I woke up to the sound of screams. My heart was racing. I closed my eyes and counted to a hundred. Outside, people were yelling. I opened my eyes, but saw nothing. It was pitch black in my little shelter. Just like it had been yesterday. It was the same every day. Wake up, calm down and wait. Wait and wait and wait, that’s all I did. I waited every second of every day. Deep inside I knew that no matter how long I waited, nothing would change. I pushed that thought to the deepest, darkest corner of my flowing mind. I knew the thought would come back; it always did, but that didn’t matter. I would just push it back again. Why should I think of that? Why should I think of all those horrible things? I gave my mind a desperate shove, and my thoughts were cleared. For the moment. I reached around my little shelter searching for one of my lighters. There weren’t that many left. How long had they lasted? Seven, eight years? When it all started, I had only been ten. Did that mean I was seventeen now? Or was I eighteen? It didn’t matter. I reached for a candle. Once it was light, my little cave was illuminated. I looked around to see the stacks and stacks of books. When I ran away I was right to bring my books, lighters and candles. Everything else was useless. Read. That was the only thing that kept me sane. I knew I would eventually run out though. No. I pushed that thought away as well. I looked around myself and stared at all my books. Inkdeath, Twilight, Moby Dick, City of Bones, Wolf Brother, Breaking Dawn, Golden Compass, Soul Eater, Thief Lord, Fahrenheit 451, The Hunger Games, Uglies and so many more of them. Books I’d read and planned on reading. They were my only company. They were all that was left of the glorious world that once stood outside my little home. They were all that was left of the future. My present. I remember how my mother used to say, “You must always think twice about what you do Thiria. It will affect your future. Think about it. Our present, is the past’s future. Our now, is the future. Never forget that.” She used to say it all the time before she… changed. Then slowly, everyone started changing. But I didn’t stay long enough to watch as they did. I ran away when I was seven, took all the books I could shove into three bags and took some money to but lighters and candles to last me twelve years. And the same amount in food and water. Then I was off. I found a small cave that could only be opened if you knew exactly how to push the rock. I always left it slightly open so I could breathe. I stayed there for all that time. That is the only reason I didn’t change as well. There was nothing special in me. I was not some hero who fought against the change. I was simply lucky. In theory. I stared at my books. Everyone had changed. No one was the same. No one. Except me. Then they started the war. When I turned ten I started to hear the noises, the screams, the laments, the sounds of humanity desolating itself. I panicked. For the first time in three years I stuck my face outside of my shelter. The light blinded me at first, but then I saw, and how I wish I had stayed blinded. I saw how people fought. I saw how they annihilated and massacred. Destroyed. And all for what? What did they kill and abolish for? I knew the answer very well. Green paper. Money. They mutilated each other and themselves. The glory of our world, our future, was truncated! Humanity became adulterated, and all because of that cursed green paper! I breathed and tried to calm my internal temper tantrum. I was not going to let myself be overwhelmed. I kept reviewing what happened. Since that incident, I hadn’t stuck a single inch of my body out of my hide out, and I didn’t plan on doing so for as long as I could stay hidden. I knew that would not be too long. I had enough materials to last me twelve years. If I left when I was seven, and now I was seventeen or eighteen, then I had used up ten or eleven years. That only left me one or two more. Anxiety started to creep up my throat. It crawled like a spider, but moved swiftly like a snake, filling me with dismay. I reached for a bottle of water. It did not wash away the horror inside me. Desperately, I reached for a book. I opened it to a random page and stared at the paper. I didn’t take anything in. I just stared at the familiar shade of the old paper, the well-known format and the recognizable shade of the ink. These were things I knew, things I felt comfortable with. I felt myself calm down. I read some of the lines and instantly knew which book it was. It was an old children’s book, it was very old, and the author was long gone. The book was wonted and worn from age. I’d read it easy ten times. I relaxed. I may run out of food, water, candles and lighters, but I would never run out of books to read, and I would never get tired of reading them again. I closed the book and shut my eyes, listening to the sound of my breathing masked by the sounds of screams outside. I reached for another book. It had been long since I had last spoken a single word. I read aloud the words printed on the pages. My voice sounded rough and unfamiliar. "If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. I can't let a god take care of me...” I faltered and skipped a few words, thinking of how I seemed to be in a similar situation. “I have to...find the courage on my own.” I recognized those lines. I would recognize that writing style amongst billions of others in a second. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Chapter 21, pg 170. I stopped. Smiling, I flipped to another random page and read "‘There’s no right side. The gods never cared about us. Why shouldn’t I-’
‘Sign up with an army that makes you fight to the death for entertainment?’ Annabeth said. ‘Gee, I wonder.’”
pg 270, Battle of the Labyrinth. I didn’t even have to look at the page number. I knew it by heart. Every story I’d read, I only had to read it once to have it mostly memorized, but this one I’d read one too many times. I put it down. Every book, every page, it was all inside my head, and it would stay there for as long as I lived. The people around me could destroy everything they wanted, they could burn all the books ever written, but I would never forget them. As long as I existed, so would each and every one of tales I’d read would exist as well. And that was something that could not be torn, stabbed, shattered, burned or shredded. Knowledge could not be destroyed. But it could be forgotten. The though hit me like a punch in the chest. Knowledge could be forgotten. Even worse, it could be unforgettable. It could be harmful. Dangerous. I was spontaneously overwhelmed with an unexplainable ache in my heart. Out of nowhere, where my heart had been hurting just one second before, there was a black hole. Sucking every second of my life, slowly. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to rip that hole out of my chest. Story after story, book after book, dream after dream. All of it. Fantasies. That was what I had become. I lived off of fantasies, myths, and stories. I devoured paper pages and drank their ink. My mind and soul lived off of the stories and ideas that I managed to place in my reach. But none of it was real. That was a fact that killed me. It engulfed my very being. I had seen, read, heard, watched and written. I’d traveled to other worlds and forged my own. Yet all of it was a dream. A glorious, wonderful dream. But I always had to wake up. Always. I used to say that humans tend to want what they can’t have. This theory had been proven before my eyes various times throughout the years. I must say it is more than true in my case. I’d earned myself a hard life. An imaginer’s life. I’d created that little classification. The imaginer. Weather you imagined, dreamed, wrote or designed it was bound to be hard. It was hard as much as it is crewel. You could grow to love your fantasy more than you love your own world. Your own life. And you would want it. You needed it. But it was also a heartless was of living. You eventually made others wake up. For those who watch, read or hear, the dream you illustrated always had to end. Those who do experience this, I called observers. I was an observer. As well as an imaginer. I had originated, learned, created and ended. But to lose something, a fantasy, it is the most painful thing anyone could ever imagine. The worse part was that if you let go to that pain, you would forget it. You would forget that fantasy and the torture that was caused by its ending. To have to yield something you never truly had. Because eventually, I always ended up wanting to be part of the story I wrote, or the book I read. I wanted to be part of that other world I knew I would never reach. Part of something that never even existed. Because everything ends. Life may continue after death, but it is a new life. The past one ended. Lives end, series end, movies end, books and dreams end. So how was I supposed to know that my world would not end one day? I thought it would. But I thought there would then be another world. One with new life, new fantasies, dreams and stories. But regardless of that, everything else would have ended. Some said life was a line. Some claimed it was a circle. Well I avowed that it was a triangle. At the first point everything begins. At the next, it is experienced, lived or developed. At the last, it is ended. Then something else is born, and the whole process repeats itself again and again. Everything starts again and repeats the process. Heedless, there was still an end. Nothing could ever change that. Everything eventually ends. Weather it is reborn or not is another case. It is the same with imaginers and observers. Their stories and fantasies have and end. As well as their lives. But they are reborn. Other stories imagined, other people born to take their place. But they ended. No matter what. I’d been on both sided of the door. I’d imagined, created and wished I could stay in my personal fantasy. I’d also observed, watched, read and heard. And how I’d wished it would not end. How I wished I would not have to wake up every day from my dreams to the sounds of screaming. I didn’t know what happed after death. I hoped there was pain and suffering. Because if not, all the joys of that mysterious afterlife would be lost. Unappreciated and unrecognized. Without desire, there is no ownership. Without waking up, no dreaming. With no tears, no laughs. Without an end, there is no beginning. So imaginers and observers live and die. But they would have experienced it all. The thrill that constantly overwhelms someone when they open a book. As well as the bitter sting in their heart as it closes. Every episode of an intriguingly wild fantasy, as well as its final closing. Each and every bit of it. Balancing out so there is enough pain as there is joy. Made equivalent on a balance controlled by a force much greater than we know. Not a God or a spirit. It simply was. That was that. I suddenly remembered when I was a little girl. Before the war, before the change. There were so many things I didn’t know or understand. But I didn’t care. All I used to need to know was how to put one foot in front of the other and how to go to my own little world of pirated, princes and princesses. When I dreamed of one day… falling in love. But as I grew up I began to want answers. Answers to questions that don’t need to be answered. But as I mentioned, humans want what we can’t have. We want to know what we shouldn’t now. And the weight of those answers drags on our shoulders for every day of our life. So I didn’t bother as much anymore. That second, while I was sitting in my little shelter I realized it. I didn’t need to know who or what created my world. Or even what gave me life. All I needed to do was be grateful for it. That’s it. I looked around my little shelter. I suddenly felt strong and powerful. I didn’t want to spend my life searching for answers I dint need. Because when I found them, they might be too much to bear. Instead I wanted to do, create, experience, imagine and observe. I wanted to accomplish something with my life. I had no idea what. I didn’t know if I was “destined for greatness.” But I did know that I would do something great. What? Only time would tell. I didn’t want to live by my “destiny.” I would live by my own life. I’d make my own future. A future that I knew would eventually end. But I was all right with that. I didn’t need to now what would happen after I died. I surely didn’t intend to find out any time soon. I’d make my own answers to questions I would find important and necessary. I would definitely make mistakes and fall. But I would always get up again. Every time, every day. That is, until the day I wake up, and my dream ends.
I was not going to spend the rest of my life trapped in my home; I would make the entire world my home. I could almost feel the adrenaline wash up my veins, leaving hope behind it. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. When I opened them, the screams outside seemed to have stopped. Instead, it seemed almost like I could hear laughter. Taking one last look around my home, I admired my belongings. All of my beloved books and notebooks that had kept me alive so long. Outside the laughing grew louder. With another deep breath that I knew would be the last breath the life I knew. I closed my eyes again and pushed the rock blocking the entrance. Now, it seemed to be blocking my exit. Light poured in and covered my body. The laughing grew even louder. A strange smell reached me. Smoke. It was the smell of money burning. The smell of green paper set on fire.
I opened my eyes…