THE MINK ROOM
Sansa lay on the softest fur. It was creamy, shading to brown. Sansa thought it was just a carpet; but when she rose, she realised that the walls and the ceiling were fur too. A soft light suffused the room, but came from no particular source. There was no object to break the monotony. Except, in the far corner, she spied something.
It was a heap of pearls. They ranged from tiny ones no larger than seeds to huge ones the size of walnuts. They shone with a restrained lustre, almost humming with satisfaction. Sansa ran them through her hands, and they made a purring and then a clicking sound. She thought, what kind of place is this? It was comfortable. She was naked, but warm enough. She was not hungry, even though she knew that she could not survive on pearls alone. What to do in such a place?
Sansa knew she must escape. She pushed against the walls of fur, which were malleable but intransigent. A breach had to be made. She took one of the largest pearls and bit it hard. Unexpectedly, it had a jagged edge, and with this implement she sawed away at the fur wall. As she effected a little wound, it bled profusely, and she wiped the blood away with her hair.
After hours of hacking and rubbing, she made an aperture big enough to slip through. Now there was enough perspective and to spare. She stepped out into a desert. The endless horizon stretched everywhere, swept by a scorching wind. Sansa stepped back into the fur room, and took handfuls of the pearls. Some she stowed in her mouth, some in her vagina, some in her ears, and, thus provisioned, she walked out into the sun.
