There lived a duck by the name of David who may have been the most adorable little duck you had ever seen. Most animals loved David, especially David himself. David was so in love with himself that he never came out of the pond, choosing instead to remain there and look at his reflection. Gosh, he was beautiful. With his glistening feathers, perfect eyes and amazingly symmetrical tail, he was the envy of all the other ducks in the pond. All the ducks, except, of course, for Gary.

Gary wasn’t exactly a duck; he was a pelican, though he may as well have been a duck given that he was the only pelican in the entire pond. Gary thought of himself as a particularly good judge of beauty. This was because everything that he thought was beautiful was actually beautiful. Take, for example, that tree over there. See how its branches find more than one way to reach up towards the sky? Well, that is beautiful, is it not? That’s right. It is. And Gary knew it was beautiful many years before I pointed it out to you just now, so it’s no wonder that he considered himself quite the expert on beauty. Now, back to David.

David was quite a mean duck and would often poke fun at the other, less attractive ducks. Particularly the younger ones. Why should you waste your time looking at something that is ugly when there is so much beauty in the world? David thought. So, David and Gary, two ducks who thought that they could both judge what beauty was and thought of each other as ugly, disliked each other immensely. This was quite the problem to have when you were forced to share a home together. Little did they know that they were both planning to get rid of each other from the pond.

Gary knew that the only way he could get David out of the pond was to convince him that there was something more beautiful than himself out there in the big wide world. David, on the other hand, thought that he would just have to convince Gary that he was so ugly that he would be forced to leave the pond forever. The duck and the pelican swam towards one another, completely unaware of each other’s motives. Gary, being the smarter of the two aquatic birds, let David speak first.
“I am convinced,” David began, “that you may be the most grotesque creature I have ever seen.”
Gary, who had never experienced such an insult, began to cry. This caught him by surprise because he thought he was much stronger than that. Watching Gary cry, David started to feel guilty. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he swam around in circles for a few moments. Suddenly, Gary used his massive bill to pick David up. David panicked and struggled to escape in the hope of not being swallowed. Just as David was about to give up, convinced he had seen his reflection for the last time, Gary spat him back out into the pond.

Everything immediately looked more beautiful to David. He had never noticed how beautiful it was to watch the trees swaying in the wind or how soothing it was to watch the clouds rolling across the sky. Gary started to feel some guilt for how he had behaved as well and now started seeing David in a different light. The two birds, confused about what had just happened, agreed to swim over to the other side of the pond to watch the sunset together.

Krinsala wondered if he was the first to attempt the stairs in such a tattered outfit, his previous battles having taken their toll on his skin and khaki-coloured garments; even the red bandana that kept Krinsala’s hair from interfering with his eyesight was torn and aged. The voice inside his mind told him it was time, so he lifted his boot and took his first step onto the stairs.

Although the left side brought him closer to the sheer drop above the trees, Krinsala felt more comfortable climbing that side of the moss-covered concrete staircase. Perhaps he was attracted to the idea of having some alternative views, or maybe there was a presumption that any creature intent on causing him harm would emerge from the clouds above in the centre of the stairs. Krinsala concentrated on being grateful for each step towards the summit, ignoring the voice telling him to slow down. For a moment, Krinsala looked out over the tops of the trees, his thoughts briefly drifting towards his previous life. He brought them back to the task at hand, but he was too late. In the centre of the stairs, a green arm appeared, and a creature crawled out of the mist.

Krinsala showed no signs of weakness by moving closer towards the centre of the stairs while he readjusted his grip on his staff. The creature was not as nimble on the stairs as Krinsala would have suspected and was concentrating intently on placing its hands and feet in the right places. This was unfamiliar territory for both of them. Once they were close enough to see into each other’s eyes, the creature leapt to attack. Krinsala swung his staff under the creature’s hind feet and stepped out of its way, causing it to fall several steps below. Unable to use its hands to grip the stairs, the creature continued to tumble downwards. The creature struggled to its feet and staggered into the forest below. You choose your path and you choose the direction.

Realising his error and claiming the centre of the stairs as his own, Krinsala slowed his breathing, placed his staff in the sheath on his back and continued on his journey, disappearing into the mist until he could only see ahead two to three steps at a time. The voices, as clear as if someone were standing right next to him, told Krinsala he was too weak and too tired to continue. No two voices appeared to come from the same individual, making it more difficult to focus on the next step. He carried on, convincing himself that each step he took towards the top was a great achievement in itself. The voices continued for days, Krinsala having to dig so deep that he nearly crossed the line into questioning himself. And then, sunlight.

The mist now gone, Krinsala remained focussed, the temptation to enjoy the feeling of the sun on his skin growing by the second. The light is a source for both warmth and blindness. This was where most failed, and where Krinsala was determined to succeed. There was nothing except the next step. Unaware that his skin was beginning to burn, Krinsala celebrated the next step and the next step after that. Then, he stumbled. Not over an obstacle, but over his own feet. Krinsala had become so accustomed to climbing that his feet had forgotten how to walk when there was nothing to ascend. He got to his feet and, for the first time since beginning his journey, took a moment to enjoy the beauty around him.

The clouds rolled past peacefully under the concrete path where Krinsala stood. He soaked in the beauty of the sky for as long as he could before the voice told him it was time to go. Krinsala continued walking forward, not daring to look back, stopping only when he reached the edge of the path. He filled his lungs with the cool air, slid the staff from its sheath and, holding it in front of him, took his first step down towards the forest below.

Harper snuck in as many glances as she could at Greenvale’s Royal Park in between Amelia’s complaints about the fact that she and Tahlia Sandsmith had both worn the same style of shoes to school that day. Harper knew when to nod, periodically letting them out in sets of three to give the illusion that she was listening. The tendency to focus negatively on otherwise petty daily events was the very thing that had led Harper to become increasingly assertive when it came to reclaiming her time as her own. Usually, she would nod away and let her friend go through the motions and Amelia would eventually conclude that these matters maybe didn’t need to take up any more energy than they already were. The distraction that day, however, came from the unshakable feeling that something was different about the park. Very different.

The feeling reminded Harper of the time she had walked into her grandmother’s house and could tell that something was missing, but couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. At the time, Harper was not only concerned about the fact that things were missing that she didn’t know about, but also about the fact that parts of her brain knew more than what she thought she did.
“I mean, I basically spent the whole day spying on her just to make sure nobody noticed we were wearing the same shoes,” Amelia continued.
“Uh huh,” replied Harper while nodding.
“You’ve done that thing where you zone out again, haven’t you?” Amelia asked.
Harper encouraged her friend to look behind her. “The park,” she said. “Do you notice anything different?”
Amelia squinted, her forehead displaying lines of concentration. “Yeah,” she said, flicking her ponytail behind her as she turned back to Harper. “It’s the boulder.”
Harper nodded, slowly this time. Amelia was right. In the middle of the park was a boulder that had never been there before. She heard Amelia call out to her as she started walking towards the large rock but, knowing that her friend would follow her, she ignored her and kept walking with intent.

The boulder looked as though someone had sprinkled black and silver glitter along its light grey surface and some long lines and dark cracks aged its otherwise smooth exterior. Standing at its base, Harper ran her right hand along one of the smaller lines and felt the surface vibrate. She placed her left hand flat against its surface and turned her head to better position her ear against the boulder. Closing her eyes, Harper concentrated on trying to use her senses to get whatever information she could. There was a deep, low humming coming from inside.
“I wouldn’t be going near that thing,” Amelia announced, breaking Harper’s near-hypnotic state. Just as Harper opened her eyes, the humming turned into a grumble, making the boulder vibrate with such ferocity that the two girls took several steps away.

Cracks continued to appear along the boulder, and the girls knew that they should move, but they were unable to make the connection between their brains and their legs. They were frozen. Harper’s eyes darted towards the top of the boulder. Its surface was splitting, and something was coming out. A wing. Harper had never seen a creature so large before, but she didn’t have much time to process that before being distracted by a man, who the girls knew as Jim, placing his hands against the rock and whispering something they were unable to hear. The wing dropped back into the rock, and the cracks began to close.
“You girls better go,” Jim said in a surprisingly calm manner. The girls ran towards the edge of the park so fast that their school bags were swaying from side to side. When they got to the edge of the park, they found a hedge and peeked over its top. They held each other’s hands as they watched Jim arch his back, position the back of his head against the boulder and lift it onto his back. He managed to carry the boulder out of the park, heading towards the train tracks on the outskirts of town. The girls lost sight of Jim and the boulder just for a moment as the Charleville train went past. By the time the last carriage had sped past, Jim and the boulder were gone. Amelia and Harper stared at each other for a moment before convincing their legs that it was time to run home.

My grandfather owned a hot air balloon. Two, actually. “Things rarely go according to plan,” he would say. “So, it’s important to always have a back-up plan.” For as long as I could remember, people from all over the world had made contact with him just to take part in his famous flights over the small town of Greenvale. I’d seen him fly the hot air balloon often enough that I was confident with my decision to unravel it, inflate it and get us safely into the sky. Jennifer was even more eager than me to get this balloon in the air, despite knowing that we may never return.

Jennifer was the daughter of one of my mother’s friends. I’d seen her once or twice at the occasional “gatherings” that my mother hosted, but I had never really paid her much mind, to be honest. I knew she was there, but I was always too busy trying to figure out how to not become like one of my mother’s friends to give Jennifer the attention she apparently craved. She managed to turn that situation around one night when my mother and her friends were celebrating one of their birthdays using sparklers. Jennifer had found a darker location down the side of our house – the one place you couldn’t have paid me enough to go to at night – and was etching words into the cool night air with her sparkler, the ghosts of the letters hovering for long enough to be confident she had at least used the letters F and M. She turned around to see me staring at her from the shadows, causing me to realise I had been staring for too long.

Grabbing my left hand and lifting it up, Jennifer brought my unlit sparkler next to hers in an attempt to get them both alight at the same time. Hers didn’t have much spark left, but she managed to get mine alight before it completely went out.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that our parents are playing with sparklers and yet the two of us have to make an effort to enjoy them?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, because I genuinely didn’t know. “I do know that seeing something from the sky that you’ve seen a million times before helps you appreciate it all over again.”
Jennifer lifted her head, forcing me to lock eyes with hers.
“And how would you know that?” she asked without batting an eyelid.
“I can show you, I guess,” I replied.
Jennifer completed three small nods. “I’d like that. When can we go?”

If Jennifer wanted to see everything as if we were seeing it for the first time, then everything was going according to plan. Watching her look out over the forests in awe was enough for me. The very moment we felt nothing could go wrong was the very moment we both noticed it at the same time. At the edge of the forests surrounding our town, precisely where more land should be, there was nothing. Only darkness. Jennifer held my hand, not moving it in any direction. “That’s where we need to go,” she said, pulling the burner lever to lift us into another current. The balloon began drifting towards the dark. Perhaps my grandfather was right, maybe we did need a back-up plan, but it was far too late for that.

The baby became a boy and the boy became a man. There couldn’t really be much more to it than that, right? It was odd, however, that the artist would dedicate so much of their life to such a story; one without depth or great meaning. I must be missing something. Staring closer, I realised that the character in the frame was doing something. As a baby, he was engaged with the nature around him. But, as a younger man, he was just staring into a lake. Same again as the fully grown man. Staring. Maybe there were fish in the lake or something – the artist didn’t give me any clues about that – but the character was certainly interested in whatever was at the bottom. It’s possible that the character simply lost interest because there was a picture of the lake with no one there to appreciate its beauty.

Focussing so intently on the frame for so long, I had nearly forgotten that this object’s purpose was to be a mirror. That was until I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection. Usually, I would briefly look at my reflection and then turn away. On this occasion, however, I started to play catch-up with my thoughts, as they had realised something was different before I had: I suddenly looked older. (I had heard my mother and father use similar phrases but always passed it off as though they were having a joke with one another.) Not a “grey hair and wrinkles” type of older, but older.

I started looking at the hair poking out of my head and was surprised to see so many gaps between each strand. I rolled my head forward while keeping my eyes fixated on my scalp. Following this trend, I examined my eyebrows. Although I had seen them many times before, I had never taken the time to appreciate them. What was their purpose? To protect my eyes? To frame them? Both? This was the moment I realised the difference between seeing and appreciation, something our art teacher at school had tried to teach us but that I had never quite understood.

As if I had primed my thoughts to start seeing beauty in the strangest of places, I realised that my eyes were a universe all on their own. The rivers of veins running through the whites of my eyes held me captive for I don’t know how long. I started to see beauty where I had never seen it before. Was it possible that every human was like this? Or was it just me? Exhausted from all of this thinking, I went to turn, but the “me” that was in the mirror reached out, trying to pull me in. I dug my heels down into the carpet of my bedroom, pulling backwards with just enough force that the mirror me couldn’t pull me in. Maybe I could pull him out. I wrapped both of my hands around the inside of his arms and pulled back as hard as I could. He refused to move, instead sending me hurtling backwards and crashing into my bedroom wall.

That was when my father walked in. When I tried to explain to him what had happened and what I had learned, he either didn’t believe me or wasn’t ready to hear what I had to say, because as soon as I was done talking, he tried lifting it, but he could hardly get one corner off of the ground. He contacted a friend to assist in getting it out of my room.

I do miss the mirror; there was something about it. I just didn’t have enough time to figure out what it was.