The Chimera

Chapter Two: Enter Jasper

Coincidentally, Jasper's first day of work as a clerk is also the first day he intrudes on another world.

The shaky beat of his nerves climbing from his heart to his throat have him up early. No relief is won from waking, though, because he is then shaken by the unfamiliarity of the room he's in. Even after three days of acquainting himself with his new lodgings, he's still not fully used to it.

The bed, a place he's usually so eager to sink into, feels suffocating in the high-energy stress of what this morning will bring.

Jasper yanks the blanket of gray wool off of his body to free himself, standing and striding to the window to check the status of the morning light. After a moment of delay in which his foot becomes tangled in the blanket and nearly trips him over, Jasper looks through the glass. The sky is made up of pale blues and grays, so early he likely could have slept at least half of an hour more.

Turning from the window, he is confronted with his own genius when he spots a clock in the room. He had forgotten it existed and could have easily checked it while still in bed instead of throwing himself at the window.

The clock confirms that he still has much more time available to him than he needs before leaving for his first day as the newest municipal clerk of Cadeus Falls: in fact, he has nearly a whole hour. Still, the luxury of time doesn't prevent him from rushing through his preparations, buttoning his shirt and pulling on trousers as if his overseer in the office will bang on the door any minute.

Jasper takes an apple from the basket on the small corner table and paces, mind mostly empty between bites but stressed nonetheless. He cannot fight through the persisting sensation that this is the first of many such days, where sleep is elusive, stress is imminent, and the day brings no opportunity of joy but that which comes from getting to leave the monotony of a clerk's office at the end of the workday.

The apple finished, he has nothing more to do in the next three quarters of an hour but wait. He contemplates leaving early to take a walk through the town, getting to know it better through exploration. But the prospect of getting lost and ending up late to the office is a very real possibility, and therefore a risk he's unwilling to take.

Jasper moves to sit on the wooden chair by the corner table, but stops when he sees a few things are already atop it. He picks the items up. One is a small hand bell, made of brass. The other is a piece of parchment, rolled and tied with a red ribbon.

Jasper has no memory of either of these things. He had forgotten about the clock though, so it's possible his mind is still clouded by sleep and has momentarily forgotten these as well.

To restart the track of his memory, he places the bell down on the table by the basket of apples and tugs open the ribbon. The note is small and lights nothing of recognition in him at all. It is addressed to him, though: For Jasper, before he forgets.

Before I forget? Too late, Jasper thinks, because he really doesn't know what this is referring to at all.

Deeming the note useless, he tosses it carelessly onto the table. The bell is decidedly more intriguing. The handle is the length of his thumb, and the actual bell has etchings of what look like jasmine flowers around it.

Picking it up, Jasper gives it a careful shake. He blinks as the ring sounds out, clear and more decisive than his tentative shake probably merited, but he stops thinking about the sound completely when his eyes blink back open. His surroundings have completely changed from that of the bedroom he is renting in Cadeus Falls.

He is somewhere where the air is golden.

A second later, he realizes that it is not the air itself that is golden, but the fields surrounding him that the sun is shining on. But there are no fields like this near Cadeus Falls. They stretch out to the right and left of him, broken occasionally in their brilliance by stalks of tall purple flowers that also reach towards the sky. In the middle distance there are stately-looking trees, and farther still are a series of mountains. The sky above is made of the kind of blue that reminds one of how vast and beautiful the heavens must be.