This happened for several days.
Each time the girl went out to get water, she would hear the village girls talking about her. Her poor clothes, clumsiness, imperfect teeth, unmanageable hair, of the blemishes on her skin.
Nothing but jab after jab.
And each time the girl went back down to the mirror, she stared longer and longer.
By the end of the month, when the girl went down to check on the mirror, the sight she saw made her cry.
A fat and short girl stood there. Her shoes were gone, her feet raw. Her dress was now mere rags. Her teeth were crooked and yellow, and there were marks all over her cheeks.
Clumps of her hair was missing as it was cut short and close to the ears, unevenly. Her eyes were dull and glassy, and her lips were cracked and bleeding.
Everything about her looked completely ugly.
Her father came back two nights later. He called out for his daughter, but could not find her anywhere.
At last he went down to the mirror room, and found her lying on the floor. He smiled, knowing she must have fallen asleep.
But when he went to wake his beautiful daughter, she did not stir. Panicked, he began to shake her, but she still did not wake.
Then he heard her voice. "Father?" Her voice asked.
He turned, and there was a goblin of a girl, reflected in the mirror. He was so repulsed by what he saw, that he shielded his daughter and drew his sword.
He yelled, "Begone from here, demon. The mirror is already home to another."
And the creature replied in his daughter's voice, "Father; it is me."
It was only then he realized that the horrible creature was her. He cried out, "My God, my daughter, what has happened to you? What monster has cursed you so?"
The girl, frightened, moved to hug her father, but found that she was stopped by a wall she could not see.
The father watched, helpless, as she pounded on the surface of the mirror.
It was then he realized what had happened. She had stared into the mirror for far too long, and saw not what she was, but what others made her out to be.
And such was the curse, for she was forever trapped within the mirror.