During the summer after her sophomore year at Vasser, Sara went to stay at her aunt Maria's farm in Italy. She thought it would be a good opportunity to travel and practice her Italian, which she thought was pretty good after two years' study. Instead, she found that her aunt never went anywhere and did little outside the daily tasks required to keep the farm running. Sara was soon recruited into this routine, and her days were consumed with the monotony of endless chores.
Her aunt employed man named Ludo who lived in the large farmhouse with them. Ludo was a large, darkly tanned Italian. His English was functional at best. Most of the time he said little to Sara, and the few times she tried to strike up a conversation with him in Italian he seemingly couldn't comprehend a word she said. Later she thought he must have been mocking her. After all, none of her classmates had any trouble understanding her when they practiced together. Despite their lack of a mutually comprehensible language, whenever she had to work near Ludo she noticed him stealing glances at her when he thought she wasn't looking. She knew what those glances were about; they were the same sort men had always given her. That kind of attention made her uncomfortable, so she spent most of her free time alone, reading a book in her room or walking in the meadows beyond her aunt's vegetable garden.
It was on one of these walks that she found the strange stone. It struck her immediately as odd, although she couldn't quite explain why. Its blue color was certainly a bit unusual as well as its smooth perfectly round shape, but that wouldn't normally have been enough to capture her attention. She nevertheless picked it up and tucked it into her dress pocket. She had almost forgotten about it later back at the farmhouse until she felt the weight of it as she undressed for bed. When she pulled it out of the dress she was astonished to find that it glowed brightly in the dark bedroom. Turning it over, she saw an inscription in tiny black letters. Her Italian was not good enough to understand at first, but after some thought, she realized what it meant. "Throw me in the water and see your desire."
The next day her chores were light and by the late morning Sara was casting around for something to do. She thought about the stone again, and wondered what the inscription might be referring to. What did it mean by her "desire"? Was the stone somehow incredibly valuable? She doubted it. It didn't look like any kind of precious gem she'd ever heard of. Also, if it were valuable what good would throwing it in water do? And why would somebody bother writing the inscription only to leave the stone where anyone walking by might find it? After pondering for a while, she decided the only way to satisfy her curiosity was to do as the inscription said.
Having reached this conclusion, the next step would be to find a suitable place to perform the experiment. At first she thought of simply using the sink in the farmhouse bathroom, but then she reconsidered. For one thing, this stone could be made of something which would react badly with water. Perhaps it was someone's idea of a practical joke to paint over a lump of solid rubidium with instructions that would lead whoever found it to make a new hole in their bathroom sink. She would need to test it outdoors, preferably out of sight of her aunt and Ludo. As she was thinking this, she found herself walking again toward the place where she had first found the stone out in the meadow.
When she arrived, she saw there was a small stream at her feet that she hadn't noticed before. Following it brought her to a clear and strangely deep pond surrounded by thick brush so that it wasn't visible until she had almost stepped into it. Hesitating only slightly, she brought the stone out from her front pocket and dropped it into the water. It didn't explode or even fizzle, but instead floated on the surface for a breif moment before beginning to sink at an unusually gradual pace. When it was fully submerged, the world around Sara dissolved into blackness. Suddenly she was falling through the ground. Or perhaps the ground had disappeared and she was floating down through empty air. Soon she could see nothing and feel nothing around her but a faint draft of cool air, blowing in no particular direction. The pitch darkness finally gave way to a dim light which coalesced until she could make out walls on either side of her.
The hallway seemed endless, slowly sloping downward until the ceiling was occluded by the floor. Sara's eyes watered in the smoke that hung thick in the air. The way was dimly lit by an eerie green light which emanated from two rows of grated black iron doors. As though in a trance, she stepped slowly down the hall until she had a better view through the first metal door. She gasped at what she saw through the bars: a round stone chamber, its walls lined with women. All of them seemed to be restrained in various ways, some chained in suspension spread-eagle against the wall, some bound in ropes on the floor. All were completely nude. One woman sat on the floor, her hands, ankles, and neck all manacled and connected by two long metal bars. A chandelier hung from the ceiling in the center of the room, its candles lit with green flames whose heat Sara could feel even where she stood, at least twenty paces away. Some of the women stared ahead expressionless, others were sobbing and gasping as though in pain.
From up the hallway out of sight Sara heard footsteps. Faint at first, they were quickly growing louder. Not wanting to be seen by whoever lived in a place like this, she took off in the opposite direction, deeper into the tunnel. She wanted to run but didn't want whoever was coming to hear her, so she walked. Every chamber she could see as she passed held the same scene, the green flames, the women, and the chains. The footsteps were still getting closer but they hadn't broken into a run, so neither did she. She sped up her pace however, and stopped looking through the metal grates. Ahead of her one of the doors swung open and a man emerged into the hallway blocking her path. At least, she would have said he was a man except for the green tinge of his skin and the curved horns which protruded from his scalp. He was also taller than any man she had seen, towering over her by at least two feet. He wore black slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt with a vest that seemed to change color as he moved, first violet, then red, then a dark shade of blue.
"Wh- who are you?" Sara found her voice. She had almost asked what he was, but thought that question might offend him, something that didn't seem like a good idea when she was alone in this strange and frightening place.
"I am Oran, and this is my home. Perhaps the stranger should introduce herself first."
"I'm Sara. Please just let me pass, I didn't mean to disturb you."
