Rosalia

Rosalia had never been a daydreamer. Nor had her dreams at night meant much to her or stuck with her through the days. She was fine with this, blessed with an innate talent to find fulfillment in the pragmatic. What life threw her way, she enjoyed tackling, even when it felt like life was throwing an abundance of pipe wrenches at her ankles. She had no time for fantasy, nor inclination to lament its absence. She did, however, appreciate beauty when she saw it, and was, like anyone she knew, drawn to it and inspired by it. She had not considered this tendency a weakness until after it led her to slip on the black ring (or had it led the ring to her?) The voices it cast into her head threw her life into immediate disarray. They offered her magical solutions to practical problems she thought she'd already solved, forcing her to second guess her original choices. The solidity of her existence dissolved into a roiling ocean of doubt, against which she struggled mightily just to keep breathing. After less than two days, she threw the ring away, without even turning to see where it landed. But later that evening, it was on her finger again. She disposed of it at least a dozen times more, literally flushed it down the toilet (more than once), yet it always reappeared. Finally, she just stared it down, glaring at her hand in silence until the ring faded away on its own. She considered this a victory, until she noticed the ring's parting gift, at first in the bathroom mirror: numerous colors in her hair that she hadn't put there. Then the colors were on the mirror, and around it, and spreading onto and staining everything in sight. A pointless, cumbersome power no one had asked for, or likely ever would have. But she knew the game. The ring wanted her to find it again. Only now was she compelled to care enough to ask why.