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@ ODILI ONUOHA
2025-05-30 09:15:30In the heart of a dense, forgotten forest lay a village named Sumaila. It was a quiet, simple place, where people spoke in hushed tones and believed more in survival than in dreams. Among them lived a boy named Micheal, soft-spoken, born with a limp that made him the subject of quiet pity and louder jokes.
Michael had grown up avoiding attention, eyes always cast downward. His father, once a proud hunter, had died when Micheal was young, and his mother worked tirelessly to support them. Michael longed to be strong like the heroes in old tales but every stumble and fall reminded him that he was not made for glory.
One day, an old traveler arrived in Sumaila, ragged but commanding. He told stories of a cave hidden beneath the roots of the mountain The Mirror Below, it was where people went to seek their true strength. But, he warned, “The Mirror only shows what you hide, and to leave stronger, you must endure what you fear most.”
The villagers dismissed it as folklore. But Micheal, heart brimming with something between desperation and hope, decided to go.
The path was cruel. Rain fell like knives, and thorns tore at his skin. Several times, his leg buckled, and he wept alone. But he pressed on not out of pride, but because turning back would mean accepting the life he had always feared he was meant for: small, broken, and invisible.
He found the cave at twilight.
Inside, the walls shimmered like glass, and in the heart of the chamber stood the Mirror. It was not made of silver or gold but of still, dark water. Michael knelt beside it, and it rippled to life.
The reflection did not show him standing tall and powerful, it showed him at his weakest. A crying child clutching his father’s blood-soaked cloak. A teenager watching others run while he sat on the sidelines. A young man pretending not to care when no one believed in him.
The vision tore him apart.
But as he watched, something changed. The boy in the water stood. Limping, trembling but he stood. Again and again, each time falling, each time rising. The reflection whispered no words, but Micheal felt them in his soul: Strength isn’t born in the absence of pain. It is forged through it.
He screamed not in fear, but in fury. Not at the world, but at the lie he had lived. He was not weak because he struggled. He was strong because he survived.
When Micheal returned to Sumaila, he walked differently. He still limped, but his shoulders were straighter. When wild wolves threatened the village weeks later, it was Micheal who faced them cleverly luring them into traps, risking himself to save a trapped child. Not with brute force, but with bravery.
People began to see him not as the boy who limped, but the man who led.
And Micheal finally understood: to discover strength, he had to face what he feared most: his weakness. For only by staring into that mirror, did he see what had been there all along.
The strength to rise.