..Mia...
I walk toward my bookshelf, placing the book I had just finished reading neatly back on its shelf
only for my eyes to catch a peculiar volume.
A book with a charcoal-black cover,
marked at the center with a strange word,
etched in a deep crimson glow:
Irkala.
I settle into my usual corner,
running my fingers across its pages
a fantastical, enigmatic book, filled with unfamiliar glyphs and countless strange letters...
A fantasy tale of another world,
a realm swallowed by a dusky, eternal haze...
A world teeming with strange beings and an unbelievable story.
I turn off the lights,
letting the first pages draw me in
pages pulsing with intrigue,
shrouded events, and creatures beyond imagining..
.. A Flicker From the Past...
.. Arios...
I speak, my voice cracking as sorrow consumes me:
"I want her by my side... Grandfather, please help me!"
He turns, his face wrapped in astonishment
"This is the first time I've seen you like this...
So vulnerable.
You've always been the stoic one
the man others feared,
the stubborn soul with sharp edges,
who kept the world at arm's length."
Then Grandfather responds,
his voice steady, filled with unwavering determination
"I will help you."
The weight lifted from my chest.
The pain melted away.
Hope took root within me,
and love soft, quiet, unrelenting wrapped itself around me.
"Do you have something that belongs to her?"
I blink in confusion.
"No... why?"
"Bring me a single strand of her hair."
I nod and rush toward her world,
slipping through the mirror-gate that connects our realms.
I enter her room,
and carefully,
I take a silken strand from her brush
then return to my world.
I sit in silence, watching him at work.
And he says
"I shall weave for her a book
one that pulses with our magic,
whispers our secrets.
A book whose pages will carry her across the boundary...
Until she touches our soil,
and lives among us."
I nod, joy blooming within me as I take the book in my hands,
and return to her world.
But what will her reaction be?
Will she accept me as I am?
Or will she fear me?
I place the book quietly on her shelf.
Minutes pass.
She yawns, drowsy from finishing her other book,
and walks toward the library...
[End of the Memory]
She sits in the corner,
flipping through its pages,lost in them for several minutes
until sleep gently takes her,
the book resting in her hands...
And then, moments later
both she and the book... vanish.
In a sky brimming with stars,
I saw you.