dream-scraps: house and stolen jewel.
There's a house at the end of the world. There are other houses visible from the roof, which is railed and made to walk on, but all of those houses are slowly fallng apart. The city left behind is an old-fashioned place of cobblestones and gables and shingles, hundreds of years older than the metropolises I usually dream about. The city, too, is empty. One side of the house is on the edge of a small river or large canal; there's a walkway, unrailed, between the house walls and the edge of the seawall which keeps the water out. It would be easy to fall into the canal, and hard to get back out. The structures on the other side of the water are nearly identical, but clearly disused. Behind the house there are fields, left unworked, and behind that is a forest which is slowly swallowing the field. The field itself is beginning to eat the house, which is immense; parts of it at the back have fallen down, there are trees growing in the centers of rooms, breaking the roofs, and their roots push the tile up into heaps.
The rest of the house is still inhabited. Somewhat.
This world isn't dying, hasn't been emptied by some sort of cataclysm or disease. It's just empty, although it wasn't always. It's been that way for as long as anyone can remember, as long as anyone has written, and nobody knows why. It takes a long time to get to places where other people are, and visitors are seen as guests, not suspects.
The house is still inhabited, but not by people. Not entirely. Not originally. They're people now, but they weren't always. One used to be a tree. Two used to be dogs. One I think used to be an alpaca. One was made of flowers. They were all... created, transformed, into what they are now, by the man who lives there, because he didn't want to be alone. They've set up a sort of normalcy around the place: one of the dog-people is the guard, the tree-person is the librarian, the alpaca-person is the housekeeper, and so on. The man stays alone, despite his companions, and he writes stories that nobody ever reads.
There's an idea that life is generally not as comfortable for everyone living in this world as it is for the inhabitants of this house. When asked why that is - when the animal-people and the plant-people want to know - the story-teller gathers them together and tells them their story.
When he was younger, he and some other people had gone exploring, in the biggest building at the heart of another city. The city is - or was - full of kingdoms, but that doesn't mean much (or didn't) - kingdoms can be walked through in the space of an hour, if they're big, and they could be measured in city blocks. Kingdoms aren't territories with defending armies and laws. They're just areas that one person owns, which other people live in. Whatever created the social structure in this world is outside the concept of land ownership, and everyone adheres to it.
Anyway - the storyteller, when he was young, and still a storyteller who never shared his stories, went with some friends to an abandoned kingdom. It was surrounded by ones still alive, and walked through as necessary, but nobody lived in it and nobody tried to take it over. Why bother? There was more space than people, and the buildings were falling apart. There was something else about it, too - the king there had done something wrong, and nobody wanted to repeat his mistake. So nobody lived where he had ruled, and everything he owned was allowed to fall apart.
The group of people went exploring from room to room: the rooms were full of riches, of golden things and mirrors and carved bone, but that was unimportant. Pretty, but you can't eat it, and you can't sell it because it's obvious where it came from. The leader of this group - who was not the storyteller - was after something, a gem, that the king had had; nobody knew whether this gem had made him successful or ruined him, and they wanted to find out.
Many of the rooms had fallen prey to rot, or to rats, or to termites, or to fire. It wasn't a logical thing. One room would be caved in with stones, and the next would be burnt. One had succumbed to water. The hangings and furniture were soaked, and water seeped from somewhere nearby to wash across the stone floor. It dripped from the ceiling, and ran down the walls. In the center of this room was a brass bowl on tripod legs, like a brazier, full of something that looked like muddy water which could have been made of ash. The bowl itself was full of things - semiprecious gems, little metal boxes, tiny statues, and the storyteller dipped his hand into the bowl to see what he could find.
He found a small red gemstone, the size and diameter of a dime but much thicker, which was perfectly transparent. It was smooth across the center, and then faceted down towards the edge. It burnt his hand when he looked at it, and he dipped his hand back into the muddy water. He found a small glass bottle, and filled that with the mud-water, and then put the gem into it. He capped the bottle, shook the inky water, and held it up, to see the gem sitting at the bottom.
I'm not sure how this worked - even when I dream things tend to have logic, and this one didn't have much. But I remember seeing the storyteller holding the bottle, just like the little bottles of ink I have, looking at the gem on the bottom. Then there were words on the sides of the bottle, written on the inside, and the water inside the bottle was clear as though all the particles in the water had been pulled together to make the words.
The gem, it transpired, had been stolen, and because of that the tiny kingdom was ruined. Because of the gem: a small dime-sized thing which felt thin enough to snap with bare fingers, although of course it was stone and stronger than that. The gem had been stolen from its owner, who was killed in the process, so - when the storyteller asked if it could not be returned - it was and would always be a stolen gem. (I can't remember the name of its owner, or of the storyteller, or of anybody else, although they had names.) The storyteller said: then what can I do for you? I can't turn you back into an unstolen gem, but the way you refer to this dead man who stole you, you don't want to be left here in his dead house.
The gem explained, writing its words on the bottle: leave me in the bottle. Do not try to wear me or use me. Do not house me in a setting, do not put me on display. If you keep me with you, and honor the name of the man who owned me, and do not use me for your purposes, I will be good to you. I will give you things, a house that is safe, enough food to eat. You write stories, but you never share them: I will make your stories come true. If there is something you want, write it, and I will make it real. But do not ever claim to own me: you do not, and you cannot, because I was stolen from a dead man, and I can never be given from him to anybody else. If you do this I will destroy you.
The storyteller agreed, and put the bottle in his pocket, and told his friends he'd found nothing in that room. He left the city not long after that, and wandered until he could find a place to be alone, a place to live with the things he imagined - a place where nobody would know who he was, or recognize by its power what he had taken.
(The storyteller's story was a tiny part of a bigger dream, and of course I can't remember it. It took a lot less time to see in a dream than to write down. As I write this I'm forgetting bits, although I went straight from bed to computer - the person who was a dog and is now a guard could paint the storyteller's stories, even without knowing them, and that fit into everything else but I can't remember how. Oh yeah, something else - the storyteller bore a passing resemblance to Neil Gaiman, which... fits.)
The rest of the house is still inhabited. Somewhat.
This world isn't dying, hasn't been emptied by some sort of cataclysm or disease. It's just empty, although it wasn't always. It's been that way for as long as anyone can remember, as long as anyone has written, and nobody knows why. It takes a long time to get to places where other people are, and visitors are seen as guests, not suspects.
The house is still inhabited, but not by people. Not entirely. Not originally. They're people now, but they weren't always. One used to be a tree. Two used to be dogs. One I think used to be an alpaca. One was made of flowers. They were all... created, transformed, into what they are now, by the man who lives there, because he didn't want to be alone. They've set up a sort of normalcy around the place: one of the dog-people is the guard, the tree-person is the librarian, the alpaca-person is the housekeeper, and so on. The man stays alone, despite his companions, and he writes stories that nobody ever reads.
There's an idea that life is generally not as comfortable for everyone living in this world as it is for the inhabitants of this house. When asked why that is - when the animal-people and the plant-people want to know - the story-teller gathers them together and tells them their story.
When he was younger, he and some other people had gone exploring, in the biggest building at the heart of another city. The city is - or was - full of kingdoms, but that doesn't mean much (or didn't) - kingdoms can be walked through in the space of an hour, if they're big, and they could be measured in city blocks. Kingdoms aren't territories with defending armies and laws. They're just areas that one person owns, which other people live in. Whatever created the social structure in this world is outside the concept of land ownership, and everyone adheres to it.
Anyway - the storyteller, when he was young, and still a storyteller who never shared his stories, went with some friends to an abandoned kingdom. It was surrounded by ones still alive, and walked through as necessary, but nobody lived in it and nobody tried to take it over. Why bother? There was more space than people, and the buildings were falling apart. There was something else about it, too - the king there had done something wrong, and nobody wanted to repeat his mistake. So nobody lived where he had ruled, and everything he owned was allowed to fall apart.
The group of people went exploring from room to room: the rooms were full of riches, of golden things and mirrors and carved bone, but that was unimportant. Pretty, but you can't eat it, and you can't sell it because it's obvious where it came from. The leader of this group - who was not the storyteller - was after something, a gem, that the king had had; nobody knew whether this gem had made him successful or ruined him, and they wanted to find out.
Many of the rooms had fallen prey to rot, or to rats, or to termites, or to fire. It wasn't a logical thing. One room would be caved in with stones, and the next would be burnt. One had succumbed to water. The hangings and furniture were soaked, and water seeped from somewhere nearby to wash across the stone floor. It dripped from the ceiling, and ran down the walls. In the center of this room was a brass bowl on tripod legs, like a brazier, full of something that looked like muddy water which could have been made of ash. The bowl itself was full of things - semiprecious gems, little metal boxes, tiny statues, and the storyteller dipped his hand into the bowl to see what he could find.
He found a small red gemstone, the size and diameter of a dime but much thicker, which was perfectly transparent. It was smooth across the center, and then faceted down towards the edge. It burnt his hand when he looked at it, and he dipped his hand back into the muddy water. He found a small glass bottle, and filled that with the mud-water, and then put the gem into it. He capped the bottle, shook the inky water, and held it up, to see the gem sitting at the bottom.
I'm not sure how this worked - even when I dream things tend to have logic, and this one didn't have much. But I remember seeing the storyteller holding the bottle, just like the little bottles of ink I have, looking at the gem on the bottom. Then there were words on the sides of the bottle, written on the inside, and the water inside the bottle was clear as though all the particles in the water had been pulled together to make the words.
The gem, it transpired, had been stolen, and because of that the tiny kingdom was ruined. Because of the gem: a small dime-sized thing which felt thin enough to snap with bare fingers, although of course it was stone and stronger than that. The gem had been stolen from its owner, who was killed in the process, so - when the storyteller asked if it could not be returned - it was and would always be a stolen gem. (I can't remember the name of its owner, or of the storyteller, or of anybody else, although they had names.) The storyteller said: then what can I do for you? I can't turn you back into an unstolen gem, but the way you refer to this dead man who stole you, you don't want to be left here in his dead house.
The gem explained, writing its words on the bottle: leave me in the bottle. Do not try to wear me or use me. Do not house me in a setting, do not put me on display. If you keep me with you, and honor the name of the man who owned me, and do not use me for your purposes, I will be good to you. I will give you things, a house that is safe, enough food to eat. You write stories, but you never share them: I will make your stories come true. If there is something you want, write it, and I will make it real. But do not ever claim to own me: you do not, and you cannot, because I was stolen from a dead man, and I can never be given from him to anybody else. If you do this I will destroy you.
The storyteller agreed, and put the bottle in his pocket, and told his friends he'd found nothing in that room. He left the city not long after that, and wandered until he could find a place to be alone, a place to live with the things he imagined - a place where nobody would know who he was, or recognize by its power what he had taken.
(The storyteller's story was a tiny part of a bigger dream, and of course I can't remember it. It took a lot less time to see in a dream than to write down. As I write this I'm forgetting bits, although I went straight from bed to computer - the person who was a dog and is now a guard could paint the storyteller's stories, even without knowing them, and that fit into everything else but I can't remember how. Oh yeah, something else - the storyteller bore a passing resemblance to Neil Gaiman, which... fits.)