Iris hurried up the stairs of the two story cottage towards the room she rented. She unlocked the door with haste but gently shut it behind her. The moment it latched she whirled around, tossing her knapsack on the bed and rushing over to open the drawer of her nightstand.
Rifling through the items, she pulled out anything she might need and tossed it on the bed. First she got a few inches of thin rope with frayed ends, not strong enough to hold a person's weight, but still, every proper adventurer needed rope in their bag. Next was an old, rusty dagger she had found in the woods last year, she immediately nodded and tossed it onto the bed beside the rope. Wedged diagonally in the drawer with barely enough space to fit was an arrow with bent fletching and a missing arrowhead. It was basically just a stick, and Iris didn't even know how to shoot a bow, but she tossed it in the pile anyway.
Then she rushed over to her dresser and dug through the piles of unfolded clothes overflowing from several open drawers. She picked out the best adventuring outfit she could put together. She chose a pair of black fitted trousers, a white button shirt, and a black vest. From the floor beside the dresser, she also grabbed a mismatched pair of slightly worn socks and her only pair of boots -- also black, to match most of her wardrobe.
She tossed her old clothes onto the ground as she changed. She moved in front of her mirror to tie back her dark black hair into a bun, not bothering to catch the loose strands that fell beside her face. After dressing, she moved to her bed to pack her bag. On her bed was the weird drawstring sack. She froze, then slowly turned to look at the pile of clothes on the floor which she had just been wearing. She didn't remember noticing the bag when she unbuckled her belt or took off her pants, and she didn't remember taking it off her belt or placing it on the bed at any point either. She turned back and eyed the bag wearily.
"Are you evil?" She asked it, surprising herself by almost expecting a response. The bag, however, said nothing.
Iris inched closer, reaching out to tug on the string. The bag loosened and opened up on its own. She leaned over and peered into the endless emptiness within. Picking up the rope, she dangled the end of it over the bag, slowly lowering it into the void. The rope was suddenly pulled taut and her outstretched hand dipped down as something tugged on the rope. She yelped and let go, stumbling backwards as the full length of rope was sucked into the bag like a slurping noodle.
"Uuuhh," she stammered, "can I... have that back?"
The bag said nothing.
"Okay, this is fine," she assured herself, ignoring the fear in her voice.
She approached the bag again, this time grabbing the arrow shaft. She tossed it at the bag awkwardly and it landed horizontally on top of the bag, far too long to fit into the opening. Her eyes widened as either end of the drawstring began to move on its own, wrapping around one end of the stick and pulling it away from the bag, so that the other end of the stick would slide into the opening. The drawstring released its grip, and the stick tipped over and fell lengthwise into the bag.
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Iris immediately crouched, closely inspecting the height of the bag. It was only a few inches tall, absolutely not enough room to fit the length of an arrow. She got down on her hands and knees, lifting the dangling sheets and blanket to look under her bed, where there was no sign of the arrow.
She popped back up, eyes locking onto the bag. The only other thing left to do now was figure out how to get the items back out, a proposition she was not thrilled by. With a groan, she reached towards the opening. At first she watched the void closely, but after feeling a strange unease of being watched from within she averted her gaze. Slowly, her hand dipped into the empty.
The sensation immediately reminded her of floating in the void in the forest, something she hadn't remembered happening until now. Calling it a sensation almost wasn't accurate; it was more like a total absence of sensation. The void had no temperature, no texture, no anything. It was simply empty, somehow emptier than air.
Taking short, curt breaths as she tried to calm her nerves, she reached deeper into the bag. She couldn't feel around for items like she expected to, and she got the sense that even space itself didn't exist in the void. Instead, she instinctively understood that she was grasping, in a manner of speaking, whatever item she searched for. She focused her thoughts on the stick, and pulled out her hand.
What came out was not the arrow shaft, but her walking stick, thhe same walking stick that she lost somewhere in the woods the night before. She stopped pulling after recognizing it, holding about six inches of the walking stick above the opening to the bag, the rest extending down into the darkness. She angled the stick so it wouldn't hit the low hanging roof, and then pulled it hand over hand the rest of the way out of the void.
She placed the foot of the stick on the ground, inspecting it fondly, "did you pick this up for me?" she asked.
The bag said nothing.
"Well, thanks," she said awkwardly.
She reached back in, this time thinking about the rope, and was able to pull it out of the void in much the same fashion. Shrugging, she started tossing the items she had collected on the bed into the bag. Then, she grabbed her knapsack, unbuckled the flap, and dumped it upside down over the drawstring sack. Books, magazines, ration bars, hair ties, trinkets, loose coins she didn't know she had and various other odds and ends tumbled out of the knapsack and fell into the bag. The largest of the books landed flat atop the bag much like the arrow shaft had, and she watched as the drawstring gently nudged it until one end slipped inside the bag and the whole book fell into the void.
With a smile, she picked up the bag in both hands, pleased to find that it didn't seem to weigh any more than it had before. She brought it closer, peering intently at it, "you are fascinating," she whispered.
The bag said nothing.
She brought it down beside her belt, and just as before the ends of the drawstring reached out to wrap themselves around her belt. They wove around it in such a way that they returned to continue the loop around the rim of the bag, leaving the two ends dangling together beside it. She was beginning to suspect that the length of the string was whatever the bag wanted it to be.
She took one more look around her room, deciding if there was anything else she wanted to bring. Her gaze rested on her small bookshelf, both shelves were stocked full and more books where stacked up in front of it. For a moment she chastised herself for considering it, but then again, knowledge was an adventurer's best friend after all. At least she was pretty sure she'd read that somewhere.