Riddle Cure
“Contents: One (1) self-knitting sphinx costume, powdered
Transformative effects will take place when all the powder is in place.
To remove the costume, receive the answers to the three riddles.”
You drop the sheet, having gleaned all you could from it. This was certainly a relief! You have a way to reverse the process now…but what exactly are the “three riddles”? And what does it mean to “receive the answer”? You close your eyes, trying to think of what the paper means!
As you do so, a few ideas come to the surface, like bubbles in a vat of water. You’re not sure which are things that you are really remembering and which are additions from the transformation. You know what the role of a sphinx is…it is to test travelers with riddles. Answer the riddle correctly, and the traveler receives some kind of boon. Fail, and the sphinx will devour the traveler. If you need to receive the answers to three riddles before the costume is removed, then you’ll need to seek travelers out to participate in the process.
The riddles themselves…well, you can’t say that you can think of them right now, but they seem to be in the back of your mind, as if hearing the first word would cause the rest to fly to the tip of your tongue. Perhaps you could only speak the riddles to others? Regardless, it won’t do you any good to say up here in the empty sky. The only place to find people is on the ground! Picking a likely direction (away from the shop), you begin a long, low arc of descent, your piercing eyes swiveling around to try and spot a reasonable target.
Written by Kinky Chameleon on 23 May 2018