Stern Emmaliare

The Source

Stern Emmaliare is a modern folk-tale told to Nusriza as they approach the Seventeen Mirrors ceremony. Though the specifics vary between retellings, she is said to be some sort of authority figure in life, who was so betrayed by her charges that she became a vengeful kith-spirit who fixates on bad children.

The Tale

[This entry is in the form of a clip from a Nusrizan soap opera, perhaps entitled ‘On Wings of Moonlight’]

Moonlight falls upon a serene cloudscape outside Minaccia’s bedroom as the camera draws inwards, following silver shadows across walls covered in band posters, past a desk covered with presents, to view a beautiful young Nusriza sitting cross-legged on her bed. As she taps a message to someone at a frenetic pace despite the late hour, our perspective shifts, and we see a set of sleek hand-mirrors resting upright in a stand, reflecting partial glimpses of her glossy feathers for just a moment until we move past them, shifting until we can peek over her shoulder.

A video plays on the screen - a child, bawling loudly as he struggles to snatch his datapad back from Minaccia whispers; “-little daka, you’re the one who flakking snitched that me and Perez were smoking. She took my pad for a flakking month, so now you lose yours too”. The faint reflection of her face is an expression of amusement.

Another message pops up; “But Mina please, let’s talk. You don’t have to do this”. In another mirror across the room, we see her face reflected again, impatient and dismissive. She shoots off a response; “You didn’t even join a combat squad. You’re pathetic. We’re done Patrucho”.

In the quiet of the night, one sound rings clear; the spine-tingling sound of talons on glass. She freezes, looking around for the source of the noise, bringing our perspective with her as she turns this way and that, seeing her own cautious face reflected in seventeen mirrors.

It is not alone.

Slowly and steadily, a frost-blackened hand reaches out -inside- the mirrors, tapping on the glass as if Minaccia was trapped inside an aquarium. Each of the hand-mirrors rattles and shifts in their stands as the hand tap-tap-tap-taps and then retreats into the reflected shadows. As the next mirror begins to tap-tap-tap, she stammers “W-who’s there?” but as if in response, the tapping simply becomes more urgent, the glass flexing as pressure is applied more firmly by something trying to get out… or to get in.

Breathing fast, Minaccia drops her datapad and tries to make a run for the door, but stumbles as she locks eyes with a gangrenous-looking Nusriza behind the glass of a standing mirror, dressed in the austere, anachronistic uniform of a military college headmistress. As they lock eyes, the woman continues to tap on the glass with a talon until finally, a crack forms – it is small at first, but quickly grows as a patina of frost creeps outwards even as air begins to be sucked in as if the crack were a faulty seam in an airlock.

[End of clip]