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Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them.
A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun.
Reading a novel, he supposes, is like playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game.
A reading major, that’s what he wants. No response papers, no exams, no analysis, just the reading.
Yesterday it felt like it always does, like almost not quite home. Today he feels like an impostor.
“To be able to make your own choices and decisions but to have it be part of a story? You want that narrative there to trust in, even if you want to maintain your own free will.”
The reader. The player. The audience. That’s what you bring to it, even if you don’t make the choices along the way, you decide what it means to you.”
Stories are personal, you relate or you don’t.”
Everyone is a part of a story, what they want is to be part of something worth recording. It’s that fear of mortality, ‘I Was Here and I Mattered’ mind-set.”
For every tale carved in rock there are more inscribed on autumn leaves or woven into spiderwebs.
A girl lost in the woods is a different sort of creature than a girl who walks purposefully through the trees even though she does not know her way.
He believes in books, he thinks as he leaves the room. That much he knows for sure.
“But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings no matter how the stars might wish it so.”
