A challenge is set.

It is dark and cool in the Library, and you are tired.  Not because you are really, physically tired, but because this place is so restful, it slows down all of you.  Even the electrons in your cells are spinning a little less fast, urging you to settle down, find a place to be, and think and read.

You reach the end of a long shelf of books, titled "Days to be forgotten" and you notice the dust on most of them, but a few have fingermarks, as though they are looked at, albeit reluctantly, and put back on the shelf once more.  There are strange marks, like water droplets, next to the books most moved, but you swiftly forget those too as you move along to the end of the line.

The blinds are over the windows at the end of the rows, and the colour of the sun that creeps around the edges tells you that the afternoon is wearing on.  You can't remember what you were doing earlier in the day, but you could do with a sit down now.  You turn the corner, and it is as if the library knows.

There is a little nook, a gentle fire, and a green leather armchair.  The leather is cracked and soft, reflecting the warmth of the fire, and as you settled into it, it gives underneath you, welcoming you into it's embrace. 

On your left, on the side furthest away from the fire, there is a wooden table with a silver tray on it.  The teapot is warm, steam escaping from it showing that it is ready.  There is a jug of milk, a bowl of sugar cubes, and a cup and saucer, which you think is the Royal Albert old country roses pattern.  You're not sure why, but you know it.

You pour yourself a cup of tea, and notice the biscuits that you didn't realise were there before.  You must have missed them, but there they are.  The plate is on a book, and you juggle the book onto your lap, and replace the tray. 

The book is red leather covered, but when you open it you realise that it's a notebook.  The handwriting is spidery, a fountain pen writing blue-black ink that has meandered across the page, leaving the thoughts of the author behind.

It is a book of stories.

One short story, every week.  Alphabetically ordered.

Challenge accepted...

Beginning at the beginning

Walk through the doors of this blog.  Push them open and marvel at how lightly they move, how well they must be balanced to move so gently when they are so large.

Step into the silence of the library.  It is a warm, living silence, born of the concentration of a researcher, and the peace of a reader, mixed with the fascination of the easily distracted.  It embraces you as you enter, welcoming you and seeping into your very bones, reading and knowing you, cataloguing and understanding you, and loving you anyway.

You look at the books, on the shelves.  They come and go, almost without notice, one moment there, the next moment just a gap, a mark in the dust where they were lifted away by hands you did not see.  Just as suddenly, they appear again, used for that moment, and then returned.  It is then you realise that you are in the 'ideas' section of the library, and so you start to wander around, looking along rows of books in their own sections, marvelling at the sheer variety of notebooks and pens that have been used to record anything and everything in, from bits of prose to chunks of poem, to entire stories.

This is the library of Madyline.  

Welcome