The Moth and the Mirror

The winter of my sixteenth year, I lived in the port city of Osthaven, a clattering, salt-crusted town where the fog came in off the sea like a living thing. My daily journey to school involved a long descent from the bluffs where our house clung, then a bone-rattling ride on the umber line of the city’s electric autobuses. The stop for the umber was at the southern edge of Meridian Square, a vast, cobbled expanse dominated by the black glass tower of the old Post Office.

That morning, the fog was thicker than I’d ever seen it. It rolled in from the harbor in slow, deliberate waves, swallowing the streetlights until they were just pale ghosts. I was crossing the square, my boots clicking on the wet stones, when I saw the umber bus already pulling away from the stop at the far side. It was a wheezing, electric beast, its trolley pole sparking against the overhead wires, and it was moving faster than usual, as if eager to escape the murk. I knew I’d miss it if I didn’t run. I was about to sprint when I noticed something odd.

At the very back of the bus, on its rear platform, a silhouette was standing. Not inside the bus, but on the small, open step where the conductor used to stand, a place that had been welded shut years ago. The figure was tall, impossibly so, and it wore a long coat that seemed to absorb the fog around it. And it was looking directly at me. I couldn’t see its face, just the suggestion of a pale oval beneath a wide-brimmed hat. A shiver, colder than the morning air, traced my spine. The bus began to move, and the figure remained perfectly still, facing me, until the bus and the fog swallowed it.

I shook off the feeling and hurried to the stop, waiting for the next bus. The time passed in a grey blur. When the umber finally arrived, it was nearly empty. I took my usual seat near the back, by the window, and watched the fog smear the city into vague shapes. My mind kept returning to the figure. It had been too still, too tall. And something about the way it had looked at me… not with hostility, but with a terrible, quiet recognition, as if it had been waiting for me.

The bus jolted around a corner, and I saw it again. On the sidewalk, moving at the same speed as the bus, was the same figure. It glided, not walked, its coat trailing like a banner of smoke. My breath fogged the window as I leaned closer. The figure’s head tilted, and I could have sworn I saw a smile, a thin, black line against the pale oval. The bus picked up speed, but the figure kept pace effortlessly, its movements fluid and wrong, like a film reel running too fast. Then, as we approached the next stop, it vanished—simply dissolved into the fog, leaving only a single, delicately patterned moth fluttering against the glass.

That evening, I couldn’t shake the image. I told myself it was a trick of the light, a half-sleeping vision. But the next morning, the fog was back, thicker than ever, and the same figure was there, waiting at the edge of Meridian Square. This time, it was closer. As my bus passed, it raised one long, grey hand and pressed it against the window beside me, and I saw that its palm was covered in tiny, moving symbols—not writing, but something older, like the patterns on moth wings. The touch left a frosty imprint that lingered even as the bus rounded the block.

For a week, the figure followed me. It appeared on the platform, in the flickering lights of the bus, even in the reflection of the school’s glass doors. It never spoke, but I began to hear a sound when it was near—a faint, dry rustling, as if a thousand tiny wings were brushing against each other. And at night, in my room, I would find moths in impossible places: on my pillow, inside my closed book, hatching from my woolen socks. Their wings bore the same symbols as the figure’s palm.

My grandmother, a superstitious woman from the old country, noticed my pale face and the insects in my room. She sat me down and told me a story I’d never heard. She said that in the deep forests, where the moss grows thick and the trees shed their bark in white curls, there lives a spirit called the Looming Moth. It appears to those who are about to be unmade, who have lost the thread of their own story. It doesn’t harm them—it just watches, waiting for them to look into a mirror and see not their own reflection, but the moth’s face, and then they forget who they are.

I laughed, but the laugh was hollow. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I stared at the ceiling, and in the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow shift. The figure was there, in my room, its silhouette outlined by the dim light from the hallway. This time, it spoke. Its voice was like the rustling of wings, a thousand tiny whispers. It said: ‘You have carried me for a long time. It is time to give me back.’

When I woke, it was morning. The sun was shining, burning off the fog. I walked to the square, and the figure was gone. There were no moths. But as I approached the bus stop, I passed a large, ornate mirror that had been placed at the corner, perhaps for a street fair. I glanced at my reflection, and for a split second, I saw not my own face, but a pale oval, blank and empty, with two dark spots where my eyes should have been. I blinked, and it was my own face again, but it was older, stranger. I didn’t recognize the person looking back.

I never saw the figure again. But from that day on, I had the unsettling feeling that I was being watched from the other side of every reflective surface. And sometimes, when I caught a glimpse of my own reflection in a window or a puddle, I would see a tiny, almost imperceptible flutter at the corner of my mouth—like the movement of a moth’s wing. And I would wonder, in the deep, quiet hours of the night, if I was still the one walking to the bus stop, or if somewhere in the grey fog, my body was still there, waiting for me to return.