Unidentified Found Object

This story fulfills the Minor Characters prompt as well as featuring (what appears to be) a tiny person in a jar. Because of how creeped out characters are by the snow globe, this may count as Dark Fantasy as well.  

The bank of the North River was only sparsely populated, making it an excellent place to let a lizard run loose. Pare rode on Lizzie’s shoulders as the giant reptile galloped and frolicked. She seemed to love the riverbank, with its warm stones and open spaces and all the low-buzzing mosquitoes she could catch.

Lizzie settled on a particularly wide, flat rock and closed her eyes. Pare dismounted to stretch his legs.

The sparkle of sunlight on water was almost hypnotic. Pare walked slowly around the edge of Lizzie’s basking rock, appreciating the view of the wide river on one side and wider field of flowers on the other.

There was a glint of light where he hadn’t expected it. The large elf lowered himself over the side of the rock, hanging by his fingertips for a moment, and went to investigate. He wasn’t concerned about danger. Lizzie was just a shout away, and there hadn’t been enough rain this summer to make the river a flood risk.

Whatever had caught the light was mostly round and about twice Pare’s height, and splotched with mud.

He got close enough to make out a shape inside of it.

Pare gasped in horror.

He had never seen the cobweb trap in which the Bog King had imprisoned the Sugar Plum Fairy, but Sunny had described it to everyone. Under the mud was a clear orb, much like that one, with a woman frozen inside of it.

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