The Song of Endless Roads I. The Beginning The morning stirs with golden breath, A hush before the day is born. The earth awakens, soft and slow, Its heart still trembling from the dawn. I step into the waiting silence, Shoes damp with dew, lungs filled with sky. The road before me bends and whispers, “Walk on, child, don’t ask why.” For every path has secrets hidden, Carved in stone and sung by streams, And those who dare to keep on walking Find their footsteps leading into dreams. II. Voices of the Earth The fields are choirs of quiet wonder, Grass blades hum in emerald rows. The trees hold council in their stillness, Guardians of what the spirit knows. Birdsong bursts like sudden laughter, Rising clear where shadows fade. Each feathered voice a note of freedom, Each trill a hymn creation made. The wind becomes my patient teacher, Tracing stories along my skin. It speaks of journeys without ending, Of worlds that live both out and in. III. The Weight ...
The Last Library
The city of Cindralis had forgotten silence.
Engines roared through the steel towers, neon lights pulsed endlessly, and the air was heavy with advertisements that spoke louder than human voices. People walked fast, their eyes fixed on glowing screens, never looking up, never looking back.
But tucked between two colossal towers, hidden like a scar in the city’s skin, stood a crumbling stone building with a weathered sign: The Grand Library. Few even noticed it, and fewer still went inside. Books, after all, were relics.
Only one man remained there—Arin Vale, the last librarian.
The Keeper of Dust
Arin was old, his beard silver, his back bent, but his eyes still carried the sharp gleam of wonder. He had grown up among the shelves, raised by parents who had once believed stories were as vital as air. Now, he lived alone in the silence of parchment and ink, dusting the books, mending their spines, whispering to them like old friends.
Every night, he walked the aisles with a lantern, tracing his fingers along the shelves. Each book seemed alive, each cover a heartbeat, each page a breath.
The city outside believed knowledge lived in the Cloud—streams of data uploaded and downloaded at will. But Arin knew better. True knowledge had weight, smell, texture. It was written in trembling hands and pressed into paper.
Still, the shelves grew lonelier. Few came anymore. Except for one.
The Girl Who Listened
Her name was Lyra, a thin, sharp-eyed girl of fourteen. She slipped into the library one rainy evening, her hood soaked, her hands clutching a broken tablet.
“It won’t turn on,” she muttered, holding the device up.
Arin chuckled softly. “Then you’ve come to the right place. My machines don’t run on batteries.”
He handed her a book. She stared at it like it was a stone.
“What is it?”
“A story,” Arin said. “Open it.”
Her fingers fumbled with the stiff cover, but when she saw the words, her eyes widened. She read haltingly, stumbling on sentences, but her voice softened as the story pulled her in.
From that night, Lyra returned. She read hungrily—fables, histories, myths. She asked questions, big questions, the kind no glowing screen answered. Arin saw in her what he had once felt: the fire of curiosity, the thrill of discovery.
“She’s the future,” he whispered to the shelves when she left each night. “The last flame.”
The City’s Warning
One morning, Arin found a notice nailed to the library’s door:
ALL PHYSICAL DATA STORAGE TO BE DESTROYED.
UNAUTHORIZED ARCHIVES WILL BE ELIMINATED.
The government had long believed books were dangerous. They carried contradictions, emotions, truths that could not be “optimized.” And now, they were coming for the last library.
Arin felt the weight of centuries pressing on his chest. Thousands of voices, thousands of years of human thought—erased with a single fire.
When Lyra arrived that evening, he showed her the notice. Her eyes burned.
“They can’t just erase it all,” she said. “It’s… it’s who we are.”
“They can,” Arin whispered. “Unless…”
The Secret Room
By lantern light, Arin led Lyra to the back of the library. He pulled a ladder to a forgotten shelf and pressed a hidden panel. A door creaked open, revealing a chamber lit by a single flickering bulb.
Inside were hundreds of books, carefully wrapped and preserved. But more than that, there were machines—ancient printers, typewriters, even a hand-cranked press.
“This,” Arin said, voice trembling, “is the heart. I’ve hidden it for years. If the library burns, these survive.”
Lyra’s mouth dropped open. “Then we can save them.”
Arin shook his head. “I’m too old. But you—” He placed a book in her hands. “You can carry them forward.”
The Burning
It happened three nights later.
Engines thundered outside, and soldiers in black marched in with torches.
“By order of the Council,” their captain declared, “this archive is terminated.”
Arin stood in the doorway, frail yet unyielding. “These books are not yours to destroy. They belong to every soul who ever lived—and those yet to come.”
The captain sneered. “Stories are inefficient. They slow progress.”
Torches ignited. Shelves caught like dry bones. The air filled with smoke and the crackling screams of paper. Arin felt his heart break as centuries turned to ash.
But Lyra was already in the hidden chamber, loading a satchel with books. Her hands shook, but her resolve was steel. Arin had taught her well. She slipped out the back door, unseen, vanishing into the alleys with history on her back.
The Last Stand
Arin did not flee. He walked into the burning aisles, running his hands along the shelves one final time.
“Forgive me,” he whispered to the books, to Marian who once read by his side, to every story he could not save.
As flames climbed higher, the clocks of the city struck midnight. Arin sank into a chair, closed his eyes, and listened—not to fire, but to voices. A thousand stories sang in his ears, and he smiled.
When the soldiers dragged his body out hours later, they found only ashes and silence.
The New Beginning
Lyra did not stop running until dawn. She reached the abandoned trainyard at the edge of the city and hid in a rusted carriage. She unwrapped one book and pressed her nose to its pages. It smelled of smoke, dust, and something eternal.
Tears blurred her vision, but she began to read aloud. Her voice cracked, but she kept going, because she knew: the stories could not die if they were spoken.
In time, others found her. Children, wanderers, outcasts. They listened, they learned, they carried books in secret. A new library was born, not of stone, but of people.
And though the city of Cindralis thought it had silenced the past, whispers spread: of a girl with fire in her eyes, carrying the last words of humankind into the future.
Comments
Post a Comment