The Mirror Realm

27.

"What do you mean I'm dead?!" Amy questions, exasperated.

"I mean it exactly the way it sounds. If this were real, for example, like what happened in Demon Days, you'd be dead right now. Losing focus and getting distracted while trying to hide your fear from demons like us can end, let's just say, horrendously. That is why you asked Apollyon if it is possible to hide your stench while thinking or being somewhere else in the mind, is it is possible. Very, very possible." Lucifer strides close to Amy, stepping into the original light while the circle once around him fades away.

"For now, until your impeccably inarticulate - or in other words, dumb - mind is able to grasp such a skill on its own, you'll have to practice with an anchor."

"An anchor?"

He lets out a groan to her wondering, something that she has been doing every single second, and it's beginning to rattle his nerves.

"To make this process quick and painless - for me at least - please, no more questions. Just listen to my voice and I will tell you all you need to know," Lucifer harshly appoints. "Now, back to what I was saying. You must choose a mind anchor, something that your limbic system can focus on while your parietal cortex is distracted with whatever is going on around you. Your parietal cortex must be focused completely on your surrounding sensory details in order to keep the connection between it and the limbic system durable. This connection is not literal, but is metaphorical," he pauses for a moment, to make sure Amy is still listening.

"Your limbic system must be focused as well, on an emotion, or a vivid memory of someone or something. This memory must be strong to you, something that persuades you. Your limbic system is part of the brain that controls basic emotion, fear is one of these emotions, so by focusing on a memory, you are keeping your fear tamed, or covered. You are doing this all while you're aware of your surroundings."

"How do I do that?!" Amy exclaims, disobeying Lucifer's previous request.

Lucifer lets it slide, as if washing the words away like sand on a beach struck by a wave.

"The human brain cannot effectively preform two complexities at once, but, you are different, so am I," he steps a few inches closer to Amy, her hands crossed in front of her chest.

"Haven't you ever noticed when you were on the other side of the mirror, on the other side of reality, that you could do things with your mind no one else could? You could read two books at once and know the distinctive differences between what you were reading. You could hide your emotions so effectively that no one ever though anything was wrong with you, accept one person of course...Oliver."

A sudden pang hits her stomach like a wrecking ball to the mention of his name...and Lucifer realizes this, rather feels it in his own twisted stomach. Its only then, that an idea crashes into Lucifer, the gears to teach her this skill ticking and running backwards.

"You still have feelings for that fool?"

Amy is caught off guard for a moment, confused to the fact how he seems to know every little detail in her life on the other side of the mirror, even details she's never told anyone else before.

"He's searching for you, this boy," Lucifer steps forward, all the while Amy steps back, distancing herself from the crooked young man coming closer to her with every word. She's inches away from stepping out of the light. Her mind flickers back to the moment they first kissed, and relives the moment, relishing it. More pain comes to her at the thought of this.

"Your naive mother believes that you've been kidnapped and that you're still alive. And she told Oliver to find you," he mocks, "but, of course, he won't. But we won't tell him that, he'll find out on his own...but why not have some fun with him until he comes to that conclusion?" He lets out a low chuckle, one that spreads goose bumps down the back of Amy's neck, the hair on her arms fixed high. Her heart paces, her legs quivering.

"And certainly, you know that there's no way out of this Hell, no way out alive. So, I guess your little relationship is over, your hopeless romantic on the other side of the mirror will be swallowed by the truth, by the pain, he'll drive himself mad...until his ultimate breaking point. When that time comes, he'll already be a dead man. Now you don't want to be in love with a dead man, do you?"

Amy's mind fills with memories like a rapid river filling with water let out of a dam. She can't stop thinking about his face, his voice, the way he expressed his feelings to her in ways not even her family did. But it's Lucifer's words that peer into the memories, his words that tear them apart...though there is one memory that they cannot destroy, and that is the first time she ever met the boy, at the park, sitting alone under a willow tree, reading.

That memory is too strong, unbreakable...the perfect anchor.

Amy stops moving, as Lucifer steps closer. She keeps her eyes wide as she stares at his mutilated face, her's and his movements concentered.

She is aware of her being, of his being, of the darkness around her, all while thinking of Oliver, and the first time she had ever laid her hunter green eyes upon his beautiful brown ones.

"It's just that simple," Lucifer affirms, a grin taking over his pale lips.

"What?" She challenges, not letting go of the memory, not taking her eyes off of Lucifer's.

"You are masking your fear, using an anchor, a strong anchor. This skill is not impossible to master, though it will take some time to conquer and learn it without using that anchor, but that I cannot teach you, you must learn that on your own."

Amy stays quiet, not thinking or saying anything, just staring right into Lucifer's lifeless eyes. It is only now that she realizes four rings around both eyes, but the outer ring is different, it's fainter than the other three, like it's disappearing. Amy wants to stare longer, but her gaze is broken when Lucifer steps back.

"Now, before we waste more time that we do not have, let us move on, to the last parts of lesson one."