A light wind is blowing through a forest of trees surrounding a small circular lake. The clear calm water gleams from the midday sunlight. A few yards away from the lake is a small clearing of land with a large wooden cabin facing the pond.
In the back of the two story cabin under a large deck sit several paintings on stands. The painting are bunched together in no order other than those that appeared to be finished were separated from those that looked like random blobs of paint on the empty canvas's.
The finished paintings were peculiar and elegant, the edges of the different colors mingled with the edges of the different blobs around it. Most paintings were of vast beautiful landscapes of the mountains and forests. The unfinished painting however, where the most intriguing to look at. There were only a few colors of different shapes on each canvas.
The painter; a tall, muscular man who looked to be in his early 40s wearing a paint stained t-shirt and shorts sat at an almost blank canvas. he was working with only one color creating a peculiar oblong shape.
After a few minutes he stood up to move his stool to the almost empty canvas right next to the one he was just working on. He reached over to the workbench he placed in the middle of the patio and felt around on the bench till his hand found the bucket of water. Dipping his hands in the water several times, he wiped his hands clean of any paint before drying his hands. On his workbench the painter placed his hands on several different small tubs of paint, each with a set of unique groves to make each one distinguishable from the other.
He picked up a single tub of paint and set it down on the tray with the painting he was going to be working on. His hands wandered around on the almost blank canvas until they came upon a small blue oval shape that occupied the paper by itself. After a minute or two of feeling around the shape on the canvas, the painter dipped his brush in the tub of paint he had chosen and went to work on the canvas.
The man set his brush down after he had created another intricate shape filling the canvas just a little bit more. He stood up and stretched his back and legs. He reached to the side of his chair and picked up a white cane with a red band at the bottoms and started carefully tapping the cane from side to side in front of himself as he walked over to the cabin and opened the outside door into a kitchen.
He leaned his cane against the wall and held out his hand in front as he slowly made his way to the marble counter by the fridge. He reached over to the wooden hand crafted cabinets to push a button on his phone base turning on the answering machine. The answering machine made a loud beep and notified him of one unheard message.
The machine continued on, "First Unheard message", "Keith? Its me Martha. I wont be able to make it up there today so I will try to make it over there tomorrow night, call me as soon as you get this message." As he reached up and grabbed a cup there was a loud smack on the west side of the cabin. Startled he dropped the metal cup, which hit the floor with a clang.
Muttering under his breath, Keith dropped down on his hand and knees feeling around on the tile floor for the metal cup reaching towards the direction of the noise the cup had made when it hit the floor. Finding the cup he set it carefully down on the counter top and walked towards the door leading outside, picking up his cane he carefully set out to the side of the cabin where he had heard the noise. Twigs and small pine cones crunched beneath his feet as he steeped off the patio onto the dirt. He took a few small strides away from the house before stopping.
"I've already told you to stop throwing rocks, don't make me call the cops again!" Keith growled. Hearing no response, he stood there a moment holding completely still. After hearing nothing but the birds in the trees and the ripple of the occasional fish on the lake, he wandered towards the side of his cabin where he had heard the noise hit. The man frowned as he stepped on something hard. Had he found the object that hit the side of his cabin?
Muttering under his breath Keith removed his foot from on top of the object and knelt down to pick it up. After finding the object with his hands he picked the object off the ground. He noticed right away it was a very peculiar object. It was a small polygon band just bigger than his finger. He felt the edges and counted 6 sides. The center was a perfect circle cut out leaving the center hollow.
It was a ring. The material of the ring was something he had never felt before. The sides and the edges felt very smooth. Just by how the ring felt, Keith could tell it was a very well crafted ring. It was fairly warm to the touch and the surface felt very smooth, almost like his marble counter tops. It was very tough and solid. Wondering to himself, "What do we have here?" he put the ring in his pocket and tapped his cane in front of him as he went back inside.
Closing the kitchen door behind him he lumbered across the kitchen to his office chair taking the ring out of his pocket along the way. As he sat down in the rocking chair, he pulled the lever to change the chair into a recliner so he can lie on the chair. As he examined the ring with his hands he puts it on his ring finger. Suddenly, a flash of color sears through his head. Keith grits his teeth and grabs his head with his hands in agony. The colors spin around in his head faster and the intensity increases rapidly. Unknown to Keith, the ring on his finger glows brightly with different colors swimming through the ring. Keith fears his head is going to explode from the outburst of colors. Just as sudden, his hands loosen their grip on his head and fall down hanging limp at his side, his whole body lies motionless in the chair.
