I recount upon thee this one fleeting vision. A vision most frightening, from the days of yore, when I was but a youth, and schemed of growing fat. Ye, even unto now, my dying days, to think back upon it brings a touch of ice to my bones…
Whereupon one starlit eve I laid upon my bed dressed in fine linens and closed mine eyes to the blissful silence of sleep, I dreamed of wondrous things. A landscape richer and softer than the finest of silks, in colors most vivid. And there I came to a pool of still water nestled between sparkling rocks flecked with gold.
Into the pool I looked and beheld such sights as made me drool. All about were arrayed many things; gold and gems were heaped in mounds like breasts and sparkled like sequined chemises. Sheep whose wool was red and blue and green, and all the colors in between, and were fit for the dinner tables of kings and gods. Women in delicate things and sheer cloths danced to every tune for amusement. Sticks of rare incense burned for-ever in gold holders, and flowers of such kinds as boggled the mind in their dazzling multitude perfumed the air. The walls of the palace, for surely, such opulence must have required to contain, were of finely worked enamel or bone on carved stone. A fire roared in a golden hearth over which a whole suckling pig roasted glowed so strong, and so vivid that I could feel its heat. I lusted for these things in my heart of hearts while I knelt by that pool.
And at the head of the table in this glorious room sat a gross beast of a man, grown fat on the richness around him. He was clad from the waist down in gold cloth, his skin oiled and soft. It was also pallid, like a maggot, a thing that saw no sun, and all things in this place revolved revoltingly about them. And then I realized that this thing was me.
“Harken unto me, this message, stranger,” spoke a voice like thunder and rattled in my bones. “That what one wants is not always what one gets.”
I turned to look, and saw a white flame made of eyes and wings, and many faces. Many gnashed their teeth at me, and I was frightened. It’s form stretch long and wide, and filled all places high and low, that I could not escape its countenance. I closed my eyes, but my inner ones opened and were seared with an even more fearsome visage, that there was no safety to flee.
“Do not be afraid, and open thine eyes, and here what I say.” It commanded, in its terrible voice, and I was compelled to obey. “To grow rich beyond your wildest dreams is what you seek, and you will find it, for you have the means within your grasp. But you will condemn yourself to your greatest fear: to be trapped in a small place of your own making. Shed your desires and take the path of wisdom, and you shall be rich, and wise, and free.”
And then hundreds of hands sprung from its flaming body and wielded a great scythe and it slashed at me. For an instant, all was a fire of purest white and my mind was thrown into torrents of warring thought, and I awoke with a start upon my bed in a cold sweat. I swore off worldly possession, then and there, donned a cloak, and found a walking stick.
