The Atlas of the End of the World

I’m in an old library. Old like the European buildings that have stood since the middle ages or older. The walls aren’t visible through the shelves and shelves of books. Are there walls? Are there doors? Is there an end? 

The creaky floors have been walked on by thousands. Information seekers; fiction-lovers; and those merely looking for a place of quiet, of rest.

It is timeless.

I rise from a wooden table, carved with vines and gargoyles and eyes that are a bit too realistic if you look closely. The age-old floor groans as I wander. No matter, though; there is no one else here to notice me. Alone in a maze of books, of time. 

I pick up a leather-bound atlas. Maps of a world fill the worn pages. Our world? Maybe. But the continents are too close together, and labeled in an untranslatable script. The edges of the pages are illuminated, telling a story of their own. A story of creation, of end, of the movement of continents and peoples and cultures. 

But the ink is fading. How many people have run their hands over this story? Over these continents? How many have understood, while the rest close the atlas when they see they cannot read it? What about they who wrote it? Did they see? Did they understand? Did they want us to understand?

There are no bugs in this library. No ants searching for crumbs, no mice skitter-scattering through the walls. No life.

Nothing except me. And the silence.

 

CeciliaSweeney

NH

YWP Alumni

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