Page 85 of Rewitched

“Scrying. A technique of mind-bending and meditating to alter consciousness. All you have to do is speak the incantation and focus your mind just beyond the surface of the mirror. All being well, you should slip somewhere else. It is nothing to be feared,” Artorius told her, leaning over with a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Kind of a scrying-not-crying mentality?” she asked with a reluctant sigh.

“Good luck, Belle,” he said quietly, backing out of the room and clicking the door shut behind him.

She read the allegory again, the cogs in her tired brain starting to whir. It wasn’t until she reached the end of the page, flipped over to the next and back again, that she noticed a small pair of words which had been scribbled in haste by the old man’s almost illegible scrawl.

Mihipte Solacium. My own solace.

He had left the incantation and translation for her. She spoke the words aloud.

Nothing happened. She leaned towards the scrying mirror, glimpsing herself through the thick dust that covered it. She wiped it quickly with the end of her sleeve, dust lacing together and falling onto the table like snow. Now she could see her face properly, blotched red with tears from the night before, shadowed with tiredness that hadn’t lifted since her birthday. But past all of that, she just saw herself.

“Mihipte Solacium.” A little louder and bolder this time, trying the pronunciation as best she could while her line of sight drifted to something farther, something deeper.

The mirror rippled, casting iridescent rainbows so bright that Belle had to shield her eyes against the glass. The moment she removed her hand, the picture changed. She still recognised the reflection, but it was a person who she hadn’t seen for a very long time.

Belle locked eyes with her younger self. Not a day over sixteen, judging by the questionable haircut, the black eyeliner, the full freshness of her face. In fact, she recognised the moment to an exact pinpoint, because it was one that she’d seen only recently. One of the earliest of her manifests, from her trial at Hecate House all those weeks ago, when she’d first practiced light levitation with Jinx. A mirror had been opposite her as she sat cross-legged on the floor, and now here she was, watching from the other side of that glass. She thought back to the moment now and had hazy recollections of a short conversation breaking up her practice. The memory felt like shattered glass fragments; she couldn’t remember who she had spoken to. But it had bolstered her at the time, she knew that much.

Her shy younger self shifted her gaze awkwardly, not one to start a conversation willingly. Belle knew she had to take the lead but could barely bring herself to say a word.

Speak words of peace in thine contact.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” her younger self replied shyly, untucking her hair from behind her ear to let it fall around her face, an extra layer of protection between her and the world. Belle’s heart leapt. They could communicate.

“Wow, this is…This is very weird. Do you…know who I am?”

“You’re me in, like, thirty years,” the teenager replied matter-of-factly, shrugging as though it was the world’s most obvious scenario.

Belle tried not to be offended. “More like fifteen years. But yeah, I am. And you’re me.”

“Right.” Her reflection fiddled with the stack of bracelets on her arm.

“I…” Belle swallowed. “How are you?”

Her younger self frowned. “All right. Surely you know how I am?”

“I suppose I do. Although it feels like a long time ago. I remember, though.” They glanced at each other nervously through the glass. Older Belle added, “I think I’m supposed to tell you what things are like for us now. You won’t remember this later. Knowledge gained from time-bending spells doesn’t stick to the past, but…”

“I don’t think I want to know if it’s bad. Is it bad?”

Belle shook her head. “It’s not bad,” she said gently.

Seeing her younger self look right at her, full of apprehension for the future, was overwhelming. She felt an all-consuming protectiveness towards the girl in front of her, a longing to make her believe that she really was okay. She wanted to tell her that she was everything, every single thing that she needed to be. Belle felt her voice break.

“You’re so ready for the world,” she whispered.

Her younger self frowned again. “You’re not doing a very good job at reassuring me that everything is going to work out, if that’s what you’re here to do. I thought scrying would be all fun and mystical.”

“Sorry, sorry. This isn’t about me. This is about you,” Belle said. “What do you want to know? You can ask me anything, I’ll be honest.”

“Um, what is it we do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we ended up doing something cool for a living, right? That’s all anyone ever talks to me about. What I want to do, what I’m going to be. So I’m hoping the plan worked out?”