In the beginning, there was nothing.  Everyone agrees on that.

But that's about the only thing they agree on.  Some say the gods created the world out of the primordial elements; others claim that a singular creator-god brought it into existence using sheer willpower.  Yet others say that the world was formed from discarded body parts, clay, sweat, or tears.  There are a hundred thousand variations on the same story, woven through time like a single golden thread in a tapestry.

They're all wrong.

Those hundreds of thousands of variations all have one important similarity – the word 'world,' singular.  As that particular word happens to be an essential component of the story, it's not surprising that they all have it in common.  It's impossible to tell a world-creation story without discussing the world, after all.  But, sadly, that one word is why they're all wrong.

Then again, that's the nature of stories, to get the broad strokes right while being wrong in every particular.  It's why they're so fascinating.  In this case, the proper word should be 'worlds,' plural, though 'multiverse' is a more precise term.  And it wasn't created out of nothingness, or primordial soup, or willpower, or a nasty assortment of bodily fluids.  It wasn't created at all, at least in the normal sense of the term. 

So, really, that plethora of stories doesn't do a very good job with the big picture, either.

If anything, the array of end-of-the-world stories are even worse.  They tell us that the end will come in fire or ice, heralded by trumpets and the blaring of horns, presaged by omens and signs and prophecies.  The four horsemen will ride out of the sky or the frost giants will sweep down from the north, obliterating everything in their path as the world convulses.  The devastation will be noisy and explosive and, above all, obvious.

It's not supposed to be quiet.  A single crack, like the snapping of a tree branch in a high wind, isn't supposed to signal the end of the multiverse.  But it will.

Or maybe it already has. 

See, that's the problem with thinking in stories: you're so busy looking for the showy signs that you miss the subtle ones.  The stories that get repeated over and over are only a fraction of the whole tale, smoothed and tweaked and made palatable for the masses.  'Happily ever after' is only the beginning of a new adventure.  It all depends on where you start and end the tale.

This tale, for instance, starts with a crack.  Or maybe it starts with a question.  Or maybe, just maybe, it starts earlier than that, when a particular bubble of a universe arose from the heaving sea of the multiverse and began to grow.  Eventually, stars formed, then exploded, giving birth to more stars.  Planets grew alongside their stars, and a few special ones happened to contain the right conditions for life to form.

Maybe that's too far back, though.  Maybe you don't care about the evolutionary arms race that eventually spawned sapient races, only to massacre them before they reached their full potential.  Maybe you only care about the particular species that managed to survive until now, forming flourishing, fragile civilizations that whisper stories to each other in the dark of the night.  Maybe, you argue, the crack and the question are really what's important.

So let's get back to the question.

* * *

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"

"You are, my lady," I drone, and she smiles.  It's the smug, satisfied smile of a woman sure of her place at the top of the heap; I don't think she realizes how unpleasant it looks.  I've seen corpses with better rictus grins.

Admittedly, some of those corpses were up and walking around at the time, but still, it's a valid comparison.

I'm not sure why so many mortals are obsessed with their looks, but it's a pattern that has repeated for the length of my existence.  I've seen the same situations play out again and again, repeating in an endless parade of minute variations on the same dance, and beauty plays a key role in the vast majority of them.  Cultures change, technology changes, but physical allure is a common thread across every race I've ever seen.  I think it's probably due to evolution.

There are always those who strive to avoid such gilded traps, of course, and they tend to be my favorite mortals.  Yet even they cannot avoid it forever.  I do my best to help them, providing what crumbs of wisdom that I think they might heed, but I'm never surprised when they succumb to the same forces that I have seen control the lives of so many others.  They're only mortal, after all.

And, well, I may have been mortal at one point, though I have no recollection of it, but I'm far from that now.  The infinite spaces of a multitude of parallel universes are my playground; the frozen vastness of the space between the worlds is my home.

They don't know that, of course.  They think I'm bound to the thin pane of silvered glass that allows them to summon me; they cannot comprehend that my existence transcends their world.  They don't even know that they're not alone, that a hundred thousand copies of them are starring in their own little dramas right at this moment.  All of them believe that they're as unique and special as the snowflakes that they like to compare themselves to, and they've never thought to ask me otherwise.

Mortals are so limited, but maybe that's why I'm fascinated by them.

I often marvel over the sheer smallness of their lives as I watch them through droplets of water or shards of glass.  They go about their daily tasks unaware of the enormity of the universe, content to remain in their placid routines for the rest of their short lives, never questioning why their world looks the way that it does. 

Sometimes I wonder if they are happy.  Do they ever look up at the stars and ask what it would be like to visit them?  A select few ask such questions, but they tend to die miserable deaths at the hands of the more close-minded around them.  Are there others, who cherish dreams like that in the secret corners of their hearts, never to share them?  I want to think that there are, for art and stories and song across the multiverse hint at it.  But if those dreamers exist, they haven't yet gotten a hand on one of my mirrors.

What about the others, who don't dare to dream so big?  Do they ever ask themselves what it would be like to be something besides a farmer, or a baker, or a housewife?  Or does the thought never cross their minds?  I've eavesdropped on their conversations before, but they never talk about those things, and I can't read minds.  I want to scream at them sometimes, tell them about glory of the world beyond their front door, but I restrain myself.

They probably wouldn't listen anyway. 

Even the ones who talk to me – the humans I think of as 'mine' – ask the same tedious questions over and over.  Like the one that is currently the bane of my existence: "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"  The first time I heard it, I thought it was a trite but amusing little rhyme; now it just disgusts me.  There are only two acceptable answers: the questioner herself or her stunning daughter.  They don't want to hear about the lovely milkmaid or gorgeous farmhand in the neighboring country, and they definitely don't want to hear about their husband's newest mistress.

Admittedly, they don't want to hear that their daughter is the fairest of them all, either, but most prefer her over a stranger. Some twisted spark of parental pride remains in their withered hearts, I suppose – though that doesn't prevent their jealousy from leading them to act rather destructively in most cases.

Do they really think that I'm actually searching the entire world to find the most beautiful woman in the land?  It's an impossible task; beauty can't be measured like weight or height.  'Lips as red as blood and skin as white as snow' are common criteria in some lands and times, but others favor golden skin and emerald eyes, or mahogany skin and ebony hair.  A few prefer more exotic looks; not all of 'my' mortals are strictly human.  In one world, a thousand degrees of separation from my normal haunts, silver scales and crimson eyes are considered the ideal.

But they don't want to hear that.  So I give them the boring, predictable answer, stifling my amusement at the absurdity of their mortal pretensions.

Others, more intelligent or less credulous, ask different questions.  If they spend hours primping in front of my mirrors – and they do – they don't ask about beauty.  Instead, they want to know what new plot the vizier came up with last week, or what rumors are circulating in the marketplace, or which new girl has attracted their husband's eye.  Though they never like the answer to the last one... I don't know why they bother asking it.  They know that I'm geased to tell the truth, when I know it, so they can't really argue with my answers, but that doesn't seem to matter to them.

"Mir-ror!  Mir-ror, I command you to appear immediately!"

I wince.  Unfortunately, that voice belongs to a woman who fits firmly into the former category.  Every day, without fail, it's "Who's the fairest of them all?"  If I don't respond to her summons immediately, she yells at my mirror until I show up – like she's doing now.  Her screechy voice echoes through the spaces between the worlds like a foghorn, bouncing off of the universe-bubbles without losing any of its stridency.  It's an unfortunate property of the mirror system.

You see, anyone who possesses one of my mirrors can contact me at any time; I have no way of blocking out their voices.  I don't know why I'm connected to the mirrors, or how the network was formed, but I do know that every world that I can touch possesses at least one of them.  Most, thankfully, are hidden in dusty basements or buried in remote locations, but mortals hold a distressingly high number of them.  It wouldn't be nearly so bad if they were sane, but for some reason the vast majority of them want to be Evil Queens™, complete with flowing black gowns and a penchant for poisoned apples.

"Mirror, show up right now!"  Her voice makes me wish I could cover my nonexistent ears to shut out the grating noise.  Unfortunately, that's not possible, so I send a fraction of my consciousness to deal with her before she manages to shatter my mirror from sheer volume.

She's a fairly typical specimen, as queens go.  Her jet-black velvet gown, replete with lace reminiscent of spider webs, sweeps the floor while revealing a daring amount of décolletage.  If she wasn't glaring at the mirror so hotly, she would be considered gorgeous, as her milky white skin and vivid violet eyes fit the aesthetic paradigm of her country.  But the arrogant sneer twisting her artificially-red lips detracts somewhat from her beauty.

She inhales sharply, about to begin another tirade, and I manifest a hollow mask to serve as a mouthpiece –mortals seem to appreciate having a face to talk to.  "Yes, my lady?"

"Finally.  You forget your place, mirror.  I expect you to show up promptly when summoned, not play games with me."  She starts to rant about the natural order of the world and my place in it, but I'm not paying too much attention to her.  In the Horsehead Nebula, the light from a newborn star reflects off of scattered ice crystals; in another universe, the sun named S'syndra is exploding in a fiery supernova.  Either incident is far more fascinating than her chatter, but then, almost anything would be.

I perk up when her tirade changes to comparisons between me and her 'faithless' daughter.  Apparently, we're both lazy, incompetent, worthless fools who should never have been born – or in my case, created.  There's more than a hint of jealousy in the screed, which doesn't surprise me; the princess is a top contender for the 'fairest of them all' slot.  But the sheer venomous hatred makes me want to sigh.  It won't be long before she demands the death of her daughter in a futile attempt to preserve her own power, if she follows the traditional pattern.  After so many years, I've become somewhat inured to the pathos of it all, but the extinction – or attempted extinction – of a sapient being is always a tragedy.

She finally pauses for breath, but only for a nanosecond.  "So?" she demands, stabbing a pointed carmine nail at my mirror.  "Who's the fairest of them all?"

* * *

Author's Note: So, what do you think of the mirror? Are they an interesting protagonist?

For those interested in learning more about the multiverse concepts that I'm playing with here, check out Brian Greene's book The Hidden Reality. It's fascinating!