03/25/2024
It was a day like any other, filled with tasks worth doing around a home but an entire day to do them at leisure rather than panicked mandatory action. Perhaps it was nice enough to have the music you love playing loudly over the radio, your lips silently moving along with the lyrics you've known for years. or maybe not so silently. Maybe the windows were open for the first time in months, letting in a welcomed soft breeze to let loose the stagnation of the winter's grip on your home. Or just maybe you were on your way to the kitchen to fix a small lunch. Not that you were 'hungry' per se, but a classic pb and J just sounded amazing.
Whatever your day was is no longer, at least not for this moment. When stepping between the defined borders of one room to another you blinked. And with the natural gate that carried you, you realize a great many things all at once.
-The music is no longer playing
-The warm breeze is gone
-You are very likely no where near the kitchen, which is perhaps the saddest part
-You almost forget to breathe for a few seconds, but as you realize that, you understand that you can breathe just fine. The air in here is cold but not biting, and very still.
You stand on the interior edge of a dome shaped room, though not perfectly circular as it elongates a bit more than a proper circle should. The walls behind and around you are made of hard grey stone. Not cut, but just found and stacked ever so carefully with bits of dirt and moss fill the gaps between them. The floor beneath your feet is made of a soft soil that sinks at the slightest of angles to the center of the room. The ceiling above you is what catches your attention first as after the first 5 or so feet of walls, they gradually fade away into open blackened space, but where you would expect an open void you see stars, thousands of them glittering. Between them you see dancing lights, whisps of greens moving gracefully and slowly like verdant rivers among the cosmos. You understand that this is simply no projection, but some sort of existence in the great unknown reaches of space. If you were so inclined to look more closely, you are sure you can see the vague shape of a planet nearby, but it does not match any you know of.
As your heartbeat starts to flutter in a chaotically shifting balance between confusion, fear, and bewilderment, your attention is drawn eventually to the center of the room.
Displayed in a half-circle arch are 5 columns of stone, each uniform in their width of no more than 4 feet wide and 5 feet tall. They are made of a beautiful marbled stone cut smoothly leading up to a slightly slanted top, the angle of which is pointed to the center. To you. You are not sure if you actually took the steps to get there, but you are there now in the focal point of the entire experience. As you gaze upon these small pedestals you are eventually drawn, one by one, to investigate the strange objects laying on each of them.
The First item, starting from the left, you approach and gaze upon a simple stuffed teddy bear. Plastic beady black eyes and ruffled brown fur that shows the telltale signs of years of 'love', though it does not seem unclean. It sits with its feet kicked out in front which allows you to see a simplistic stitch of bears claws in the pad of the feet, on the left you see the name Sam stitched into it it. You reach out to touch it and you understand what it is. It's your new best friend, Sam. For the rest of your life, Sam will be there for you when you need them, and leave you alone when you want some space, will be your player 2, your camping or cuddle buddy, and the shoulder to cry on, will be the first volunteer to bounce ideas (good and bad) to and will never lead you astray. This, the truest form of Best Friend Forever, will be whatever animalistic form that you choose and adapt the moniker Familiar, but it will always be Sam.
You place the bear back down, and catch your breath. You take a moment to collect your thoughts and then your gaze eventually drifts over to the bear's neighbor. A backpack, a simple brown faux leathery backpack with only one big zipper and one small one. Covering almost every available space are stitched on pins and patches denoting famous locations from around the world. From somewhere around the middle of the backpack's back sprout two paper-mache wings. Not feathers, but those of a bat? no, something more like what can be pulled from the imagination, These are the wings of a red dragon. Admittedly a bit flimsy and not terribly detailed, but they get the point across ascetically. You touch the wings with a child-like wonder, and you understand. You hear heavy flaps of large wings behind you. Your eyes are pushed shut by the sensation of a warm summer wind beating against your face. Those wings are yours now, and oh how fast you can fly.
The feeling fades and you reluctantly find that you never left the ground. You are starting to wrap your head around this experience and without wasting any time you move to the next featured item. The Tome. Like straight out of a movie in the center of some grand library is this large-as-your torso book. Small bits of metal serve more as an accessory on the corners to this brown leathery cover with no title, and uneven time-stained bits of velum sticking out of the edges. Seldom is there such a thing as a book not worth reading, so you reach out and open the cover to the first page, "The guiding steps to the First Circle, by B.D. Filylus", and as you turn each page, you understand. These are more than just instructions; these are written lessons. Complicated, and disorganized, but thorough. You know that if you spent the time, months, years, maybe even a decade or two. you know, YOU KNOW you can unlock true understanding of magic, and start to wield it.
The implications of that object are most certainly not lost on you, and before you hover on each concept or glue to one choice or the next, you move to the next. A simple small black plastic box. On its lid is gently painted depiction of a ginkgo tree, and several of its leaves falling gracefully in an invisible wind. Tied ever so gently, keeping this box closed, is a pink silk bow. You reach out and undo the bows grasp, and you open the box to find a simple display of food. Buts its warm, fresh, and smells immaculate. And as your senses are filled (and reminded of how hungry you were for that sandwich) you understand. This is a simple meal, but if you consumed it, you could never think about needing to eat anything ever again. Sure, you could if you wanted to, with reckless abandon even, as this feast before you is such a healthy and all-encompassing meal, that you would never have to worry about getting sick, catching a cold, not even your allergies stand a chance. You easily can see a life where age is actually just a number. What's strange is that you get the implication that you get the feeling that even thought this feast would fill you, you could easily share it with another.
You close the box as your stomach makes an unhappy sound. The smell fades as you calm yourself once more, and you gaze at the simplicity of the last item. How could something so small compare to the other options? But if the nerd that lives in you has anything to say about the power of rings, this has to do something more than look good. But that is all that is there. Sitting on a small grey pillow is a golden ring without remarkable detail. Your mind starts to race with the implications, the hopes of what it could be or what it shouldn't, so you touch it, and you understand. You see yourself crossing a street, but you couldn't have seen the car speeding about to hit you, but you stop walking just before it hits you and the car zooms passed harmlessly. You see another vision of yourself finding a shiny coin on the ground, only to get it appraised and find its worth quite a lot. You watch a friend drop something and you reflexively catch it. These are the telltale signs of someone who is genuinely lucky. Not blessed, not guided, and not protected, and certainly not wizened, but at least you are lucky, and that could be the start of a very good story
You put the ring back down and you take a few steps back, looking at the options before you. The bear, the backpack, the book, the food, the ring. And something in you knows, that you can only choose one. The friend, the freedom, the flair, the fortitude, or the fortune. This same part of you knows that you cant stay here forever, so you must choose eventually.
So tell me, dear reader, which one do you pick?
