Ulash A'kahar - the Jar of Whispered Words

Throughout dark alleyways and whispered sheets of silken pleasure, the most valued currency is often not gold or iron, but silence. And nothing embodies this better than Ulash A'kahar, the jar of whispered words.   The jar’s heavy ceramic body is often rendered in dark, luminous color, a deep indigo or sapphire blue, a hue so rich it seems to hold the very darkness of the starry heavens. Sometimes, veins of pale, translucent jade weave through the glaze, like the cool waters of an oasis spring. Other times tiny white stars are worked into the glaze or is kept in the simple, abyssal black of a stormy night. While held, the pottery feels cold and empty no matter how heavy the sun burns as long as the lid is open. But all that changes when its closed: But all that changes when it’s sealed: the lid settles with a soft, final sigh, a sound often described as a breath let go by one's own mind.

Indeed, within that perfect, final seal lies the jar’s true magic. It does not contain, it does not store, it seals away the truth itself. Once one leans in and breathes their burden - a stolen name, a hidden crime, the location of a lost treasure - into the dark, cool mouth of the vessel only it remembers. The moment, the very breath the meticulously crafted lid is sealed, the connection to this secret is severed. Unburdened, the speaker is left with a sudden, palpable lightness, a sensation akin to waking from a fever or realizing a crippling debt has been paid. Stress, terror, knowledge - all things related to the secret are gone. The jar takes it all, sealing the secret in the dark; a soft warmth shuddering trough the clay the only hint of its new treasure. One does not simply forget, the knowledge does not merely fade; it is utterly removed, blown away as cleanly as a sand drawing swallowed by the storm - and so is any interest in the jar itself. Most store it away it onto a cupboard to gather dust or in some dusty chest, never thinking of it again.

  Inside its shell, the secret slumbers as an imprisoned echo, a barely audible whisper clinging to the glazed surface. Should one attempt a magical restoration of the memory or any form of divination against the speaker, the effort fails utterly, for there is nothing there - the knowledge is gone. The only way to unleash the truth again is to deliberately unseal the Jar and listen to the returning echo. How many secrets still slumber, hidden away in cupboards, gathering dust, their bearers long turned to dust and shadows, nobody knows - and yet, the voices of forgotten whispers carry on, telling secrets of the dead if only one listens.