There was a Library. Not a library in the traditional sense—no, this was The Library, a place so vast it could only exist in the small spaces between logic and fiction, between now and not-quite-yet. It was a realm where the Dewey Decimal System had long ago given up and gone to cry in a corner, and where books were shelved not by genre, but by grudge.
Some said it was built by the first librarian who ever refused to shush. Others claimed it spontaneously assembled itself out of sheer narrative inevitability. However it began, it had grown… oh, how it had grown. Wing upon wing had sprouted, spiraled, sunk, and occasionally sizzled. Entire sections were accessible only during solar eclipses or after a good cup of tea. One corridor could only be entered by walking backwards while reciting Shakespeare; another smelled suspiciously of burnt toast and quantum probability.
It held books from here, there, everywhere, and—through some particularly suspect filing practices—even everywhen. The forgotten, the forbidden, the long-lost and the never-yet-written huddled together on shelves that trembled slightly, as if trying not to be read. There were books so dull they could knock out a charging rhino at ten paces, and others so cursed they whispered spoilers into your dreams.
And then, of course, there were the boring ones.
The truly dangerous ones.
Because boredom, in the right binding, can unravel reality.
So when the intern arrived—fresh-faced, over-caffeinated, and armed with an optimism that would soon be misfiled under “Fictional Creatures”—The Library noticed. It ruffled its pages. It made a note in a margin. And it smiled the smile of an index card that knows exactly where you’re going.
After all, destiny is just a book you haven’t returned yet.
.