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Like the World Is Ending · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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Parchment, Blood, Curtains
Wipe the grime off your pants. Thick. Sturdy canvas. Not the most comfortable. Comfort isn’t essential. Now brush the dirt from your hands back onto your pants. Funny, isn’t it? Put a quarter in the laugh bank. Save, don’t spend. Clean hands brush against dusty parchment. Flick through a few pages, don’t find what you’re looking for. Just things you’ve already heard.

Not heard. Read. You don’t get to hear much most days. Slashing blades, turning pages, footsteps, breathing. Even in, even out. Ragged every now and then. Mumbled words turn into sparks. Sparks light the way. The way is perilous. Every day is perilous. What was life like before this? You’re reminded of that question. It pushes your eyes back to the pages, sets them on a search for another book to peruse.

You read and read and read, looking for a clue. You don’t find any. You just find spells and incantations, charms and cantrips for those with a talent to cast. A talent like yours. Why was it given to you? That’s not a question you can solve nor do you consider it important enough. You were given it and you were going to use it. That’s the way it has to be, you figure.

Always so many questions. Maybe it’s because you spend so much time in libraries. Empty libraries. Some deserted long ago, some freshly cleared of occupants. Taking books by force. Interesting life to live. Interesting place to live that an action like that would be natural. Have you read everything in here already? Four words slip from your mouth and your consciousness streams out of your eyes, sweeping past shelves and shelves of ragged tomes. Nothing new left here. Figures.

No closer to an answer. As it has been for some time. It used to be you’d bump into something here and there. Some mention of great spires, of piercing pinnacles. Breaching the bonds between worlds, between schools of knowledge, between planes of thought and soul. The books now are silent. You’ve done all you can.




You’re outside now, hand on the pommel of your sword. Simple weapon. Simple applications. Your feet carried you through the halls like clockwork. You learned to remember every step the first time you got lost in a place like that. Getting lost is something you try to avoid. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can do. Maybe you should give it a shot. Get lost for a while. See if you find yourself.

Paths put here are long. Not much to look at. Whole world is largely devoid of a landscape. You’ve read about that. About the canvas across which all life is painted. Spoken. Drawn. Carved. Pulled from the muck and mire, washed in blood and rain, raised on fire and stone. You spit. You want to bring this whole place down. Smash the sky into the sea, crumble mountains and flood valleys with fear. You’ve tried. The sun just laughs. Says it’s not that time yet. You’ve still got more to see!

So you keep searching. Keep packing dirt down with your boots, keep puncturing lungs and severing arteries, keep bathing in old words. It gets you closer. You know it does. Just never as close as you want to be. You want to walk on stage, pull back the curtains, and kill the playwrights. You don’t want to run the show. You want to stop it entirely. You’ve always felt like the world was breaking down around you. Ever since you woke up here. No one seems to see it. No one seems to care. It falls on you to fix that.
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