The ink upon the pages stretched as the longest of ladders up the tallest of walls. Ariah held onto the book as if it were her escape route. Reading is escapism, but some need to escape more than others. Boredom is one ignition to imagination, she thought, yet strife and pain are another thing altogether. The past year had been the education she never wanted. From this moment on, with this book, the future will be better.
With a cover of sky-blue and pages cloud-white, Ariah held the book with party-invitation glee. The spring wind came to rustle its pages, to hint at the miles of inky roads within. Ariah, with two hugging hands, clasped it to her heart. At once, a skipping sensation rose from her soles to the very tip-top of her head. This frisson of joy brought an easy grin to her freckled face. Fun. This summer would be fun. She could feel it!
The book had rained onto the park bench one paper-drip at a time, or at least that is how Ariah imagined it. Born of a storm cloud dense enough to cut out all light, she mused. Though all about it the wood was drenched and rotten, from front cover to back, the novel was as dry as it would be on the hottest of summer days. To her adventitious fingertips it was baked to such a searing heat that she retracted her hand with a scream. Sadness. Anger. Danger. What in the world could create a book such as this?
‘Twas typewriter born a time long forgotten; every page had been anger-battered with a casuality of iron rods - clunk-clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk-clunk. The crudest of ink had soaked its pages through and through. Its sepia pages had descended into the most woeful of brittle conditions, fragmenting into rough edged leaves. The only touching fingers came from winter’s hand; at times it was as if the wind howled its prose in spectral fashion, deliberately disregarding the syntax. Perhaps it would have gone on that way for time out of mind, but Ariah came and everything changed.
The book cover could have been woven from the first petals of springtime. Whatever lay within was of such worth to the writer, to their community, that it had been bequeathed this velvety-aromatic protection. Without turning a page her heart made a skippity-skip, a twirl of joy, a fairytale leap! It must be an original, written by a fairy’s hand! Ariah ran; she ran through the misty rain to her treehouse and up the ladder. This would be one to savour, on her cushion, snacks at the ready.
If both page and ink were made of sunny rays, the book couldn’t have been more light. Hundreds of pages though it was, it could have been a daisy on Ariah’s palm. She held it aloft and twirled around. This book was her shangri-la, her doorway into a world made of laughter. In those times of trouble, that book had become her sanctuary and friend. Wherever she was, it was too.
In a cover of scarred animal hyde, every page end was a filthy grey. The once gaudy writing was vanishing in the meanest of twilights. Ariah turned it in her hands before holding it up to the age-bitten mirror. Curious. The book had no reflection. Every ounce of her screamed, Don’t open it! Just don’t open it! But reading books, opening them, was a habit. Creak!
A book of leaden bulleted type, of cruelest coldest ink, sat mired in table dust. Around it there were no marks, no lightening of the dirt. Time had passed unremarked. The ‘snow’ was both clock and calendar. Traffic droned mere feet from the grimy panes, muting birdsong to almost nothing at all. Ariah inched closer to it, closer, closer… Until the stench of its mouldy cover dared encroach on her brain.
The book opened as sweetly as spring flowers. Upon those soft leaves were words for the soul, a poetry that asked the core of each person for a dance. For it was written so deeply that it spoke of them more clearly than they could; it whispered the words ears lent themselves too gladly, as if from a wise mother. Inka enjoyed imagining the writer with a magic wand for a pen, that she was some sort of inter-dimensional refuge. Somehow this fantasy added to the ambience each line she brought about, as if ideas could be both seed and aromatic flower all at once, a full lifecycle in an eternal instant.
In the early morning light the pages of the book fluttered in the breeze, oblivious to the sounds of the shower or the chorus Rika chose to sing. It was her favourite; the one she could read over and over and still want more. Those creased pages within the soft green cover were her elixir. In every reading she was the heroine, the one who saved the day and still had time for fun. Each time she climbed the mountains and spoke the best lines: wise and humorous. She felt so safe in that book, sailing over the words as if she were a velvet-coated captain. Somehow, in those pages she was freer than in all the libraries of the world, as if one book was her universe.
The book took its time to sleep and its time to sing. For on those pages were a heart song, the sweetness of a soul passed on. It was no ghost, nor voice from beyond, yet it haunted us in all the right ways. For the pen is only mightier when it calls others to show the heart through the pen also; not those cheap charlatans who use it to speak of swords. The musician does not take his bow as a weapon, that is for the archer. Thus it was pure reason with a soul, words with a rhythm that echoed through humanity. So regardless of the dust that came, or the length of the slumbers between each humble opening line, it was just as good every time.
The book was a simple earthy hued cover, warming to the eyes, comforting. After all these years it was soft to the touch and the edges had a similar look to some beloved teddy bear. Inside the pages looked as if they had bathed in golden rays and taken them in, so softly golden were they. And the letters took their places as if by a composer's hand, one who was accustomed to the sweeter notes of beauty.
The book and desk, these cousins of the tree, sat near the window and the view of the woodland beyond. Upon the flowing grains was the flowing ink, both so still. And it would be that way until Seraphim returned, returned to bring purpose and life to the duo.
The book was several hundred white pages, each gentle to the fingertips. Upon them was the wisdom of her soul; those feelings of love channelled through great knowledge and a lifetime of meditative contemplation. In that humble ink was the liveliness of her brain, how her synapses danced as if they were young all her days. That book, it was what a person could accomplish in decades if their soul was forever as pure as a child.
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