Because I Love You✔️

Chapter 140: Reflection

Chapter One Hundred and Forty: Reflection

He was standing in front of a full body mirror that stood in a void of white nothing.

He blinked, looking around, but there was nothing else to see but the ornately carved glass reflecting his own image back at him. He gazed at himself, dazedly, taking in his features. He was completely nude again; blue-green eyes lingered on those folded black wings.

Those horns, that face.

He raised his hand and touched the glass...

But his reflection didn't move.

He blinked, confused, until he saw that his fingers didn't have claws on them.

Xaphile's heart jolted and the world around him flickered, fading out, but his reflection instantly stepped closer and pressed both hands to the glass, looking at him with a calm expression. He felt that calm radiating through him and relaxed.

"You aren't me," he said softly, finally realizing it; the self he'd been on atlas before his awakening blinked, long ear flicking. "You aren't me, are you?"

He paused, watching as his other self's lips moved, eyes gentling.

The doppelganger tapped his long ear and shook his head, blue-green eyes swirling like mist.

He didn't seem to be in pain, or upset, that Xaphile was inside his body. The waves of calm and slight approval made him feel... like he was doing the right thing, almost. But he had to talk to this version of himself, he had to know the truth about why he was alive.

Why he'd been given a second chance.

And he had the strangest feeling that the only way he would get that answer was by talking to the boy behind the mirror and asking him directly.

So, he raised his fist, intending to break the barrier keeping them separated, but a look of fright on the face of his reflection made his fist halt. The boy behind the glass shook his head, desperately; his ears had pulled back and he was visibly distraught, frantically swinging his head back and forth so fiercely that his hair was flung from side to side.

Xaphile swallowed, and instead decided to try something else.

He focused, trying to project his thoughts through the barrier the way he occasionally did with Ella.

To reach his other self.

An itch the color of the ocean filled his mind, but for some reason, he felt nothing.

His other self's head cocked to the side, looking at him questioningly.

There was no way to communicate aside from their feelings, apparently, but that didn't matter. He decided to talk anyway, even if the boy couldn't hear him.

"Hello," Xaphile said, locking eyes with his reflection through the glass. "This is the first time... I think I've spoken to you."

His doppelganger's head leaned closer and gazed at him curiously. Xaphile stared into those eyes as the boy that wasn't him gazed into his own, and for one moment they just looked at each other in an assessing manner. Then, very slowly, his reflection smiled a little.