A painter came across the torn remnants of an ancient scroll, its mountains, cities, and figures rendered so f…
A painter came across the torn remnants of an ancient scroll, its mountains, cities, and figures rendered so finely they seemed almost alive. He lost himself in copying it, and after some time he began to notice faint traces of ink appearing in the world around him, with voices that murmured like players reciting from a script.
One night, by the unsteady light of his oil lamp, he noticed that the wet ink at the edge of the scroll had spread beyond the paper and was seeping into the walls of his room. Seized with dread, he took up his brush, dipped it, and with a trembling hand added a single stroke to a corner of what he now thought of as his room. The world lurched. The walls shriveled and peeled back like rice paper, and behind them were the scroll itself and the wooden rods of its mount.
Only then did he understand. He and everything around him were nothing but a few drying drops of ink on some vast, unseen painting. A voice came from beyond the picture, low and even: "That stroke... was unnecessary." And with that, the painter and his room were wiped clean away, leaving behind only a small, unremarkable smudge of ink on the ancient scroll.