Ugly, marked, deformed—but real, and alive.
Sod began to avoid the mirror, not out of shame, but out of fear that one day she would look into it and not see herself, but one of them looking back.
The days passed as if the sky were always cloudy. Even when the sun was shining, Sod walked as if she expected something at every corner. Something or someone.
The market was no longer the same. Every corner seemed to hide a glance. Every voice seemed to whisper secrets. No one dared to speak aloud.
She still remembered the woman at the well. The mirrored face. The tears.
But what would truly break her was yet to come.
It happened on another hot morning. She was stacking sacks of flour under the shade of her stand when she saw them through the hanging sheets: two women walking side by side, discreetly dressed in simple floral fabrics, but with an unsettling air because both had her face.
Each step they took made Sod’s world shrink. Her heart pounded. Cold sweat ran down her back. One was shocking enough. Two—that was impossible.
“My God, what is happening to me?”
They passed without looking at her.
She pretended to shop for peanuts, then for fabric. Sod tried to follow them, but a swarm of running children blocked her path. When she reached the end of the alley, the women had vanished like smoke.
Later that day, Sod tried to speak with her mother.
“Mom, I saw—now there were two.”
“Two? What?”
Bimbo pretended to be surprised, but her voice trembled.
“Two women just like me. Like the other one, but now there were two. You swore you weren’t hiding anything from me.”
Bimbo lowered her gaze.
“Daughter, you’re confused. You dreamed of them before. Maybe you’re mixing up what’s real with what’s imaginary. Soul twins, like the elders say.”
“Mom, stop it. I know what I saw.”
“Sod, please…”
Bimbo slammed her hand on the table. “Don’t make things up. We already have enough problems. I don’t know any women who look like you except you. That’s enough.”
Sod left the conversation with a bitter taste in her mouth. Her feet felt heavier, as if they were carrying buckets full of questions.
In the days that followed, the women disappeared. They never showed up at the market again. No similar shadows, no whispers, nothing.
But the silence was even worse.
Sod carried that mystery like someone carrying a stone in their chest, visible only to the one who feels it.
One cloudy afternoon, weeks later, Sod was closing her stand early. The sky threatened rain, and vendors were shouting to save their goods. She walked alone down the path between the trees, avoiding the main roads.
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