The Truth About The Many Worlds Of Printed Pages

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Books are magic portals to other worlds, places where hope never dies, where loneliness doesn't exist, and great love truly happens. 

Siena believed it wholeheartedly. 

Siena also believed that disappearing into books, freeing her soul into the parallel worlds she was reading about, leaving her body, the imperfect, inadequate shell trapping her spirit in her everyday life behind, vanishing from reality for hours on end, was something of her special power. She considered the huge number of books she had read the only peculiar thing about herself. Siena didn't see herself as pretty or awesome, but she was well-read in her own opinion, possibly knowledgeable...

The problem was that no one she had ever met thought that her bibliophilia and bookish wisdom was anything special, or interesting; the amount of men who strolled into her life and then walked away, yawning, after the second, sixth, or the twelfth date was a good enough proof. The number of both the men and the disappointment and heartbreak they brought with them was growing gradually, and she was only twenty-three... if it continued this way... No, she didn't want to think about the count she would hit upon reaching forty.

Sighing, Siena closed the book she had devoured in the three hours since she returned home from work; the contemporary books seemed to be always getting shorter. She should reread The Count of Monte Cristo next, or War and Peace, those would last longer than The Fault in Our Stars.

Wiping the last tears lurking in the corners of her eyes, she pushed her reading blanket to the side and stood up from her cosy reading armchair, stretching all the muscles in her body that had gone to sleep during her long reading session. She walked across her sitting room towards one of its four walls lined with a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, made-to-measure bookcase, depositing the latest victim of her book-vampirism on top of the shortest pile of books, coming only up to her knee, composed of the volumes that had already spilt from the over-filled, white, wooden shelves. She needed more books. But first, she should get another bookcase, and before that, a bigger flat to store them all... She could always move to her grandmother's old house, lying empty and abandoned in the Tuscan countryside, if only it wasn't so far from the city centre and the high school where she worked.

If you continue at this pace in this flat, you'll bury yourself inside under all these books, that's that, she thought, jumping at the sudden sound of the cat flap reaching her from the front door, pulling her, at last, entirely back into reality. The noise was followed instantly by the appearance and a miaowed hello from Dante, her enormous, ginger tomcat, who, curiously resisting the gravity's pull, floated fluidly towards her across the tops of the piles of books, not upsetting one.

"You're the best duster in the world, Dante," she told the purring orange ball as it jumped in her arms from the closest, trembling pile of printed pages. "But that's not the reason I love you, I hope you know that. Let's feed you, shall we?"

Dante miaowed in acquiesce, allowing his human to carry him into the kitchen on her shoulder, his ginger fur creating a stark contrast next to her long, honey-blonde hair.

Even as Siena switched on the lights in the kitchen, noticing for the first time that night had descended upon the word outside while she was lost in her book, her phone rang, making her deposit Dante unceremoniously-- his bright blue eyes watching her with haughty indignation-- on the tiled floor, and rush back into the book-crowded sitting room, towards the armchair where she could see the phone's display shine through the white layer of her blanket, stumbling over one of the book piles in the semi-darkness, inwardly cursing her uncatlike clumsiness.

She stared at her phone, surprised into a silent, almost petrified state of motionlessness long after the call had ended, stirring back to life only when Dante jumped on her lap, and pawed her thighs painfully in demand of the promised meal.