Loki picked up his Alicorn again and stood up, wondering if the room was full of other crows. He had to face whatever else was waiting for him in the room.
“Stupid Loki,” he mumbled. “Neither Axel or Fable should’ve come with you. This is your war. It isn’t fair if something happens to them because of you,” Loki noticed this was one of the longest mumbling episodes he’d ever had. He suspected that it meant he really cared about them.
Finally, Loki found Axel standing in the middle of the room, right in front of him. Then he saw the horror on Axel’s face. He looked paralyzed with an inanimate stare in his eyes and with an open mouth. Loki thought he looked like he was made of wax, standing with his hair as stiff as a witch’s broom, his face pale as if he’d just been bitten by a vampire. Loki stayed put, watching the goosebumps on Axel’s arms.
Axel was speechless, his eyes reluctantly shifting sideways; looking as if they were someone else’s standing behind a statute of Axel in a celebrity museum. Loki got the message, and stared in the direction of Axel’s gaze.
The room was full of mobile, stand-up mirrors. They were set against each wall, and reflected the sun back inside. Each mirror reflected the other’s reflections; spooky stuff that caused the blinding brightness in the room and in the hallway. It was distracting, forcing Loki to look at everything twice to identify it. The back of his eyes hurt, as if he’d stared at the sun too long.
Still, Loki stepped inside, slowly getting used to the brightness. That was when he understood what was going on. The mirrors weren’t the reason for Axel’s fear. It was something else, simply laid on the floor in the middle of the room: a glass coffin.
Fable was kneeling down, hugging the glass coffin and gently brushing the back of her hand against the glass. She was watching the sleeping beauty of Snow White inside. Loki never imagined this scene the way he saw it right now. Aside from scared-to-death-with-chattering-teeth Axel, and haplessly romantic Fable, Loki was emotionally touched. He thought if Snow White were the old-fashioned vampire type, he’d find her in a darkened room with a bluish-brownish vibe, full of bloody curtains. She’d be next to a wooden armoire with an old rusty lock with intimidating shadows on the wall. On the other hand, if Snow White was the glass coffin princess, he’d imagined the scene before him taking place in a forest with seven dwarves mourning over her and Prince Charming, kneeling down to kiss her.
Loki nodded at Axel, reminding himself that everyone was allowed to pee in his or her pants occasionally.
The mirrors in the room were like those at a fun house. Loki could see himself from different angles, his reflection repeated and multiplied into smaller and farther versions of him inside the mirrors. He wasn’t going to complain. The mirrors were more than enough for him to bury Snow White in the Dreamworld.
He knelt down next to Fable.
“Shhh,” Fable said, “she is sleeping,” she caressed the coffin as if it were her baby. Loki decided he wouldn’t argue with her now, because he wanted to examine the coffin instead.
The glass coffin was padlocked from the inside. It was a devious trick. To stake her, Loki had to break the glass, which would be like sending her a text message: Hey baby, I’m coming to kill you. Wake up. Vampire’s reflexes were fast so he had to find a way around it.
“I wouldn’t be that sentimental if I were you,” Loki said to Fable. “If she wakes up, she’ll bite you.”
“Yeah,” Axel mastered the courage to squeak out a useless word.
“You two are horrid,” Fable whispered, which made Loki think she was also a little bit afraid of Snow White but wouldn’t admit it. “She is just a young beautiful girl. You didn’t tell me she was this beautiful.”
“Isn’t she supposed to die when exposed to sunlight?” Axel asked Loki, knowing he couldn’t win the conversation with Fable. “Or burn?” he seemed to like the idea better.
“She isn’t an ordinary vampire. That’s if she is actually just a vampire,” Loki said. “There is something different about her. Besides, not all vampires burn in the light. It might be dangerous to stay out in the sun for a long time, but dying is so Hollywood tabloid stuff. Those few vampires who burn in the light have charms and spells to protect them against it.”
“Don’t kill her, Loki,” Fable stared at him with moistened eyes. “She is so beautiful. I can see why her evil stepmother wanted to kill her out of jealousy. Please, Loki, please.”
Loki could easily cry now, burst into tears and throw himself against the floor, kicking with hands and feet like a two year old who shoots long-range tears out of his eyes into the air, and cries: waaaaaaaa!
But instead, he took the high road and didn’t reply.