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Date Posted: 07:37:46 04/01/04 Thu
Author: Nira
Subject: Unconditional

A child darted through the trees, small and underfed, yet moving with a grace that was not her own. Dashing past sturdy oak and across faint streams, through brambles that tore and over hills that whipped and stung with icy breath, there seemed to be nothing that stood in the girl's way that she could not take. Up ahead gaped the maw of a cave, but it was slowly being shrouded. At first the girl did not notice, did not understand. Around her swirled a mist, so heavy that it slowed her progress as thick moisture settled on fragile shoulders, weighting her down until she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe….

Nira awoke to the stifling scent of festering compost. Sweat beaded her brow as mismatched pupils flitted from one side of their sockets to the other, searching for the illusory threat from her lying position on the hard ground. There was none seen, other than a few worms, yet she jerked away from the pile and jumped up all the same, breath heaving as she retreated from the refuse and the memory of… that dream. What was that? Who was that girl? She wanted to know, but even trying to think, especially now when she was already so stressed, was prodding the never-dormant migraine located at the back of her eyes into a pulsing rage. Stumbling out of the alley with nowhere else to go, Nira blinked away the harsh rays of the dawn sun to get a bearing on her whereabouts. The building directly across the street was one she didn’t recognize, though it did have a sign on the front. Uh oh. A sign. That would mean reading. That would mean hours of puzzling out shapes into sounds. That would mean another headache. Nira decided to give the sign a quick once-over. Much too hard. Instead of working through it she scampered up the steps, pausing only a moment to view the ancient structure before deeming it safe and slipping inside.
The first thing that met her eyes was the dust. It hung everywhere in the air, or at least seemed to. After a few moments of Nira standing patiently still, the cloud stirred to reveal a sight so wondrous that Nira’s eyes dilated to the size of dinner plates. Great volumes lined the shelves, far too many to count and containing who knew what sorts of stories! Nira had always loved stories whenever she could sit under a windowsill to listen to one. The words sometimes didn’t make any sense, but she still enjoyed the dramatic flow of the sounds, the rising and falling waves that carried with them the tales of ancient times. Flitting over to the nearest shelf, she hauled down a mighty book that made her feeble arms tremble under its weight. The words on the cover were a foreign language, and she wouldn’t have been able to understand it even if she had been able to read. But it pulled her attention with its size and mystical ambiance, and so she tottered unsteadily towards the reading area determinedly. Once plopped into a chair, Nira realized that she didn’t know what to do. What did one do with a book? She had seen them before, and had heard them be called that, and seen people make stories out of them, but wasn’t sure how to unlock the sounds from the symbols. Leafing through the pages with clumsy yet gentle fingers, the child began to search the sheets for some sign of what to do next, humming a waltz-like tune that seemed very out of place coming from the mouth of a grubby, smelly street rat.

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