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month record rogue 5 3 3
Here at this bustling marketplace, a stall selling clay dolls proves to be very popular, drawing in an unending stream of customers. If you buy one with no further discussion, the peddler will be happy, cheerfully throwing in a grasshopper woven of straw gratis. If you try to haggle, the peddler will be unhappy, and you won't be able to buy anything. Children—the people the peddler hates the most—shout and yammer right by her ear, but unfortunately, what she sells are toys, the easiest target of said children's interest. To try and keep them away from her, she has come up with a marvelous scheme: whenever she sets up her stall, she will set aside a few new gadgets and gewgaws to amuse them. The children will be so enraptured with them, they will stop bothering her.
The result?
The children seem to have learned that 'if they bother the lady, they'll get new toys'. And so, her stall became even noisier.
The clay doll stall slowly fades away from the busy marketplace in the scroll, and in another scroll depicting ancient forests and mountains, a great bandit fort appears.
At the foot of the mountain, a carriage drawn by a burdenbeast and its escort trundles along. 'Shh—' Upon meeting an obstruction, the commander of the escort bids his men halt. The group fearfully lifts their heads as a giant shadow looms over them. Blocking their path is a burly, shaggy-bearded man, rivaling a manglerbeast in strength and stature. He has eyes like copper bells, fists the size of alms bowls, and muscles as thick as ancient tree trunks. It is clear there is no other in the land like him. Confident he is up to no good, the commander has no choice but to summon up his courage and step forward to talk with him.
'It is no sin to steal ill-gotten gains.' The burly fellow refuses to negotiate, and pulls out a fist. At first, everyone panics, but then they see him step forward. His left leg trips over a wheel, while his right leg steps upon his own trouser leg. He falls to the ground.
The burly fellow's comrades, accustomed to this farce, sigh and shake their heads as they draw their blades, stepping forward onto the road.
The bandit fort fades away, and another scroll depicting a dark prison unfurls. Within is a silent prisoner, wondering if the script that left her in this place has been published.
The prison fades away, and in another scroll, by a vast battlefield, an aged general gobbles down fistfuls of rice before an envoy.
The battlefield disappears, and in the next scroll, a stern mortician tends to a friend's corpse.
Another scroll, then yet another... Until upon a stage in some scroll or the other, an opera singer acts out the roles to be penned so as to write fitting lyrics. After recording the phrase 'In all things real is a fake, but in a fake is rarely anything real', the figure steps out of the painting.
Dull. Tiresome. Drab. This scroll too is boring. Pieces of the scroll flutter as they fall into the fire, until eventually, Dusk can tear it no further. She leans against her table in boredom. These paintings have become a multitude of lands, allowing her to experience a multitude of lives. Did these hundreds of years worth of emotion and temperaments within these lives have no effect on her? Of course not. But...
What is real? If I am the one in the painting, and the me in the painting is real, all I feel and experience is also real. However, when It awakens, I shall fade away... In the end, I am just a being in a painting. Real or fake, true or false, what sense is there in even asking?
