.........AriesWinter comes hard and whips through cracks in shattered windows where shutters bang until...one day...the magical canvas...freezes. Unmoved by the divination stone or the musical board, your efforts to revive it are futile...
It is only then, when the canvas fades to black, that you look around you and see the devastation of your former...life.
With tardy horror, you summon your failing strength, shivering in that frigid tomb, and pack the demon device back into the curious crate.
And that night, when the last of your coal burns to dust, you...also freeze...in an act of contemplation, your chair drawn up to...the box.
The last and most peculiar object will be...is it an instrument? For it comes with keys--though more like a concertina than a piano forte and there is no billows or sounding board...no tune (other than the easy staccato of the well oiled buttons as you push them) You note that they are marked with arcane symbols and strangely literate commands but also...letters.
The second item will be a small flat oval stone a bit like an...amber paperweight that fits comfortably in your hand and...you notice...slides easily on the leather inlay of your secretary desk.
One will be a freestanding picture frame of some smooth (but not cold!) substance akin to...pottery. But behind the pristine glass the canvas will be painted...a dull and lifeless black.
Being of an enlightened eighteenth century mind, you do not believe in such things as the...stars...the problem, you will discover, is that they believe...in you.
Thus...on the eve of your Saturn Return, a crate unlike any you have seen will be discovered by the butler at the door to your pleasant and orderly colonial Pennsylvanian home.
It will be large and be of some light unknown corrugated wood not unlike cork and its utterly smooth birch paper veneer will be peculiarly painted in the colors and patterns of...cows.
Inside the box (packed in another weightless white carved cork like shell) you will discover three arcane objects equally unknown to you.
Your...future.
You arrange these curious items on the delicate writing desk where you attend to your daily mail and, being both curious and ingenious...as are the times...you attempt to "play" the thing from which no sense can be made and no sound or light emanates...until by happenstance, you hit a certain key (which one!!!) and are greeted by celestial chimes! You leap back--over turning your fragile Windsor chair as the canvas begins to glow so brightly that you no longer need the sputtering candle in the stick beside you.
The canvas, now dancing with colors and images, configures itself in what could only be a portal to another...world.
To your astonishment it fills with prompts and words and paintings so lifelike as to be true forms impossibly contained within and you note (with breathless shock!) that there is even...movement.
Other's in the parish would pitch this devise aside as the devil's plaything! But you are not of that strict...sect. Thus you allow yourself to be...enlightened...through this magical resource you now have.
Over time you see much, learn much which you wisely keep to yourself. For who would accept such...wonders! And you begin to prefer these pastimes to what is tangible and...real. You eagerly await correspondence you receive from disembodied companions...while calling cards and invitations lay unopened and unread on the silver salver by your front door.
In frustration, your near and dear finally stop calling on you. By season's end you are socially...forgotten. Your prosperous enterprises similarly fail for neglect. And spooked by your eccentricity and...locked study door...your faithful family servants pack their bags. You barely notice that your calendar, like your larder, has gone bare as your fashionable parlor becomes the empire of mice and spiders.
After your desiccated corpse is recovered...the curious crate will be shipped and stored with your other effects in many attics and sheds until finally, to your past life amazement, it will travel far and come to rest in a (horseless?) carriage house on the far shore of the New World where...in several hundred years...
An ambitious young man with the patience of job...s...will figure out HOW to make it work again and unleash it on an unsuspecting world.
And the folly of your life is that, soon, when the accursed crate arrives upon your stoop, even knowing what you now do, you still WILL...open it.
Try the buttons...