Reflections on Energy (part 2)

Continued from part 1.

Reflections on Energy (part 1)

Here's the writing prompt from the following day:

> It looked like a shell, half buried, but as she dug through the sand around its edges, she found it was something completely different, something she'd never seen before and thought only existed in stories. She had to be imagining—it simply couldn't be a ____

As before, take a moment to think about what you might do with this writing prompt yourself.

Here's what I wrote.

Life Mirror

It looked like a shell, half buried, but as she dug through the sand around its edges, she found it was something completely different, something she'd never seen before and thought only existed in stories. She had to be imagining—it simply couldn't be a mirror of her life. It was blurry, an old mirror of burnished silver, but there was no mistaking it—every moment of her life was reflected back in that mirror.

She gazed out at the ebb and flow of the ocean, and felt the residue of her life's experiences in her body. The pain in her side from the accident, the tension in her head and neck that had been there since her 20s, the skip in her heart's beat every minute or two. "Harmless," the doctor had assured her, after her scans checked out. "Just part of growing old." But it had started all at once, almost 6 years ago now, after a straight year of overwork and drinking coffee as a substitute for, well, everything she felt no control over.

Now, here she was. At peace, she told herself, and there was truth to it. But it was a peace that her body couldn't quite accept, a calm inside the changing climate of her body. She hugged herself. "We've been through so much together, and we're still so young," she whispered to her flesh.

The mirror. She could feel the details of its trim in her hand. It was inert, the same temperature as the air. All she had to do was look at the moment of her life that she desired, and she would return to that point to do it again.

"Again," the ocean said, as it washed against the shore. "Again."