The Interspace: Library of Dreams
Kacper loved books. But no library could compare to the one he saw that night when he and Lena crossed the creaky old gate at the back of the park. The building looked inconspicuous - a dingy facade, broken glass, foggy lights. But inside... Everything was different.
Shelves reached ceilings so high they disappeared into the clouds. Lanterns floated overhead, casting golden glows on the spines of books; some volumes turned the pages themselves, others moved slowly, as if on short legs. The air was filled with the scent of parchment, wood and something else - something on the borderline between dream and reality.
- Do you think we are allowed to be here? - Lena asked in a whisper, glancing at the door, which slammed silently behind them.
Kacper just shrugged his shoulders and moved ahead. With each step, the library seemed to grow. Suddenly, a book fell from one of the shelves and began to roll behind them, like a cat. Lena crouched down to pick it up, but the spine went from her hand all the way up to her nose and opened to the first page.
Inside, instead of letters, were maps, some pulsating like a heart, others rustling as her fingers moved across them. As Lena touched one of them, she felt as if something was attracting her - a light flashed between her fingers, a whisper emerged from the quiet rustling.
- 'Let's see where it leads,' Kacper said, staring at the map.
They moved forward, letting the book guide them into the depths of the library. They walked past bookcases full of books that muttered snippets of history under their breath, saw windows looking out onto non-existent gardens, doors opening onto corridors made of mere pages of paper. Each step made the world around them look less and less like an ordinary library.
In the depths, far from the entrance, they spotted a spiral staircase. At the top of them, a cloud of blue mist drifted. Lena looked at Kacper and he nodded. They climbed the staircase, which bowed underfoot like a soft carpet. The higher they went, the more everything around them became blurred. Words from the pages flew into the air like birds, entwining them in a dance of sounds and colours.
They reached the top. Before them stretched a great portal woven of illuminated letters and dyed illustrations, through which they could see an unreal landscape - mountains made of paper, lakes made of ink, cities woven of words. Lena was already about to take a step forward when suddenly something grabbed her arm and jerked her backwards.
Kacper turned abruptly and his eyes met the gaze of a being woven from shadows, words and forgotten dreams, who stood just behind them and whispered something in a voice as hard as a sheet of paper that had been inadvertently jammed.
- Do you dare to enter a world where imagination knows no bounds? - asked the being, raising a hand made of a thousand letters....
Author of this ending:
English
polski
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