You take a deep breath. The scent of Earl Grey tea and old books fills your lungs. The air around you is still and warm. You had just come from the kitchen cradling the warm cup. Your eyes land on the window. It's closed for some reason. You walk over setting your cup down on the table by the window. With a slight struggle you open the stubborn thing and breathe in again.
Sweet green trees and grass. You can practically feel the plants stretching their leaves to the sun. Wanting to hug its friendly warmth. Not knowing it could burn them. The sky is impossibly blue. The bright azure of summer with big fluffs of white. Making the dark green pines and fresh green trees stand out.
Walking back across the creaky old floors. To get the one book you want, nay need, right now. Walking back into the labyrinth of stories. So much emotion, passion, adventure, horror, and mystery packed into paper with ink and encased in leather, canvas, wood... They seem too small. Even the biggest books don't seem to be big enough to hold the stories. My heart, my mind, is a much better place for them. I wish I could remember these stories forever. Keep them in the depths of my mind-library. The only place where they will stay perfect and unchanged. The only place where everything is perfect. But this place is still so comforting. The many colored covers of the treasure-chest of stories.
There it is. The one book right for you right now. The only one you want to hear, to read. Nothing else fits. Nothing else works. Hugging the treasure, you head back to the sunlit window. There is something so comforting about the seat. The slightly worn-down armchair was warmed by the sunshine. Waiting for you to snuggle up and read to your heart's content. The way the sun warms the pages of the book and lights up the tea in the mug; there's nothing better.
You open the book and the story engulfs you. Pouring over you. Into your soul. There is nothing left in the world. You aren't even in this world anymore. You are in the story. Laughing at the character's silliness. Crying with them. Living with them. Scolding them for being stupid. Falling in love with them. Nothing else matters.
The books speak. Stories told over and over and over. Whispers in the dark corners of the night. Laughter in the midday meadows. So few words. So many feelings. There is so much hidden in those inked pages. So much told by only 26 letters. This world probed to its limit and beyond. Other worlds created. With their own laws. Their own prople. Our human mind dissected in a book. One man trying to understand another's actions. Nature explained in simplest terms. Yet confusing even to the greatest mind. Because nature is more than just sky and earth and grass and trees. It's love and hate and joy and joy and sorrow. Hundreds of memories of thousands of people. Millions of faces parading in masks. People. Humans. Me...
I'm in those books. Those fictional places and fantasy lives. I see myself in the smile. A question. An action. In those creatures. Things that never existed, but are so alive in my mind. People in a book. That's all me.
