They had warned her at least a dozen times, at least eleven more than she needed, before ever so much as letting her try to cast cantrips in a room with a mirror. She had nodded along, and nodded off, with the rest of her class through the same endless lectures – every spell had a reflection.

Some were harmless fireworks, just something not to be startled by. Some were violent inversions, turning a spell’s purpose against its caster. And some were wonders in their own right, more useful than what they reflected, so that casting the spell in the first place was just a catalyst for the mirror to act on.

They had warned about death and ruination and endless catastrophic iteration, but at least, in all of those cases, they had explained exactly what an apprentice had to be wary of. So why had there been no explanation when she had raised her hand, trying to stay awake in class, and asked about teleportation spells?

Why had the teacher’s bright, expressive face closed up like a forbidden tome before he’d said that never, under any circumstances, for any reason, should any of them attempt a teleportation spell in the same room as a mirror?

There were none in the dormitories, no mirrors at all that an apprentice could access without permission and supervision. She’d had to wait three whole months for the summer solstice and the week it meant she was free, at last, to spend with her family.

In her childhood home, with its many heedlessly bare and brilliant mirrors. She had one in her own bedroom, all to herself, staring back at her with her own blue-flame eyes.

Just a spell to travel to the next room. Her older sister’s room, empty these last three years. She had laid a dried poppy on its floor just to be sure, a beacon, something she could picture and pull herself to perfectly.

Her reflection, harmless echo, drew in the same deep, ready breath as her. They raised their hands together, fingers arrayed in perfect form. Their lips formed the words, the light that limned her fingers blue blossomed almost the same in the mirror, an uneasy teal, like that same blue seen through darkly tinted glass, and as she pictured that guiding poppy with all her might, the world on her side of the mirror cracked.