Lost Things: That Which Is from Within

She reappeared in another part of the library, a dank room smelling of moldering wood and fungus. The furniture here was in disrepair, rotten through and falling apart. She loved it.

She settled onto a pile of termite-eaten wood that may once have been a chair and opened her case. Rather than removing the object, however, she made a hacking sound in her throat for several seconds. A moment later she spat a great gobbet of sticky, yellow-and-black phlegm into the case. She cackled, producing a small, paper box from the sleeve of her moth-worn robe.

Only then did she reach into the case and produce an orange vesicle that pulsed and bounced lightly from her fingertips. The object couldn't have been larger than a marble, but the smell it produced would have been nauseating to anyone other than the old crone. Instead, she inhaled deeply and cackled again before placing the vesicle into the paper box. The box she placed in a cubby-hole, where it vanished from sight. That which was found was once more lost again.