I didn’t have the energy to ponder them, instead walking through the portal, back into the Library. Like how most small-scale universes work, only a couple hours had passed outside of it. I saw someone standing nearby, and asked them about this ‘sanctuary’.
Apparently everyone around these shelves knows about it, a small bubble built by a woman by the name of Zakkh. A woman who wanted something to call her own. A little paradise all to herself, and when she passed, the place became a world where one can forget about all anxieties and problems. Just plop down and relax. Smell the freshly cut grass, feel the wind on your face, be transported into the ‘past’, when things were 'much easier', and 'much better’ Ha!, all that jazz.
So I guess I was trapped because I did the opposite of relaxing? I feel like a lesson to be learned here evades me. The one solace I can hold onto is that were I to ever step into such a world again, I will know how to step out of it.
And, if I ever need a place to relax, away from both known and unknown, I know there is a place I can visit now.
Not that there aren’t already about 30 places I would go to were I ever need a break, but hey, having more options is always good.
”What the hell is this?…”
The magpie librarian, in disbelief, shuffles page after page of the run-down journal, a piece of literature that many would consider old, but paled in comparison to the ten-thousand years old turtle shells and ox scapulae that decorated the numerous rows of bookshelves dedicated to a single authoress. An authoress who the feathered librarian respected the most out of anyone in this bleak world. And this book, giddily resting atop golden-bamboo treatises and battered wooden boxes, taunted the librarian with its mediocrity, with its lack of poise: This was not a book written by the authoress. This was not a book that belonged here.
“… But where in Heaven is the book that used to be in this place?” She held her breath as she hunted through her work desk, anxiously searching for the book with one wing as she tightly held the journal with her other. “Where is it… Where is it…” The only words escaping out her dark, oblong beak were these: Words born out of anger and fear and grief, because this meant a piece of her invaluable memories, of the treasure trove she had come to possess and cherish and respect was missing. Which meant she had failed to protect that which had been entrusted to her. Entrusted by the emperor, by the people, by the kingdom she once called home, but more importantly, by the authoress herself. And now, a single brick was missing from the castle. A single weakness that could be exploited. That might have been exploited already: Who’s to say this was the only book missing? If she had been foolish enough to lose one, who’s to say she hadn’t lost more? Who’s to say she wouldn’t lose it all? Who’s-
“All good, girl?”
The magpie stops in place as a somewhat familiar voice