Knill sits up, confused. Waking up from a decade long dream tends to make one do that. Knill looks at the glittering, purple stone he still has in his hand. It seems to glow against the unending white of the room and the monotonous grey of Knill’s skin. The white room is a prison of sorts, a place where one is tortured. The walls are too white. Indeed, they are so white that one cannot decide where the wall ends and the floor begins. It is almost as if one could go on walking forward forever. But obviously, Knill cannot; he can feel the solid wall in front of him. It is undoubtedly a wall. 

Knill’s dreams are foreign. Gone are the days when he could embrace his slumber with alacrity; his dear friends are perfidious. He opena his deep purple eyes to look at the clock on his ceiling: half past six, time to get up. Still lying down, he draws the curtains next to his curved bed against the circular wall. The orange light of dusk falls on his face, amplifying the power of his laser-like gaze.

There is a scratching at the door. Knill’s world flickers as he lazily drags himself to the other side of his small, wooden cylindrical room. He opens the door. A small, orange fox stares at him expectantly with its large yellow eyes, camouflaged so perfectly against the orange snow that it seems as though the two eyes were floating in midair above a small black spot of a nose. Knill slams the door shut.

  A few minutes later, the door reopens. The fox regards Knill with a polite curiosity mingled with a triumphantly smug air.

“Just get in, would you?” snaps Knill.

“I haven’t got anything for you to eat.” he adds as the fox trots in. Wasting no time, the fox ceremoniously positions himself at the centre of the room. Then with a gag, a great retch and a disgusting sound, he vomits a small amethyst onto the floor. Seemingly unaware of Knill’s remonstrations, he then promptly jumps up on Knill’s bed and pretends to go to sleep.

Curiosity gets the better of Knill. He picks the stone out of the pool of drool. A light playfully dances and beckons within it. He looks up, only to see the white walls of the room mocking him once more.