Someone's home

I was in somebody’s home, but not my own. It was a small, quaint little place and I was standing in the living room. A fireplace was in front of me, lit with a comfortable warmth issuing from it. Atop the mantle of the hearth were a number of photographs with slightly familiar faces on them, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on who they were.

“Whoa, what’s going on?” I wheeled around to find the room empty, no mirror, no strange lady, just me, alone in somebody else’s living room.

Don’t panic, cutie, I heard the lady’s voice, but I couldn’t see her anywhere.

“Where did you go?” I asked aloud.

I’m still in the studio. But I can communicate with you here. Welcome to the home of the mirror’s previous owner.

It was in that moment that I began to recognize the features of the other two people in the photos. They looked like my grandfather and grandmother, but much younger and much happier.

“This is a different reality?” I looked around my surroundings more closely. Nothing about it seemed fake, “it seems so real.”

For all intents and purposes, it is real. This world has its own ecosystem, its own geology, it even has its own people.

“There are people here?”

Of course. It was designed to be exactly like your world in nearly every way, with the exception that a few of the owners previous friends and family being alive again.

This revelation struck a deep chord in me. Though I knew little of him, I knew that my grandfather mourned very deeply for his late wife, it would have made sense that given this kind of power he would have created a world where he could be with her again. I was surprised this reality didn’t offer much else different than the regular world, it seemed the man was easy to please. Or he had already had his fun in other ways, it would be impossible to tell.

Suddenly the vertigo returned, and I was once again inside “the Studio” as the lady called it.

Yet again, she was there, smirking at me and still eyeing me with her bicolored eyes almost hungrily. I found myself oddly turned on by the idea of such a gorgeous woman being so sexually aggressive toward me of all people.

“Since you are here, and you are certainly not the previous owner, I can only assume he has passed away and left you this mirror in his will. This is the only way the mirror could have taken you here.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that means you own this place now, and the reality your predecessor left behind is yours as well. You may use the Studio to alter his world or erase it to make way for a new world,” that seemed simple enough. Or at least, I was able to grasp the concept without my brain melting.

“Where do you fit into all of this, though?” I asked, growing ever curious about this mysterious woman.

“I’m the Studio. Or rather I’m a part of the Studio that you can interact with. I can answer any questions you have, or even make changes at your request if you’d rather not take a hands-on approach. However, if you prefer the latter…” she strode to the door in the room with the artist’s brush painted on it and opened it, gesturing for me to enter.

I walked inside to find a much larger room full of various creative tools. I immediately spotted an easel, a writing desk, a block of marble and a stool, even a variety of musical instruments. There was much more, enough that it was a bit overwhelming and making me sort of dizzy.

“If you are the creative sort, you can use anything in this room to give inspiration for, or directly change, the world you create, designing every last detail.” The possibilities were whirling inside my head.

“How would anyone have enough time to design every aspect of an entire world, though?” I asked.

“This studio is timeless, you won’t age here, and time won’t pass here. For that matter, each reality is temporally exclusive. This means that you could spend hundreds of years in your created world and not age a second in your home world, and the same is true for the other way around. If you’re in the Studio, time won’t pass in either reality.”

Well that was certainly helpful.

“But,” the woman continued, “if you prefer, you can just tell me what you want to change and I will do it for you instantaneously, though it may not be exactly how you imagine it.”

I walked back into the lounge, for lack of better name, and looked at the door on the other side, with the hanger on it, “And what about that room?”

“It’s a dressing room. You can alter any aspect of your appearance or attire in that room, to make sure you fit in with whatever locals inhabit your world. I can help you with that when you’re ready.”

I nodded, trying to contain my excitement. The woman had basically just casually told me I could solve my body issues entirely, but I wasn’t quite done addressing my immediate concerns, so I carried on, “So, what should I call you then?”

“The former owner didn’t name me, and that was on purpose. Apparently, he wanted me to look like a woman he had met in a bar one time but never learned the name of, with a few adjustments here and there. The owner of the mirror before him had given me a name, but I’ve been altered quite a lot by now so it likely wouldn’t suit me anymore.

“In the end, my recommendation is that you customize me to your heart’s content. I don’t even need to look or act like this if you don’t want, I’ll take on any form or personality you wish.”

“Okay, fair enough.” I thought to myself for a moment, trying to think of a good name. I was drawing a blank though. “I can’t really think of anything yet. I do think I want to keep the personality and look, though.”

She smiled an almost devious yet enchanting grin, “You’re the boss.”