Grandmother's House

Of course it didn’t take a note to tell her where her beloved Grandmama was, for moments later Sylvia cast her eyes into the blue flame and could see for herself where Mother Earth was travelling.

The cabin room Sylvia was in was decorated in a familiar way: there were mementos from all over the world, the strangest objet d'art cluttered in every available space.

Mother Earth’s staircase was in the shape of a giraffe’s neck, there were lanterns embedded in the walls that were made of ruby glass radiating a rosy pink hue around the rooms. Mosaic paintings covered every north facing wall with intricate scenes of foliage, flowers and herbs, were worked in tiles of precious metals. Port-holed windows on the east side caught the morning sun. There were two bathing pools imbedded with pearls, one of salt and the other of fresh water.

Like every grandmother's house there were baskets of potpourri - only these held ancient droppings from bees and birds, and species now extinct … cushioned amongst sleeping seeds born from plants now expired from a much older world.

Sylvia took herself down into the underground pantry … remembering the fruits that she had sampled when visiting before. The cold room had cheeses wrapped in white linen, tied with a coloured bow that denoted the century it was crafted in. Roman candies, Andean bread, African crackers with English Marmalade. She soon forgot herself and kept eating her way through the ages, enveloped in a rapture all of her own.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series