Mirrors and veils

Green grass, green grass... Waiting, waiting... The young man pulled out an ordinary metal coffee can  from his well worn backpack and took off the lid. Then, without any hesitation, he grabbed the snake from inside and let it out. He held it by its tail, as if on display, so all of us saw the creature's full length. A grayish snake with pattern, of a decent size, an odd apparition on the lawn in front of the dance studio... 

I was not scared, just delighted, as such occurrence made waiting time less boring. After all, although kind of hideous, snakes are curios animals that fascinated me. They move as if they have no bones, and some apparently sensitive to special music. And I was about to take up dancing, to find out why ballerinas float in the air...

Step one, two... repeat, step one, two, repeat... Look in the mirror, posture, keep up the posture. ..The instructor-- a lady that made quite a presence with her impressive bun and poised figure-- was tough on everybody. Short recess. Then again, step one, step two... Through the mirrored walls, with its typical optical illusions, another world prefigured... Like in a dream, where things are hard to touch, or grasp. If you do, what you see becomes something else. And it seemed a looong way to get to float in the air in a veiled dress that would barely want to cover my body. 

Around that time, they gave me to read Alice in Wonderland, and I found out about her mirrored rooms, dreams, and games to play. I did not engage too much in her adventures though, as I had my own... About 2 times per week I was escaping into the luring space of the mirrored room, and was crafting a parallel existence, with veils floating in the winds...

After some time, and unexpectedly, Death came by and showed me her face. She wanted to appear beautiful, so she veiled herself and got adorned with lots of dried flowers (immortal ones they say, how ironic...), because it was December and fresh flowers were nowhere to be found. But I still perceived her as ugly. However, she gave me something to be appreciated-- reality-- which I had no choice but to accept. Following such encounter, I did not want to return to the mirrored room. There were other dances to dance, other steps to master...