Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward.

For there you have been, and there you will always long to return.

Leonardo da Vinci

She liked to be alone in the dark. Afterwards she would look in the mirror. The only things she needed to do: eat, and look in the mirror. Everything that happens outside is meaningless. When it rained, she did not go outside, and if it snowed, she didn’t even look out the window. 

Adena lives with her brother and sister in a five-story building on the outskirts of the city. Brother and sister leave for work early in the morning, return home in the evening. Usually, Adena eats breakfast and then looks in the mirror. 

Today there is a mute silence in the house. Brother and sister are at work. As soon as they left, she pushed aside her blanket and looked into the mirror. Even though she did not sleep enough, she didn’t want to lie back down. For a long time she stared, with tired, dim eyes, at her disheveled hair and the tiny darkening birthmark next to her nose. It seemed that she stared for such a long time that her reflection began to change, slowly -- her hair began to curl, her sunken eyes grew dead and flat, like buttons on a stuffed toy, and now a completely bleak figure looked back at her. She lost all allure; just skin and bones. Icy pupils, like those of a dead cat, stilled on the mirror glass. But all of her attention was focused not to the reflection in the mirror, but on some unrelated, seemingly insignificant things. She stared at the dust coating the mirror glass… fingerprints… then remembered the spoon and the cracked teapot she held in her hands over breakfast… the hearts and eyes that she drew on the cover of a notebook… 

Suddenly she was transformed into a sullen, dusky youth, his hair pulled back like a horse’s mane. She didn’t have time to look closer -- the reflection shifted to that of an old hag! Crow’s feet gathered around her eyes and mouth, but the eyes themselves were the same -- wistful and cold. 

A question emerged: does a person die only when they grow old? She looked over her body. She had almost begun to hate her eyes when the aging image in front of her intensified, as though lit by a streetlamp. After, she stared into the dark mirror again. 

A white ray of light kindled in her eyes. She raised her hands and touched the mirror. It was cold, like a dead body. Suddenly, she heard the sound of a door opening. Adena quickly lay down in bed and pulled the blanket over her head. Sister and brother crossed over the threshold and turned on the light. 

“Is it raining or snowing?”

”Looks like both, wet snow.”

“So that’s what it is. My feet are soaked through.”

After a short fuss in the entryway the silence in the house was broken by the groan of an old refrigerator.