"Seventeen Chandeliers"

I wrote this story while sitting on the floor of Preston Bradley Hall in the Chicago Cultural Center, aka, the room with beautiful giant glass dome in the middle. Lauren gave me the word "lodestar" to write a story about and this is what happened.

I know a world exists outside this room, but I fear I will never see it again. This cavernous space is filled with slow-moving giants. I am fortunate to've not been sighted yet. They are quiet like me. I make my way across rough plains of burgundy, crimson, teal, sienna. I am in a maze with no walls. A false lodestar watches over me. I know it to be false, yet every day I am tricked by it, day in, day out, every day. They all blend together, the days.

At night, it is quiet. Quieter than when the giants of the day roam. I allay my fears of solitude, of capture, of death, by knowing that each day anew, my true sun rises on the same grandiose windows that tell me that there does exist a world outside these walls. But it soon flies away, camouflaging itself with other false stars, seventeen by my last count, though infinite they might as well be: their reflections around the ceiling are eternal.