The moss flaked idol waits in the wet jungle where the air is thick as mud and the night as hot and oppressive as the day. When the floods come, the rising river brings its bank up here, and the great carved stone sits in the soft, sinking mud. After, when it’s dry, when everything is burning dust, it lounges here under the canopy of trees, and the ground hardens so that you can walk up to the idol. There are no temples near, nor surviving legends which tell us of the thing. No rituals are remembered in this spot. Whether a god, a king, or a demon, we don’t know.
Note its size: it is abnormal but by no means the largest idol ever discovered in these jungles. It would have been a great work for whoever built it. The strange thing, the reason, I think, you came, is of course the missing chunk. Did you bring it? Yes, when the locals showed this to me, at first I was merely curious, but then I saw that missing section of what I suppose is the thing’s head. The shape, you won’t deny it once you see, will fit so well. Did you get the cast I made? I sent you a mold of that hole. It does, doesn’t it, it fits, that other stone we found out there, long ago?
It’s like finding two puzzle pieces you didn’t know where puzzle pieces. Just imagine.
You did bring it, didn’t you?
Tale Told 