Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Lady Elegans


A waltz was playing somewhere.

Well, it certaainly felt like a waltz was playing. After a terse conversation with Lady Elegans he had been directed to this hall, hidden like her cellar behind an impenetrable, unmarked wall. He had stepped in to find himself floating up towards the middle of the room, and from there he had discovered that walking--oddly enough--was an effective means of propulsion along the corridor.

As such, it was quite the impressive corridor. Ribbons and arcs of baroque pillars danced between each other, mostly obscuring the long chamber's square profile. Occasional gaps revealed plush carpeting, ornate dining areas, shadowed niches, abandoned servants' areas, and other scenes of abandoned grand living. The walls were odd, though he couldn't quite make out why, and each area he passed felt like it followed the last, as though the long hall were a concatenation of segments of time.

If you don't find something strange about The Hall, she had said, you can never help us and so will never leave.

Does floating through the air on a predetermined track count? How about flying through an ancient hall behind a solid stone wall? Perhaps the eery waltzing feeling as he strode through the air, the lack of servants, the abandoned air in so elegant a place?

He thought for a moment, staring off into space. It was something simple--

What the-- What moved? It took a moment to bring his thoughts back to reality...well, the present reality. Something in the shadows cast by the pillars? The sojourner began a slow and careful examination of the shadows. The nearest ballroom looked well-lit by a chandelier or two out of his line of sight. Still, they would be about there, and the web of pillar-like laces was thin above there, so the wall over there should be...

Laced with shadows.

It was black. Not a trace of the ample lighting was making it to the wall, and the lattices that landd there seemed to have shadows lapping at their bases. The walls certainly were odd light here where shadows should be, shadows bunched in plain sight, the right shadows sitting the wrong way in some spaces, all just orderly enough to evade the unwary mind.

Wrong shadows in a hall of memories...