Intruder alert!

In the early morning light Tabitha squinted at the invading photons inexorably undermining her continued attempts at sleep. Whose idea was it to have sheer lace curtains instead of sensible, heavy drapes? Oh, it was hers. She had said something about elegance versus utility to her mother, who had warned her that the summer sun would do just what it was presently doing. Tabitha had felt so independent, flaunting her mother’s advice. After all, her bedroom did face east. It was inevitable that sooner or later she would be exposed in the full light of day.

As Tabitha tried to bring her eyes gradually more open, the objects in the room took on more focus. The clothes hanging on her coat tree lost the appearance of the gardner whom she had inherited with the house and turned back onto her bathrobe and the fancy, feathered headdress she had tossed on top after Saturday’s costume party. The objects on her dresser gave up their masquerade as stalking predators and turned back into the various boxes, brushes and perfume bottles they were supposed to be.

One item in the room took longer than the others to resolve itself into an understandable shape. It was an antique milk can Tabitha had picked up at the local craft fair, painted black and then decorated with stylized leaves and flowers. It had two handles so it could presumably be strapped onto a horse or made fast in a wagon. Tabitha had fallen in love with it as soon as she set eyes on it, even though, or perhaps because, her mother had questioned the wisdom of purchasing such an outrageously-priced piece of junk, no matter how it was painted, and bringing it into a beautiful home such as Tabitha’s when it properly belonged in a barn. The younger woman was not to be deterred though, and the painted bucket was duly loaded into the trunk with the other “objets d’art” and set up in the corner of the bedroom as a receptacle for a long bouquet of pampas grasses.

Now, as Tabitha’s morning vision cleared, she could see the white awns swaying in the breeze from the open window like the beard on a grizzled dwarf. The dark flowered bucket, obscured still in shadow, looked like patterned trousers, or perhaps merely paint-splattered. Try as she might, this superimposed image would not fade, and Tabitha finally sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and jammed her glasses on her face, grateful that the bearded dwarf had finally reverted to pampas grass once more.