I’m brain dead, running on no sleep. Too tired, too frail. Here’s a piece I’ve been working on:
The old wizard lumbered around the counter, beckoning me with a wave of his hand as he passed.
“Come on,” he croaked.
I watched him slowly move among the isles of his strange, eclectic wares, hobbling as he wandered toward the back of the store.
“Come on,” he said again.
I followed after him through a dark door. Cold, concrete steps led down into an unlit basement. In the shadows, I could hear the creaking of his knees and the labored panting of his breath. We came to level ground, and I stared. The darkened room was alive with dim, blue stars, glimmering in ordered ranks. The faint luminescence was like something from a faery tale. I heard a click, followed by a vibrating hum; above, the filaments buzzed with a few preliminary flickers of light and then suddenly came alive with their pale glow.
It was a sort of well ordered laboratory, a strange contrast to the varied accumulation of knickknacks decorating the upper room. Here, there were shelves neatly lined with rows and rows of test tubs, their soft glimmer the source of the blue stars I had seen at first.
Tale Told 
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