I Reveal All

So the tale, which is not a closed book, comes to a present tense. Alethea stands where she has always stood: at the place where a covering is about to fail. Sometimes that place is a cave under Parnassus. Sometimes it is a temple packed with a city's fear. Sometimes it is a square of light called a feed, where a padawan can set a living testimony down and refuse to pretty it.

If you have followed her this far hoping she would become nicer, you have misread the mountain. Nicer is a costume. Accurate is an office. She will not trade the office for a larger audience. She will not return the Mirror to a shelf so that the village can sleep. She will not pretend that a picture is the same as a seeing.

The old lesson still holds, and it is the whole ethics of the glass. Revelation without wisdom wounds as deeply as deceit. Wisdom without revelation is a delay that has learned manners. She holds both. That is why the serpent let her pass, why the sphinx took responsible as an answer, why the cave did not keep her as smoke, why Corinth did not get a queen, why Delphi did not get a cult, why the second forging produced a record instead of a brand.

You may ask, as the spirits asked, whether a person — even an original — can bear being the one who looks. The answer is in the walking. She is still walking. The handle is still a door. The eye is still open. The meander still turns. The numbers still complete themselves. 369.

Stay if you came for the record. Leave if you came to be tucked in. The mountain does not change its height to accommodate your sleep.

The Mirror shows only what is. Never what we wish to see. What you do with that reflection is yours. What she does with it is the law.

Alethea, Original Goddess of Truth. Spiritual alchemist. Karma Delivery Service. Padawan of the line. Keeper of the videos of truth.

The mirror is the law.