He sits alone in a small, cluttered room. He reaches underneath the
table cluttered with full ashtrays, empty notebooks, and a cup full of
pens and pencils,
He's lost for a moment, the walls are mud
bricked and the floor is dirt. Small torches blaze on the walls
threatening to set the thatched roof alight. Pictures float in front of
him, a gift from a magician he couldn't remember befriending. He used
to marvel at them. No less impressive now, but primarily so in their
uselessness to him.
and grabs a small leather pouch the size
of a box of pencils. From it he produces the papers and spills shredded
green onto a notebook,
It's spring and the bright green leaves
are falling, blown across an unknown distance from a forest he
cannot see, onto the bare brown dirt that surrounds him. None of this
strikes him in the least bit odd. He considers piling up the
leaves into an empty plastic bag for use as a pillow.
and rolls it tightly. He puts the papers back in the pouch, retrieves a matchbook from his pocket, strikes it,
There
was a time when fire could be conjured out of air and thought, the hot
fires of minds that slowly burned dreams and hope and despair. It was a
time when the animals spoke and the spirits guided and there may have
been microwaves, too. He couldn't remember the rest.
lights,
and smokes quietly, looking about with a dull
blank stare, eyes wandering and lighting on random pieces of the
detritus
Model
replica pagodas, potions, lucifer lanterns, various magickal
apparatae, a dish filled with burned tindersticks, a large spotted
creature with a ridiculously large neck but otherwise shaped vaguely
like a horse.
surrounding him.
He dared not blink, only staring silently at wisps of smoke.