The World on the Other Side of the Glass

 

Yesterday I took the bus to work. I noticed that the woman in the seat in front of me was taking a photo of something, so I impulsively took out my phone and photographed the same thing. I didn't know what it was originally that she was interested in, but when I looked at the photo itself I decided it had to be the reflections of the chairs in the bus's interior, visible in the window, like a separate ghost-world laid on top of the real.

It made me think about the trope of having other worlds appear in mirrors, through which they can be accessed - mostly likely begun by Lewis Carroll in Alice Through the Looking Glass, though readers may know of other earlier iterations - and I started to wonder about the alternative scenario of other worlds appear in reflections in glass. 

You may have had the experience of looking into a window, perhaps the front of a shop, and suddenly finding yourself distracted by what is happening in the reflections in it (i.e., of the world behind you) rather than the display. I expect everybody has at some point; in the high street in Newcastle upon Tyne there is even a Gregg's which flips its sign the wrong way round during the Christmas period so it will be reflected the correct way round in the windows of the large department store opposite:

The reflection-in-window world is different to the mirror-world: diffuse, distant, somehow aloof. Its colours are pale; it is cloaked in shadow; its details are only really glimpsed and resist close study. Things in the mirror-world are like the evil twin of the real. Things in the reflection-in-window world are more like memories or dreams, revealing themselves secretly and shyly - you know they are there, but they only give you a hint of their real nature.

I picture an 'urban fantasy' setting in which adventure happens within the reflection-in-mirror world. There are those who are able to slip out of the real world into the glass, going not through it but within it, into the reflections themselves, and who can thereby go adventuring in the hidden reality that the glass only very partially reveals. Naturally, of course, there are also entities from the world of reflection who emerge from within the glass to wreak havoc - or realise aims more mysterious or even benevolent - in the real. Perhaps there are even kidnappers who slip out from the reflections and steal away children to their ghostly world.

Nuances immediately suggest themselves. Reflections tend to be stronger or more visible at different times of day and in different lighting. Does this have an effect on the accessibility of reflection world? Is it easier to go through at night time when lights are blazing? Is it easier to make the passage from inside a well-lit room, looking out into the night, when reflections are at their most vivid? 

Also: does it have to be windows? Can one enter reflection world through a puddle, or a screen, or even another person's open eye? 

And what does one bring back? What are reflection world's treasures, and what does one do with them when one has them? Or does one simply use reflection world as a kind of portal, entering a department store window and then emerging from a puddle in a forest a dozen miles away?