How a Lifetime Friendship Began

It’s strange to step inside what you’ve imagined. It’s like meeting someone in real life who you’ve dreamed about before. Known, yet unknown. Everything is familiar, yet new. 

I was inside some kind of building where there weren’t any windows, so I couldn’t see out. A twisting staircase led to the second floor above me and it was possible to walk along that floor and look down over a balcony to where I was. Lined everywhere were these things I’d imagined, but never seen before, coming in all shapes and sizes. There were some on the table in front of me. I stepped forward and touched one. 

It felt like wood, like soft wood, and like a box, you could open the lid. It stayed attached on one side. There was nothing contained within, but a series of lids and they were thin like pressed leaves. I opened each lid and found black symbols sprawling like a spider’s dance on the front and back of each one. There was a pattern to how they filled the lids and there seemed to be sections because every now and then the symbols stopped and there were large symbols at the next lid as if signifying a sort of beginning. 

I liked the way it felt to open the thin lids, and they were so thin that sometimes two lids stuck together. There was something soothing about opening each one, so I did, from the front to the back. And then, I looked around me. All was quiet and I was alone.

There were more of these Leaf Lid Boxes, that’s what I decided to call them until I knew their names, on the table and hundreds lining the walls. The sides of the Leaf Lid Boxes had large symbols and sometimes pictures on them. I picked up another one and started opening its lids. The symbols in this Leaf Lid Box had a different, larger pattern. And there were pictures on some of the Leaf Lids. And a Glowing One!

I slammed the Leaf Lid Box closed. After what I experienced in the forest, it was difficult not to react when I saw even a picture of a Glowing One. Guardian said that there were no Glowing Ones, but clearly there were, and perhaps they had a different name and maybe not all of them were dangerous. 

I opened the Leaf Lid Box again, this time starting further in the Leaf Lids so that I wouldn’t see the picture again. There were more pictures and this time I saw one of the creatures I’d glimpsed in the colored glass when I arrived at the Library. The one with the hose coming out its front and impossibly large ears. What a strange creature! It looked big, but not mean. There was something actually wise about it, I thought. The book had all sorts of pictures of creatures I’d never seen. Some were similar to ones I knew, but just slightly different in color of hair or nose shape or size. And then I saw the one with a long neck and spots and such tiny ears on top. This had to be out of someone’s imagination. Had I entered a world an artist had created? Wait, was I the artist who created it? 

There were more Glowing Ones in some of the pictures. They were in groups and looked very unintimidating like they were at a grand dinner. They had something on their heads. Or maybe it was part of their heads? There seemed to be a distinction between gender and whatever was on their heads was part of what designated them. 

Suddenly, someone spoke.

I jumped. I hadn’t heard anyone approach. 

It was a being who looked a little like me, not a Glowing One, and I couldn’t understand what it said. It said it again.

I didn’t know what to do. I realize now that if I’d just spoken, the Kind Being would have known that I didn’t speak its language, but I was stunned silent.

The Kind Being figured out that I couldn’t understand and gently guided me to stand up and walked with me to the entrance to the building. For some reason, I had to go. For a panicked moment, I realized that it might mean I wouldn’t be able to get back through the colored glass portal I’d made and return to the Library. What ties did I have to the Library anyway? Aside from it being the closest place to home, I didn’t. And if Guardian was right that ten years had passed and home was not the home I knew, perhaps this place that I’d created from my imagination would be worth exploring.

The Kind Being escorted me to the door and when I stepped through, it was immediately loud as if every sound imaginable was happening at the same time. There was a whoosh as little moving buildings passed by at high speeds. It was raining and water from the moving buildings splashed me, so I stepped back. The Kind Being kept talking, but nothing got through. It turned back to the building and I was on my own.

I walked a few steps. There was a smell of metal and fire. There were trees, but they were unnatural, at a planned distance from one another and around them was this hard, gray path rather than soil. It was a like a smooth blending of rock. I’d never seen anything like it before. And buildings were not just everywhere, they were connected to one another. Sometimes there’d be a little bit of a gap and you could walk between them into a very dark, damp space. The way they stacked together reminded me of the Leaf Lid Boxes lining the walls of the room I’d entered.

There were all kinds of beings walking everywhere looking hurried. Some were Glowing Ones, but not all. I was going to have to stop being so afraid of Glowing Ones. Clearly, they were not all dangerous. There were so many beings that we ended up in a group waiting for the moving buildings to go past so that we could walk again as a mass. 

I didn’t know there could be so many buildings, beings, smells, and lights. It was an assault to the senses that was dizzying. There was an energy to the motion all around that I’d never felt before. The energy was at once exhilarating and dangerous.  

All of a sudden, a moving building came at me and a being nearby gasped and called out and I was knocked to the scraping ground. Beings gathered around with a flurry of speech that I didn’t understand and suddenly among them was the Kind Being who talked with the others and they moved back. She helped me to stand and walked with me along the hard gray paths, her arm linked with mine. We went up some stairs to the rooms where she lived and she made me a hot soup.

And that was how a lifetime friendship began. 

Next: In the World I Created

This is the sixth in a series of stories. Following are the previous installments starting with the first:
1. The Library
2. Listen, Move, Hide, Repeat
3. A Necessary State of Alarm
4. Anches
5. A Question in Colored Glass