Chapter 22: The Gallery

Chapter 22: The Gallery

(Jeanne Morningstar, June 8th, 2011)

Pass through the ornate wooden doors beneath the stained glass window showing the birds from which the Seven Noble Houses take their names and you will find yourself in the Gallery. Here works of art from every time and place are brought together with little rhyme or reason. Photographs of poor children in a city that is almost but not quite Victorian London hang beside pages from a medieval manuscript portraying impossible beasts. A Cubist painting showing the depths of Hell stands next to a painting Van Gogh never made in this world. Armed statues in every style imaginable adorn the hallways. These are the guards of the Gallery, and they bring swift death to any who attempt to steal from it.

If you go deep enough into the Gallery you will find a room with paintings based on your own life. There you will see the key moments in your past as they really happened, not as you remember them, and all your future as well. At the end is a painting of your death. Few have the courage to venture this far.