Ticking Time
Seeking Truths - October 2017
It’s so very cold. Dark and cold. I can’t feel my hands or feet. My limbs seem to hurt like ice daggers are driven in them.
Where am I? What am I? My memory is shrouded in fog.
The snow is swirling about me in a never ending cascade of oncoming death. Maybe this time I’ll actually die.
Who knows, only time will tell, as always.
Time will tell.
1 year earlier
“This book is dull.” I state to no one. I’m sitting alone in the library, stack of old cracked leather books on the table next to me. An oil lamp gives off a smelly orange glow overhead. I set the book down on teetering pile to my left, about 9 books now.
I exhale, resting my head back on the edge of the chair, staring up at the dark arched ceiling. The aged olive wood glows in the faint light. It must have cost a fortune to supply all the lumber in olive wood. A fortune I’d use to buy a hundred more books losing their pages to dust.
I crack an eye at the next book in my To-Read pile, it reads; ancient religions of Russia. Will I never find the truth? I stop myself before I continue. I’ve asked myself that question before. Now’s not the time to dwell on it again. I sit up, chair creaking with my weight, and stretch. Time for a break.
Wandering the isles of dusty moldy books is a common practice on my part, since I am both librarian and chosen. I think half my life has been spent in a library. The other half is hard to define. I’ve fought vikings with other vikings, pirates on the indian ocean, the Mongols in China and the Romans in in Scotland. I’ve been to nearly every continent over the course of 10 years and crossed over centuries of time and still I cannot find the truth.
I brush my callused fingers across the spines of old books, some not opened for hundreds of years, pondering their mysteries. My youth and innocence may be gone but my sense of wonder has a strong grip on me, almost strangling. I couldn’t lead a normal life if I’d wanted to, not that I do, not anymore anyway.
I stroked the ancient texts lovingly, they whispered their deep secrets to me like lost lovers. These volumes were gateways to history's forgotten, mistold and unknown. I made it my solemn duty to verify their contents and explore their truths, but always seeking for lost artifacts.
I stopped back in front of my chair, the last volume I’d read lay atop the teetering pile, title: A History of Russia. The book was dull, the scholar who’d wrote it was boring and monotone in every way but perhaps there was something to gain from exploring the ancient monarchs of Pre-Russia. Perhaps they’d have an answer.
A tingle rose from my fingers, dancing across my skin like an electrical current. I blew out the oil lamp, casting the library in darkness. Who’d know when the next person came down to the library and find my chair and books. Wouldn’t want to burn it down while I was gone. Time to explore 10th century Russia.
As I inhaled, I vanished from November 2017, leaving the library dark and empty.
