text: [Themes: fantasy]
  
  Memory is an interesting thing. To think that somewhere in your brain is stored everything you have ever seen, heard and felt in your entire life, and quite possibly in every past life, just waited to be accessed. The unfortunate thing is that normally most memories are hard to get at. Throw in even the slightest bump on the head, and things can get very wonky. This is the kind of stuff you are thinking about now, slumped against a concrete wall, in a 5 by 5 room, with absolutely no idea where you are, or even who you are. Your head doesn't hurt, so does that mean you weren't knocked out? Maybe. However this room has no doors or windows, so it seems impossible for you to have been anywhere other then here ever. Wait a second. There is a door on the wall opposite you, two in fact. Now how could you miss them? They definitely were not there a second ago. One door is wooden, and rather uninteresting, while the other is golden, with intricate carvings etched onto it. Well you aren't going to be able to do much in this tiny room, so you guess you should pick a door, and see what lies beyond
  
  > Golden door
  The golden door seems very intriguing. You can make out certain symbols in the etchings, but most of them aren't related. You open the large, heavy door, and find yourself in a slightly larger concrete room, with several items laid around it. There is a table covered in baubles, and trinkets. A couple statues here and there. Two things catch your eyes, as worthwhile. The first thing is a clock, made of bronze, with golden hands, and silver inlaid numbers. The clock seems to have a certain sparkle to it. The other interesting object is a full body mirror, that seems to shine oddly. You can only inspect one item here, so which will it be?
  
  > The mirror
  You walk up to the mirror. Upon closer inspection you can see something is written around the mirrors frame; "Niotcefler t cefrep nidl roweh ttons wohs rorrim siht" It seems to be gibberish to you. As you gaze into the mirror, you begin to notice odd things. For instance, the door behind you is not reflected, but instead a new door appears on the lefthand wall. Also looking at yourself you notice things wrong with the reflection. Your hair is the wrong colour, and your clothes don't match. The reflection is not a very good one at all...
  
  > touch the mirror
  The mirror is very intriguing, with it's imperfect reflection. You decide to get in a little closer, touching the mirror in fact. In doing so the glass begins to ripple, like it's made of gelatine. This is very fascinating. You touch it some more, eventually pushing on it hard enough for your hand to pass right through the glass. You panic a little, as you can't pull your hand back out. You therefore decide to walk all the way through. On the other side of the mirror, everything seems to be relatively the same, as you saw in the reflection anyway. You turn around to face the mirror, but it's just a window now, with no reflection. You walk up to the table, and see it has the same contents on it as before. There is nothing left to do in this room, so you go up to the door on the side wall. Just before leaving however, the clock that caught your eye earlier begins to chime. Which is strange, since it didn't look like the kind of clock that chimes...
  
  > inspect the clock
  You decide to inspect the chiming clock. As soon as you so much as touch it, it turns to sand. The sand is a glowing a faint yellow, and seems to hang in the air. You go over to pick some of the sand up, but you breath some of the floating sand in. You begin to cough, trying to get rid of the sand in your lungs, but more sand gets in as you inhale. You go into a painful coughing fit, as more and more sand get in you. Soon you even start to become sand, the sand envelopes you, turning your skin to sand, and your eyes begin to glow yellow like the sand. Eventually all the sand is gone, having become you. You lie on the ground, breathing heavily. You get up, and notice your surroundings have changed. You now seem to be in some sort of altar, with an odd sword laying on a stand in the centre of the room. There is one doorway out of the room, and it seems to lead outside.
  
  > leave the room
  You decide to just leave the temple. Outside the temple, you seem to have been transported to an ancient arabian city. A quick exploration serves to inform that it is very densely populated, and that people don't seem to like the presence of a creature made of sand, with glowing eyes. You find a nice place to sleep, if you can't find a way home, but an overheard conversation puts your hopes up. Apparently, there is a magical vizier coming to visit the sick of the city, to cure them. Maybe if you see him, he can help you go home, and turn back to normal. On the day of the vizier's visit, there is a huge line of people awaiting his help. Considering you're a sand monster, though, it isn't hard to cut to the front of the line. The vizier nearly has a heart attack when you enter his tent, but he soon calms down, and you explain your situation.
  "MY, my. Well I can help you to your home, and I can change you back human, but I can not do both. You must decide what you want"...
  
  > be human again
  You tell the vizier you want to be normal again. The vizier then takes out a sealed vase. When he lifts the lid of the vase, a huge wind sucks all of the sand off of you, and out of you. When he puts the lid back on, your perfectly normal again. You leave the tent, and let the vizier tend to others. But now you're stuck here forever. Stuck in a middle eastern city, where there's nothing but sand and rats to look forward to. You can't get a job, and even if you did, it would pay about as well as not having one anyway. So you just sleep in an abandoned tower, and steal food and water to survive. You only try to steal from the rich people that frequently visit, the people who can afford all the bread in the world, and won't miss a single loaf. But apparently they do miss that single measly loaf, because you constantly are running away from royal guards and the like. The life of a street rat is a hard one