Reader...a baby prologue

The hall echoed with the turning of crackling parchment. Everything is old. Everything is dry. The monotone world of the library sat still. Still except for the slow, rhythmic crackle of turning pages. With so many shadows and hidden places the reader cannot be seen. They blend into the darkness, are one with it. How they can read in the dark stillness of the moonlit library is inhuman, yet still the pages turn, slowly, thoughtfully, reverently. A single flame would turn this dark dry place of shadows into a raging inferno. A marble tomb for the knowledge it would burn. The pages stop turning. Yet the crackles of their movement echoes through the library for long moments, reaching into the dark recesses of the hall. The rustle of soft robes can now be heard, moving towards the patch of moonlight illuminating the heart of the library. Even in the moonlight they are all blackness, darker than the night outside. Underneath the reader’s voluminous hood jewel bright eyes of green stare out. Fine white hands reach up and push back the hood. Her face is white, echoing the glowing softness of the gentle pool of moonlight around her. Black silk tresses fall from her brow and obscure most of her finely boned face. The reader pushes her hair back, and a tear slowly winds its way down her porcelain cheek only to settle in the corner of the reader’s crimson lips. A boom rings through the grand library. Before the echoes die down she is gone. The monotone shadows turn into myriad colour as sunrise flows into the library. As laughter and debate ring though it the marble mausoleum relinquishes its knowledge again to the irreverent scholars of day. Time is different in the library, and as the sun goes down it reclaims its deathly monotone again. Filled only with the slow, rhythmic crackle of turning pages the Library is content, its reader has returned, and, with her, hope.