I’m surprised when I find a perfect silver mirror in the ruins.

I’m shocked when I turn it over and it has a face.

It nearly slips out of my hand as I scramble to make sense of the face floating silently in the mirror, luckily I catch it again with my other hand. Blood pounds in my ears.

I speak into my recorder. “Artefact found. silver mirror with strange effects.” I run my scanner over it, a thin stick that usually clips into my belt. It displays numbers at the end.

“Approximate age is -“ that can’t be right. I scan it again. “Fifty-eight thousand years.”

This is older than my colony. I clip my scanner back onto my belt. I had turned the mirror over when I caught it, and study the back. “Ornate swirls decorate the back. Hand crafted.”

My hands are clammy through my gloves as I turn it over, sure I was seeing things.

The face is still there, and this time it moves.

Maybe this civilisation had crafted it in a way that it would move.

I press my recorder again.

“The main face of the mirror seems to hold a featureless face suspended in darkness. It reflects no light. Why would any civilisation make something like this?”

The face moves suddenly.

“I wasn’t made in this era.”

My breath catches. Did the face just talk?

I play back my recorder to make sure I’m not imagining things. I’m not.

“The… the mirror talks?” I record.

The face seems to raise its eyebrows at me.

“I can do much more than that.”

The silence stretches.

I forget that my recorder is still on.

“What else can you do?”

“I can offer my services however you wish, be it seeing others or answering questions.”

I lick my lips and taste salt.

“Seeing others? We have that technology already. Would it be possible to ask about your creation?”

“That’s difficult. I was made with magic, bound with blood and bone to this frame eons ago, when queens had terrible power.”

“Magic?” I perch on a tree stump. “Magic doesn’t exist anymore, for centuries. Could you… show me what you’ve seen? What questions you’ve been asked?”

“Yes, but would you rather I take you to the era of my creation?”

“Take me? What do you mean?”

The mouth moves again. “I have the ability to take a person through time if they wish. Of course, it comes with side affects.”

My heart is racing. Years of researching relics and a lifetime of longing for a glimpse through time, no matter how slim the chance.

I don’t hesitate. “Yes. Take me back, to fifty-eight thousand years ago.”

There’s a terrible silence, the sort that strings through your shoulders and tightens your chest.

“Very well.”

Then the mirror glows, sending warm light through the wreck it was found in. Something pulls at me, tearing me to pieces.

My clothes are on the floor, recorder still diligently running.

The mirror is close by, too, and it sighs to itself in the silent room.

“They never ask if they can come back.”