Reflection
She placed the leather-bound book on the table near her bed. Its pages were yellowed and worn, the Selected Poems of Jorge Luis Borges. A glow from the lamp fell upon words which haunted her restless night.
Oh destiny … To have wandered through the red and tranquil labyrinth of London, to have grown old in so many mirrors …
She threw a shawl over her bare shoulders to ward off the chill of the room, a deeper cold settling in her bones as she stood before framed photographs of various times and places. Wistfully, she fingered the antique frames and gazed at her unchanging visage, posing with the likes of world-renowned dignitaries and celebrities, long gone.
She moved to the large oval mirror which hung next to her desk. The poet was right. It was one of many mirrors which held her reflection, revealing the truth of her existence. She dared to light another lamp, closer to the mirror. She looked deeply into the glass, wishing to find something she had been seeking for decades. On the surface, it was a futile search. Her old soul, however, knew otherwise.
She was a beautiful woman, a woman in the prime of life. Fair skin, dark lustrous hair, no facial wrinkles, no sagging of the skin, bright eyes. Almost ageless … except that she was not, not ageless. She was 157 years old in a forty-year-old body. She was the past and present, denied the future. She was destined to live her life evolving in mind but not in body. She was an aberration, an anomaly – no more "normal" than the creatures caged several floors below her.
Her life's work seemed to have no end; she was saving the unwanted, the scourge of society. Yet, in her heart, she desperately hoped to find her own salvation in their redemption. As a medical doctor, she would continue to search for the solution to their suffering … and hers.
Humans were not meant to live forever, to outlive eras and generations, lovers and comrades, and now, most cruelly, one's own child. She would not, could not, allow this to happen.
Her eyes moistened as she ran her fingers over her cheek, feeling the smoothness, the pliability of her soft skin. She was a woman in her prime. She was a prisoner in her own body. Her mind would correct what had been unfairly thrust upon her; it would find a cure to this tyranny of eternal youth.
In the meantime, she would find sanctuary with her creatures and remember the events of her real youth, when love was in bloom and all seemed quite normal until one maddening night in a back alley of Whitechapel.
It was then that her destiny was set and the art of medicine had taken on a strange, new dimension.
In these red labyrinths of London I find that I have chosen the strangest of all callings …
Author's note: The lines of poetry are from two poems by Jorge Luis Borges, Elegy and Browning Decides to Be a Poet. This short story is dedicated to the success of Sanctuary and to the future theme of AT4 which inspired its writing. No copyright infringement intended.