The Awakening
She turned to me with a gleaming smile and scintillating emerald eyes, in a faultless union with the contours of her beguiling face. She spoke with an air of elegance that captivated her allure, enchanting the air with evangelical charisma, reaching out to grasp my journal and writings, her eyes brimming with unrequited nostalgia as if she knew me.
• • •
A melodic bell supplanted the mechanical clock ticking inside the compact live-in bookshop as it struck six in the first light. The slow simmer of light caressing window panes gently wakes its owner to salient beauty, rescinding the darkness to its silent retreat, bundling carefully out of the cocoon that induces a restless sleep. Elara slowly crept to hunch at a table, weary of life. She ignited the captivating titian glow of a candle, watching it dance proudly to a sporadic beat, offering its soothing companionship and energy for the day ahead. Each flicker of light crept further and further into the folds of darkness, smothering the room and inhibiting its concealment, awakening the books hidden within to life. A gentle glow emanates from the pages, illuminating the room with a soft, otherworldly light.
Her calligraphy pen scratches into the worn pages of her journal in the microscopic room, recalling the surreal memories that left no corner of her mind unscathed. The vivid dream-embedded, flickering forgotten images to her as she recedes these transmissions into her journal. It is an unrecognised blissful sentiment of nostalgia. Elara recalls a faraway reality, a planted recollection to which she could only feign a relation. Recognition, instead, became a gateway to the myriad stories that inhabited her mind. Each vision written weaves a tapestry of the unseen world; the haunting scatters of invariant papers remind her of the duties she must partake in to endure the reality she is enslaved in. She beguilingly closes her journal and neatens the abomination that is her desk to commence the crisp winter dawning, embraced by the sun's gentle warmth. She prepares another day within the bookshop to market texts that hum with a life of their own to readers who flood the doors of her establishment.
As she descends the spiral staircase to the entrance, she releases the final barrier between her and reality, beginning her day by milling about helping her patrons satiate their curiosity. With each hour blending seemingly into the next, the once vibrant morning rays transformed into a pencil-thin crescent moon that curled low into the sky—reminding her that the day had ended and closing time was near. Then, the timely ding of the bell summoned her attention, disturbing the silence. The ambience in the shop shifted; most customers had already been satisfied, leaving a lingering sense of peace as she completed the urgent tasks for tomorrow. She turned around to see a familiar ethereal figure glistening amongst the dusky sky perusing through the scattered papers, and journals that scattered her back desk. She had haunted her waking hours — entrancing Elara into physical inertness. She meekly stared at her in disbelief, wondering if the phenomenon was a far-fetched allusion.
“Who are you?", Elara inquired. The woman merely gazed in silence with a soft compelling smile alluring Elara to her undeniable elegance. Her reassuring expression transformed the past years of dreams into a fleeting memory hypnotised by the presence before her. The woman’s eyes held an otherworldly glow as she loomed closer and uttered. "Take this, within these pages, worlds unfurl, realities whisper, beckon, swirl. Experiences dance where words cascade, infinite realms where dreams are made," she spoke in poetic verse a soft whisper that resonated deep within Elara's soul as she extended a book towards her hands.
As Elara's fingers brushed the cover, she felt its warmth pulsing against her palms like a heartbeat. She felt the writings were more than words on a page; they were living entities, breathing and evolving. As she turned to question the woman, she found herself alone. Reality then began to blur, regressing her into darkness.
• • •
Dawn approached as Elara squinted through her jaded eyes — still drowsy — She awoke in an unfamiliar world, memory a void, with no trace of how she came to stand. with the only clue being the realised emancipation from the book gifted in her hands. As the cogent night reached its ephemeral stages, it managed one final attempt to fortify its expanse to no avail. Surfacing from the horizon, the scintillating auburn sun ebbed the dreary darkness. A new story waiting to unfold, or perhaps one from the past retold. She now stands awake.
