued to grow, their parents encouraged them to embody the same positive and kind outlook on life and the world's inhabitants that they had. That was of utmost importance to them, ensuring that their children believed everyone deserved unconditional kindness and respect. As expected, both of the twins were excited to learn more about how their parents prepared to provide hospitality to the wayward travelers, which prompted the parents to teach them how to accomplish small, easy tasks around the house to contribute. While they were happy about the twins' shared enthusiasm about helping with the hospitality tasks, neither of them wanted to pile a mountain of tasks on the twins, so they still had time to be children. Both of the parents agreed that they would wait several years until the twins were nearing the end of their childhood before assigning them to the more rigorous tasks.

Once the twins reached twelve years old, Mira's abilities started to strengthen much quicker, which only prompted Mira to practice his abilities more. Aziza loved watching Mira practice, completely enamored by his growing ease at making objects disappear from sight. She desperately wished she had abilities of some kind to make her special like Mira, as she just couldn't understand why only he had been chosen by the Gods even though they were twins. Regardless, she still supported Mira and did her best to help him when he was trying different parts of his abilities.

By the time they turned thirteen years old, Mira was easily able to make himself and Aziza disappear from outsiders' view while they could still see each other. Because of this, they started to refer to Mira's abilities as illusions since he was able to make people see that which wasn't reality. The entire family agreed that referring to Mira's abilities as illusions was much easier than just saying abilities over and over.