The Painting in the Room of Lost Works

The peculiar thing was that I’d never seen the painting before. I’d been working for hours in the Library’s private collection, hidden away in the quiet, undoored room beside Omega’s office. I’d finished mending Cato’s Carmen de Moribus, puzzling over the incantations for the dead, when I happened to glance at the wall to my left. Next to the deep, burnished bookshelves there hung a small painting of what appeared to be an island.

I rose to examine it. As I drew closer, the details of each tiny image became clearer and more distinct. At first, it appeared to me to be a painting of a crescent-shaped island in a tranquil blue sea, lush tropic greenery visible just beyond the waters’ edge. As I drew near, however, so did the place before me. I could smell the tang of saltwater, feel a warm breeze drifting toward me. I shook my head as I felt a light spray of seawater on my face while I watched the gentle surf lap at the shore.

On the beach stood a golden creature, fur rippling in the breeze and glinting in the light of the morning sun. He bent to crouch over the waves, paws darting in and out as if fishing in the shallows. I stepped back a pace, wondering if this small painting was a gate to another place, but as I did so, the waves and the breeze ceased. The delicate painting of the island hung in stillness on the wall before me. I lifted one hand to touch its frame and noticed, for the first time, a signature I couldn’t quite make out beneath an elegant inscription: The Summer Country.