I published this a long time ago and it got unpublished and i feel like publishing it again for opinions OKAY
Thanks to Xx_AngelOfMusic_xX for giving me the idea for this. I had to create and write a short story in two hours, and I asked people on Wattpad to help because I was an unimaginative procrastinator... Anyways, I got an A+! Thanks XD I decided to post it on here because why not... It might turn into a short book later on, who knows? Also, I am NOT creative when it comes to titles. HELP.
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If you had passed the small boy with choppy brown hair and gleaming green eyes sitting gingerly on the curb of the cracked, concrete sidewalk, you would not have given him more than a glance. You would not have noticed more than the obvious, evident fact that he was a young child with darkly colored hair. You would not have seen or known anything beyond the ordinary, curious countenance he displayed.
You would have never guessed that just hours earlier, he was not even residing in the human realm.
This boy was walking casually, yet swiftly through the streets of London in the late eighteen-hundreds. Nothing to worry about, surely. Just another child going about his day, being innocently adventurous. He walked through the heart of the bustling city, but he did not follow the crowd to any main attractions. He did not go into a clothing store and he did not walk to a market. Curiously, he walked into a bookstore.
Now, this bookstore was not used to customers. Many of the locals even wondered why it was still in business. The proprietor of the store was a cranky, bitter man who was fond of two things. These two things were his books and himself.
The boy obliviously walked into the dimly lit bookstore, wincing a little as the door made an uncomfortable creaking sound. The area consisted of a single main aisle, and to the left and right of the aisle there where shelves that, of course, held books. At the end of the hall from that started at the door was a desk, but, oddly enough, it was empty. No books, pencils, glasses. Absolutely nothing.
The boy knew the store couldn't be very large due to the size of the building and the fact that it had several other businesses running there. Thus, every time the boy gazed down a row, he would find it ended in the short length of about ten feet. Each row was labeled. The rows on the left were odd numbers and the right even. The boy nonchalantly strode past each one, peering down it and never doing more than that until his short body suddenly froze next to the last row on the left side, labeled in flaking paint, 11.
This row was different. It did not end at a mere ten feet. In fact, it did not end at all. The tall shelves were lined up as far as the eye could see. The boy stood in shock and awe, checking several other rows to make sure he had not missed any other hidden surprises. They were all the same, which left him baffled. Doing what any other big-eyed child his age would do, he walked down the aisle. Other than the bizarre fact that it was never-ending, there seemed to be nothing wrong with the corridor, so the kept walking.
He was about five minutes in when he began to grow bored and turned around, only to reveal how far he had gotten. The main aisle was almost out of sight, and with with a sudden wave of determination and curiosity, he took a book to keep himself busy and kept walking.
The book he had randomly chosen was something filled with stories of fairies and goblins; just about every fantastical creature you could think of. The boy soon found himself deeply engaged into the book and did not pay attention to anything other than his walking and his reading. He did not notice the leaves or branches that were beginning to blanket the bookcases around him, or how the wooden floor beneath his feet had grown cracked with grass and small flowers peeking from beneath. Nor did he detect how the ceiling seemed to be spotted with holes that sunlight peeked in through.
As he walked and read, the holes got larger. The wooden ground slowly faded away and he walked upon fresh, green grass dotted with small, colorful flowers. Yet he still did not see a thing other than the words on the pages of that book. Until he ran straight into a tree.
The boy yelled in surprise and fell on his bottom, clutching the book tightly before setting it on the ground. He rubbed his eyes groggily, as if he had just been pulled out of a trance. Removing his hands from his eyes, his jaw dropped. He looked around, slowly rising to his feet. The boy was standing in an oddly familiar, bright and sunlit forest. The trees were tall and their bark was light, as was everything else in the forest. The air smelled refreshing and of greenery. He looked up in astonishment, seeing light stream through the branches of the trees. Multicolored birds were flying above his head, making beautiful, song like chirps.
The atmosphere was peaceful and extraordinary. For a while, the boy just stood in disbelief, enjoying the scenery and feel. He knew it was the setting from his book. It had to be, for the book described a place just like the one he had found himself in.
He turned to see the aisle of books and looked around both sides of it. It was also surrounded by forest and he still could not find an end to it. The shelves were covered in trees and vines, as if they had been there for a generation. The boy picked up his book and decided that he would finish reading it in that forest, but to his dismay, the words were gone. It was just an old leather case bound with about three hundred pages.
He huffed in disapproval and closed the book, walking into the aisle to find another. He soon discovered that every book was the same, but he also found that every step he took into the aisle caused a word to appear in the book he held. The boy realized that to read the book, he would have to leave the odd place he had discovered. With a somewhat discontent sigh, he looked back at forest, giving it a small wave before he started to journey down the row.
The vines soon faded and the ceiling of the aisle pieced back together. The floorboards grew strong and bound together tightly again. After a while of walking, the forest could no longer be seen. The boy kept reading, though, and he finished the book. As his eyes lifted from the very last word, he found that he was standing at the beginning of the aisle, in the middle of the bookstore.
Behind the desk was the old man who owned it, and to the boy's surprise, he was smiling. It was not an unsettling or sarcastic smile, either, it was kind and gentle. Without a word, the boy handed the book to him. No words were exchanged, but there was an indescribable understanding that passed between the two. With that, the boy simply exited the bookstore, finding the creak of the door comforting as he closed it.
The boy then walked back into the streets of London and sat on a curb to ponder the previous events. He had absolutely no clue what had happened, but he was okay with that. His eyes danced with images of the forest as he thought, wondering if any of the people who strode by him knew of the mysterious row in the bookstore.
If you had passed the small boy with choppy brown hair sitting on the curb of the sidewalk, you would not have given him more than a glance.
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