“I am a strange sight to behold, I’m sure. But I belong to a bygone era, and before you know it you will feel the same, my friend. Time moves quickly, and we are all relics long before we are treasures, of that you can be sure. And this bag? Why, it holds a great many marbles, dark and swirling things. Here, my friend, have a look at them; hold this bag in my stead so that I may tell you my story and show you how I came to be here:
I was in the woods that day, and I knew that something felt wrong. We all have those days from time to time, and this was one of mine. I had been hiking for hours and was about halfway back to the road when it happened. I came upon him, much like you came upon me, by accident. Bloody noses troubled me regularly, you see, and since I wasn’t in the mood that day to lay down on the forest floor until it drained back into my skull, I had decided to keep on walking while holding my head up high. The sky was blue, not a cloud in sight. I remember that.
I also remember the moment my vision flickered, like the interlacing picture of a television set refreshing itself from the bottom up, and the gentle dizziness that followed. There’s no apt comparison for the way legs will suddenly reach up to kiss the atmosphere, I myself have preferred pinwheels as my metaphor before, but the long and short of it was that I spent equal amounts of time in the air and on the ground, which was sometimes rock sometimes dirt sometimes grass and consistently hurt.
I’m not sure how long I fell, time pulls back and lets you feel the now whenever your head trades places with your feet. But fall I surely did, pummeled by the earth until I finally reached that rocky spot where you now stand, and imagine the infection of pain spreading through my nerves as I landed upon my back there. And now imagine the wonder as I righted and took to my feet to find myself standing before a wide-eyed creature, satyr-like in build and smell. His look was one of anxiety, and at first I was certain he was frightful of my arrival or the sight of the dried rivers of crimson that had somehow ceased flowing but still stuck to my upper lip, but as his eyebrows began to drop the corners of his mouth began to rise, and his smile made me feel warm and welcome and as I wiped my face clean I realized he was very glad to see me.
Looking then amongst the rocks and hard places I realized that there was a scattering of darkly colored marbles about us, curiously beautiful little things, sitting here and there and numbering in the dozens. He held a small cloth bag, the same which you now hold there, and it was empty and looked as deflated as he did as he looked from me back down to his maelstrom of loose marbles.
I asked him first what he was and then what circumstances surrounded these spilled trinkets, and he responded that he was from a more distant time and that he had tripped while climbing there and dropped his marbles all about the rocks. So I did as anyone would do and offered my assistance in the recollection of his collection. He smiled again at this and then handed me the cloth bag, saying that he had seen where all had fallen and if I would only hold it open for him he could scurry around until he had brought them all back and dropped them inside it.
As he labored about me I asked him the purpose of the marbles, and he then said that they were part of a tremendous game, the likes of which could alter lives. I begged for more details, but he declined and instead began to dote upon the beauty of his marbles and lamented how much he would miss them.
When I inquired as to when and why he would part ways with his marvelous assortment, he sadly smirked and said that all ends arrive sooner or later, and for him it was not arriving soon enough. Finding this curious, I commented on his somewhat stoic take, to which he replied ‘You will one day share my sentiments.’
It was then that he gathered up the last three of the marbles, and dropped the first into the bag, then the second, pausing a moment to meet my eyes, and then he smiled before he dropped the final marble. For you see, he had waited an eternity for me to arrive, I the next living soul to stumble across his rock. Curses cast on people can be broken, but with objects it is not so; what can’t be broken must instead be transferred.
And the satyr was right, you see. They are truly beautiful marbles, and though I am sorry to see them go, my end has not come soon enough.
You will one day share my sentiments.”