THROUGH SHELVES AND REALMS

He was surrounded by paper catacombs, where the shelves rose like ancient trees, sheltering thousands of books—some young, still fragrant with fresh ink, others withered like autumn leaves. The library was not merely a room, but a heart beating with pages: it drank his days like a thirsty vine, only to return him serenity—autumn after autumn, spring after spring. A temple of refuge, its walls clothed in printed silences. The room—a cavern of memory—floated in semidarkness, as if light itself dared not disturb the spell. Outside, the day—a damp handful of ash—drizzled a muted symphony against the windowpane. The air held the scent of hidden thoughts wafting from incense sticks, while logs crackled in the hearth like ancient tales reawakened by flame. The perfume of burnt wood opened unseen portals to other worlds, where his thoughts wandered barefoot, forgetting the path home.

He sat nestled in his old, loyal armchair, its leather arms holding him like quiet hands of an old friend. Every creak echoed a memory awakening. On the massive wooden desk, his pen and notebook gleamed—eager confidants awaiting his touch. The book read the night before had drained him of strength, yet also of burdens. He began to write—not to say something, but to be silent in a different way. He folded a note and leaned back, eyes fixed on the darkened corner of the library, where an imaginary canvas was being woven with threads of memory. He no longer remembered why he had begun writing fortunes for cookies. He had become the anonymous scribe of fragile hopes, a weaver of meaning in crumpled slips of paper. Did anyone ever wonder who had written them? Perhaps it didn’t matter. Perhaps the only thing that mattered was that tender game people played with themselves—the longing to believe. He had often watched them temper their trembling emotions with a studied nonchalance. And in the end, their smiles were the punctuation marks to his sentences. Akili rose, like a dream interrupted, and his pen—parched by solitude—found its ink once more. He scribbled a few words and approached the window. Rain traced a liquid score across the glass, and thought once again took his hand. The note slipped from his palm, bearing in large script: “Rain, fire, melancholy, soul-state, joy…” And silently, he returned to his world beyond paper, humming his solitude in the rhythm of the rain.