A Librarian's Escape

This basically represents my thought process

Cassiopeia stretched, causing the flowered ink on her arms to elongate as she cracked a few bones in her neck. The library was quiet in the midst of the quarantine, and she huffed against the thin material of her mask, causing the warm air to coat the hidden skin underneath. Shelves of books crowded her vision, going on further than her eyes could see on both the bottom floor and the open balcony above that spiraled into twin staircases on either side of the library.

She broke the silence by connecting her phone to the library’s speakers and turning up the volume so that it was booming, but not loud enough to make her flinch. The cheerful piano along with the soulful voice of her favorite artist pierced the air, causing her to stand from her spot behind the desk as she moved into the empty, open space in the center of the library.

The spines of endless stories were the only viewers present as they watched her feet glide to the beat of the song, twirling her skirt around her ankles as she spun shamelessly into one of the aisles. Her fingers ran along the rough edges of different pages, thumbing through the endless portals that took the reader into a different dimension. From the first crack of the cover separating from the title page, the reader was drawn into a new version of reality that they could only experience in their innermost minds, which was the only part of the human body that could transfer itself across the boundaries of reality.

Cassy herself had been a traveler to many worlds, and she had met many faces that morphed to fit her artistic rendition of the description that was provided. That must’ve been what she loved most about working at a library. She was the keeper of different dimensions, and she felt like a guardian of multiple worlds. She lovingly cared for the keys to these different realities. It was liberating to have such a view on her own importance, and she relished in the feeling as she continued to twirl down the aisles.

Who needed this reality that was plagued with illness of both mind and body? Who needed a reality that tried to mute the freedom of the individual spirit? It was wrong; it was unfair. Reality should be enjoyable, not just a checklist of one event after the next based on the opinions of someone else! This existence belongs to the soul that inhabits a body, and the experience that they create for themselves as they find their way in the world. A little escape between the pages of a book didn’t hurt now and then.

Cassy sighed as she stopped her dancing to gently fix a book that was leaning dangerously out of its shelf. There must be something truly wrong with this reality, she mused, if I want to escape so often into others. It’s only the unexplained things, such as music and writing, that truly invoke the emotions I should be experiencing in my real life. How tragic, that I have to rely on others to experience the freedom I crave.

How tragic, indeed, that we must go through this life with its pitfalls and pain just to reach for something that is beyond our grasp.