ring of fire
2022-06-18
Iām in a high rise hotel room downtown with Polly.
There is shouting and commotion outside on the street. Polly seems uninterested. I go to look and see that the building across the street, diagonal from ours, is engulfed in a ring of fire, wearing the flames like a skirt.
As I watch, the building collapses, and falls down across the street. Large crowds of people are running in the street away from the wreckage. Iām not sure whether it hits our building or the building next to us. Either way, we need to get out. I rush to get dressed and shout to Polly, who betrays no urgency whatsoever.
When I get outside, I cannot find the collapsed building. Nor is it standing where it should be. Nobody seems to know what Iām talking about when I ask about it.
I wander around the city streets looking for the building. Itās hard, slow going because of my bum leg. Good thing I remembered to grab my cane when I fled the hotel room.
Eventually, I find myself at the gates of the gardens. Itās in a large city park, lots of greenery, trees, and open space. The gates are towering white columns set high on a hill so that they look even more impressive. I try to fly up to the gates, but canāt quite get the knack of it, so I donāt go in.
Thereās an old pickup truck parked nearby. Nobody is around, so I sit on the bed of the truck to rest. When I place my hand down to prop myself up, I set it down accidentally on a small hard plastic switch. The switch clicks, and the sun goes out, and it is perfectly dark. I quickly click the switch back to the āonā position, and the light comes back.
A farmer comes around the side of the truck laughing. āYou found my switch!ā I ask him about it and he says he found it some time ago. It is obviously powerful magic, but he has no use for it. And besides, heās just a simple farmer. Powerful magic items donāt remain with simple farmers. They are sought by powerful people. So in the meantime, he just leaves it laying around where people might stumble across it and mess with it. Just to prank them. He doesnāt care if they steal it, because somebody is going to take it from him one day anyway.
Sure enough at just that moment, a wizard and his captains show up and take the switch.
Iām not about to fight a bunch of wizards, so I let them have the sun putter-outter, and I run slowly, painfully away on my bum leg.
One of the wizardās captains, a kindly looking old grandmother witch, follows me for a while, trying to stop me. Eventually we both tire of the chase, and she offers to join me. She says her going rate is six and a half. Six and a half what, I wonder. I consider it, and accept.
The grandmother witch and I walk around the city looking for the missing building.