Living the Dream

How he had come to this place was the result of a series of events that he had largely been unable to control. His life had been fulfilling up until now, but things had changed and changed dramatically. But this here, this now. This was not good. This was not better, this was less better.

Eldric Moonshadow had had a wonderful life in the caves of Mount Glimmerstone. The elderly wizard, elderly for he had indeed celebrated his 467th year, had served his local community well for decades creating potions and spells to relieve the pains and agonies that sometime plague a life. The magic man had been well respected.

But with time and age things begin to wane. One’s midsection tends to get larger, wider. The hair on top of one’s head thins and usually whitens, as it had for the man of magic. Yes, Eldric had been the recipient of all these changes that nature had bestowed. But nature hadn’t finished its work on the poor aging sorcerer. No, nature had had a final blow to wield.

The wizard, possessed of a loyal and varied clientele, had lost his powers. What would have been simple in his younger years was now simply impossible. A young lad from the town came to him with an aching ankle, swollen from physical trauma. Eldric had tried everything, potions, spells, tricks of the sorcery trade, all to no result. That had hit his reputation in the community hard.

But what had been the final blow, the final whipping that had bent his career asunder, was the young man who longed for love. The one who had captured him: the daughter of the mayor. The young man had requested a potion to make the object of his affections fall in love with him. He had pursued his love, but the young lady had spurned him, categorically.

Love potions was the first chapter in his text, ‘Of Potions’. The conjurer had made his first such potion of amour while still a boy. But the elixir he produced for the young daughter of the mayor had not only not worked, but it had also left the young lady in question turning a shade of blue, all over her body, for months.

That had done it. Eldric couldn’t book another client after that. The word had spread rapidly in the town. His former clients, even those who Eldric had thought of as friends, now shunned him. Some would cross the street to avoid saying hello. Some, to their shame, would spit his way if the wizard managed the courage to approach them himself.

Sighing, deeply, the magic man reached into the cupboard of his kitchen, where he kept his glassware, searching for a cup. There was a brew on the bubble over the fire and he needed a vessel to pour a sample of the concoction for his enjoyment. Finding only a single cup left there, he selected that and proceeded to the fire.

The cauldron over the fire was hot with the warming, so Eldric took the ladle that hung nearby and scooped a large bowlful of the simmering infusion into his cup. Not accounting for the change of temperature that would almost certainly accompany the liquid as it heated the ceramic cup, the man gave a sharp “Yowl!” and subsequently dropped the burning hot container to the floor of the cave. The cup shattered into a dozen pieces.

“Bah!” It was his last cup.

Slowly coming to terms with the catastrophe just now having unfolded, Eldric put on his overclothes and plopped his hat upon his head. He would have to make a trip into town to replace the cup. It was a trip he did not savor.

÷

The house on the outskirts of town, the one with the peeling paint … the old farmhouse … set on a one-acre lot with the moss growing over the roof shingles … that one. That house was growing in awareness to the folks in the town. Growing in awareness and realization of what was going on inside the building. The inside was not in any way representative of the houses’ presentation on the outside. No, the inside was completely different.

The common belief by the townspeople was that the owner of the house, Gertrude DeSant, was a hoarder. If not a hoarder, then a packrat, a magpie of sorts. But that assessment of the woman would fall quite short of reality.

Gertrude considered herself a collector. A collector of miniatures. The collecting of little doodads was her deepest love in life. Well, that even understates it. To say it was a love falls short in that it had become more of an obsession, a mania with the elderly lady. A mania that could not be satisfied no matter the length and breadth that the collection commanded.

The evidence of the fixation could be seen inside the house with its rows and rows of bookcases filled with the tiny characters and structures made of ceramic, plastic, wood, resin or quite literally almost any known substance to mankind. If the substance could be molded into something small that represented something large, Gertrude would have it. Have it or die in the acquiring. Yes, to the normal human, Gertrude was indeed a bit ‘off’. The old lady evoked something unclean in her fellows’ eyes.

It was in this pursuit that the old septuagenarian, clothed in her housedress, carefully, lovingly, dusted the pieces she kept in the attic. Gingerly lifting each one and softly caressing it to remove any dust or dander that may have fallen on it, the collector endeavored to keep her life’s work, her legacy in top form.

The miniatures brought a peace to the old woman. They were something she could control. They offered no resistance to her touch. They were dispossessed of any strength or weight that could prevent her from her desires to caress them.

The wonder of the pieces filled her imagination with glee as each one would eventually be given a backstory. Where they lived. How they interacted with the other miniatures. Oh, indeed, these inanimate objects had become her friends, nay, her children. They were her comfort, her joy, her home.

Surrendering her apron to the hook by the stairs, Gertrude descended the stairs to the kitchen. Stopping for a minute to try and remember why she had come into the kitchen, the aging lady put an index finger in the air at the point of remembrance. “Charlie’s!” She had planned to make a trip downtown to the secondhand store.

Donning a frock and picking up her tote bag (she needed something heftier than her purse in case she bought something, maybe something miniature) the elderly woman walked out of the front door and down the street to the bus stop.

÷

Charlie’s was busy for a Thursday afternoon. There were shoppers for antiques huddling around an old armoire. There was a man in the back of the store looking at the fireplace mantelpiece that had been ostensibly ripped from one of the old mansions in town. But what Gertrude sought, as she frequently did when here at Charlie’s, was the miniatures section. The old lady scanned the display for any new items.

It so happened that a man in long robes and a pointed hat was also shopping the store. The man found his desired purchase in the housewares section. There, he had acquired a set of four French hand painted beauties. They would be welcome vessels for his morning brew their intricate painted designs bewitched the man. The man, the town’s wizard Eldric, smiled at his good fortune in acquiring them.

The sorcerer was just about to check out when he noticed a familiar face over at the miniatures. The wizard was a bit trepidatious. The old lady had been an acquaintance for 70 years now, but would she hold the town’s consensus on his usefulness to their society? Would she spurn an advance from him? Drawing up his courage, he decided to find out.

“Hello … Gertrude, is that you?” Eldric steeled himself for the rejection that might be coming next.

“Why … Eldric? Could that be you?”

“That would be me.” Eldric gave the old lady a hug. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you for a while now.”

“I pretty much keep to myself these days.”

“Same here.” The sorcerer took off his pointed hat. “You heard about the mayor’s daughter I presume?” He hoped, if so, she had and she had forgiven him.

“Yes. Too bad there. Even Michael Jordon missed a shot every now and then, huh?” Gertrude smiled and gave Eldric’s arm a squeeze. “Say, why don’t you come visit? I’ll make us a pot of tea? We can catch up? I’ve nothing scheduled for the rest of the day…”

“Sounds lovely. Let me pay for this and then I’m ready.”

“Great. I’m just about done here myself.”

÷

Back at Gertrude’s rundown farmhouse, the pair of the town’s pariahs sat around the dining room table sipping tea and eating cookies. The air was filled with memories of days gone by.

“Say, the display of miniatures here is breathtaking.” The guest indicated the wall of Dutch themed ceramics that spanned the length of the dining room wall.

Suddenly Gertrude’s mood changed, and she became quite somber.

“What now? Did I say something uncomfortable there?” The wizard thought he might have made a faux pas in his conversation.

“It’s just … Money has been a little tight since Marvin died.” Marvin was Gertrude’s husband. “I’ve had to sell my collection.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yes. It was hard to do but the bank insists on getting their monthly payments.”

“I’m so sorry.” Edlric knew how attached the woman was to the tiny models.

“Yes. Some movers are coming tomorrow to box them up. They’re going to New Hampshire.” Gertrude’s face betrayed her sorrow. “They’re like my children, you know.”

“Yes, they are quite precious aren’t they.” The wizard stroked his beard. Falling deeply into cogitation, the magician was forming an idea. The aging mage scanned his brain for the spell that might make this situation less painful for the old girl. She may have been his only friend left and he hated seeing her sad like this.

Eldric’s eyes brightened. “Say, if you’re accepting of it, I may have an idea for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. It’s a bit out there, though.”

The wizard pulled his dragonwood wand from under his robes. “Now this may tickle a bit at first.”

÷

When Gerturde awoke, she was lying on a wooden floor. Gathering herself to her feet, the elderly collector realized that she wasn’t standing on a floor, but on the wooden cabinet in her dining room. The display that contained miniature ceramic pieces now loomed large in her vision. The wizard had succeeded. She was as miniature as her collection now.

“Hey ho!” Gertrude was elated. Now she could be boxed up with all her beauties and take the trip to New Hampshire never to be separated from them. Clapping her hands at the sights before her, the woman stopped. Her hands had made a clinking sound.

“Ceramic!” Gertrude laughed. The mage had made her ceramic, ostensibly to help her blend in more fully with the collection itself.

Strolling down the aisles and aisles of her collection, Gertrude marveled at every vignette, every scene. The proud collector had spent years perfecting the assembly of her miniatures and to see them this up close was a thrill.

There were windmills galore. Small boys in wooden shoes ran up and down the streets. One boy had a look of worry on his face as he had his finger stuck in a dike, preventing the dam from breaking and flooding the city.

The canal houses framed a faux waterway with what had been home to many tiny boats before, but now, to the lady, the vessels looked quite life-sized. It was while thus tarrying beside the canal to drink in the wonder of the scene that something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. Something had moved. Nothing was supposed to be moving here. Well, except herself, of course. Gertrude crossed the bridge by the bench where she had roosted and followed a dark figure.

The figure was moving at a somewhat rapid pace. It was a man from all accounts and the stranger kept weaving in and out of this street to that alleyway to that street. Finally, the man stopped inside a fence where some cows were grazing.

“Eldric!” Gerturde couldn’t believe it; the wizard was there with her. “I thought you said it would be I, myself, that would shrink here. Have you come to join me?”

Eldric took off his pointed sorcerer’s hat and scratched his head. “Yeah … well … it didn’t quite go as I had planned.”

“Oh no.” Gertrude knew she wanted to stay here forever, but had she unexpectedly involved her friend in this unholy eternity? “Can you reverse the spell? For yourself?”

“Well, I think I can, but then again I haven’t been all that successful recently.” The magician looked away in shame.

“You might just like it here.” The ceramic collector tried to lift her companion’s spirits. “Isn’t it lovely?”

“You know, it is awful adorable here, isn’t it?” Eldric turned around, taking in all the sights. “I might just linger a bit.”

Eldric sighed. “Especially since my wand is in my robes, and my robes are turned to stone.” The grand man of magic clinked his ceramic hand against his ceramic chest. Groaning, he shook his head. “I’m having trouble retrieving it.”