[i]She'd been given a smartphone as a gift for her seventeenth birthday - something that had diligently held pride of place at the top of every christmas list for half a decade, finally realized now that the threat of going on strike from her job at her parent's cafe was becoming credible. What she hadn't expected to find was that the device was far more interesting with the screen off than with the screen on.

The reflective surface was fascinating. With the screen on the millions of tiny pixel-lights filled the world with light, but when it was off there seemed to be a hollow in the world occupied by a shadowy version of herself. She sensed potential in that deep place and she grew so used to keeping the phone off that she took out the battery.

That's when it deepened. Now the hollow of light had a physical hollow in it too, an empty shell, a void of being - all the more pure for its emptiness. She opened it up and took more things out - the SIM card, the wiring, the processor, drawn along by strange logic. Something moved in the deep and she could see it - and once she took out the phone's speakers she could hear it too. Methodically she unpacked the phone, discarding the casing so she was holding just the liquid-crystal screen as a single glowing reflective part in her hand. Then she peeled off the protective film. 

And finally she removed the screen itself, leaving only the reflection.

ANAH KEL ANNUNKI ZENT KARI MAR ANUN CAPHTOR UNKIROS TAIRAN VERDA KALIS KEL VARKALONT

Piece by piece she had freed the reflection from every physical constraint that chained it. She stood before the solar lion that had been caged within the shadows of the mirror and it burned white and gold and violet. She saw it with eyes that had seen it in every shadowed surface for a lifetime but never realized. It raised its mighty left paw and with razor talons it repaid her in kind. Down those talons came and they ripped away her ugliness. Her selfishness. Her sloth. Every part of her she regarded as a failing was undone in a moment of radiant cleansing and the vision of the mirror finally aligned with the vision of the heart.

As the lion stepped from the mirror into her the dark reflection snapped in two. They fell into the world, sharp and jagged and almost-physical. Sword and shield. Two different visions of her own self were contained within, but for that moment when she held them up, they were in balance.[/i]

She'd come a long way from that moment of perfection.

She'd scourged herself of her weakness once, but now she knew that wasn't the same thing as being [i]strong[/i]. She had been her most perfect self, but it hadn't been enough and she had failed to live up to it. And now here she was, squirming against a wall, wondering if the Annunaki knew enough about her to call forth the lion and have it finish its work by tearing out that troublesome edge of defiance. 

Or if they had other ways to scourge the feeling out of her. 

She struggled harder, wrists and ankles squirming uselessly against her chains.