Fantasy in the City

The Staff of Omri-La

The loss of the Staff of Omri-La was an event that still haunted the denizens of certain cloud-clad temples in the high Himalayas.  Cursed was the name of that European gentleman who had so taken advantage of the Temple’s hospitality one foul night.  

After the discovery of the Staff’s loss, monks were sent to the four corners of the earth, to every city on the planet, in a ceaseless search to retrieve the artefact.  The years passed and still the Staff was not found.  Generation after generation of eager, young novices were sent out on a quest that had begun to be seen as futile by wiser, older heads. 

For those sages knew that quests like this were rarely rewarded with success.  The vagaries of human life meant that the Staff was as likely to be mouldering in a suburban attic as it was in a museum’s vaults.  How would they even begin to find a clue as to its whereabouts? 

Still, the quest continued, year after year, for a prize which would grant the bearer almost unlimited power.  Only the wielder of the Staff of Omri-la could ascend to almost godlike omniscience – aware of all, yet at one with all – a blissful state of balance suspended in the interconnectedness of all things, washed in the river of life.  Only the most deserving monk; the most dedicated in his studies; the most assiduous in his duties; the most humble before his Lord and the most generous in his charity could hope to lift the Staff.  Only that true heart could become a great master, a Tulku. 

Not that this would have helped at 49 Bellevue Terrace when the children of the late Mrs Doris Watkins née Trimble - niece of the great Edwardian explorer, Eric Trimble - assembled to dispose of the accumulated bric-a-brac of a long life spent accumulating said trash. 

No-one spotted the Staff of Omri-La because no-one was interested in unwrapping the unwanted objects, shrouded as they were in mouldering rags.  It would have gone in the skip with the rest of Mrs Watkins’ life if it had not slid from the top of the pile on to the drive. 

And then been grabbed by Rascal, a particularly boisterous Jack Russell. 

“Rascal!”  Dennis Watkins shouted after the rapidly disappearing rear end of his barking terrier.  “Rascal!  Bring that back!  It’s for the tip!  You can’t go leaving that anywhere!  Rascal!” 

Dennis had no chance of finding Rascal, who had now hidden behind the neighbour’s tool-shed.  Rascal was uncharacteristically quiet.  Rascal had torn the coverings from the Staff of Omri-La.  Rascal had deposited an unpleasant amount of thick slobber onto the polished pear wood of the shaft, untouched by human hand for over five centuries. 

The little dog gazed vacantly into the sky as it gnawed on the strange bone. 

Rascal was at one with the Cosmos.  

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