Caution! Horror story!
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Tamíl lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and the glowing purple light cast upon it by the orb. He had picked it up before getting into bed and now lay with the thing resting on his chest as he made shadow puppets with his fingers. The shapes morphed from people’s faces to rabbit ears to little creatures chasing each other across the space. Worn out from trying to analyze the meaning of the object, Tamíl lost himself in simple amusements. The light was constant, swirling, mesmerizing, and Tamíl quickly drifted off to sleep when the novelty of the shadow puppets wore off.
Suddenly Tamíl was sitting in a dark and unfamiliar space. He felt more like a viewer of the scene from outside than a physical participant in it. He watched as the hunched old man with the white bob of hair from the market hobbled in with the Turakk beast close behind him. The man halted and turned to face the creature, extending his hand towards it. Without any spoken command from the man, the creature produced an orb similar to one given to Tamíl and with clawed hands, placed the orb in the man’s outstretched palm. With a wave of his free hand, the creature spun and stalked away.
The man stood gazing at the orb for a few moments before placing it on a roughhewn table at the edge of the space. The light from the orb lit up the walls behind it and Tamíl could see they were made of solid stone, as if they were in a cave or carved space inside a mountain. The man moved to the center of the room to stoke the fire set in the pit there. The room lit up even more with the rise of the flames and Tamíl could see shelves set into the walls all around the room. Several other tables lined the one wall and a weathered cabinet stood open on the other side. The inside of the cabinet was filled with rows of small glass vials, each one corked, labeled with an attached tag, and filled with swirling mist that glowed a multitude of different colors. Some glowed brighter than others, but all of them resembled the mist that was captured inside the orb.
The man pulled a large iron grill over the fire pit and Tamíl was surprised by the strength of his small, feeble body. From the table he took a small convex metal plate and set it on top of the grill. Then he placed the orb into the convex space on the plate. Next he pulled another metal apparatus from against the wall and set it up over the grill and orb. From it he hung a rod lined with a number of empty glass vials suspended upside down with leather ties. The glass made a light tinkling sound as they jostled against each other from the movement. In any other setting, the sound would have been quite pleasant, but they only gave Tamíl a dark sense of foreboding.
With an iron poker, the man shifted the coals in the fire and added a fresh log on top. As the heat increased, the color of the mist inside the orb began to intensify and the mist swirled more quickly, almost violently. The man waited a few more minutes before taking a small hammer from one of the tables and shattered the glass containing the mist inside the orb. The mist rose up and became trapped in the vials. The man quickly corked and righted each one, removing the leather strip, and attached the label with a length of twine. He placed them on the nearest table, made an entry in the open book there, and then gently placed each vial into a space in the open cabinet.
When all of the vials were shelved, the man wiped his brow, and removed the grill and metal rack from the pit. He doused the fire with a pitcher of water and disappeared into the darkness of the stone room. Tamíl woke with a start and sat up quickly, sending the orb clattering to the floor and rolling across the room. Tamíl placed it back on its bed of piled clothing on top of the chest at the end of his bed. He placed a handkerchief over the orb to damper the glowing light, before climbing back into bed. He lay awake for a time, trying desperately to decipher the meaning of the strange dream he had just experienced.
Unable still to find sleep, Tamíl uncovered himself and crossed the room to his writing desk. He quickly found a pen and ink and his small journal book. He recorded the events of the dream in a messy scribble and by the end of his writing, he could feel his eyelids starting to feel heavy. He tucked the journal in the small top drawer, and then returned to bed. Sleep came quickly and easily this time, with his mind now clear, he was able to slumber dreamlessly.
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