Voices

Somewhere between the printed page and my brain, they come alive. I no longer know them as just characters in a book but as actual living people. I become intertwined, embroiled and entangled within the intricacies of their lives. When I am away from them, after the book has been marked of its page, and closed - regardless of where it is housed, my Nightstand; Writing Table; Library; floor or Chamber, they summon. I hear their voices. They do not like to sleep. And so, it is without fanfare, everyday, without fail, that I reopen a book, my eyes absorbed along the printed line, and they awake.

The world as I know it fades to black and is silenced. The curtain goes up, chandeliers dim, and sounds hush. I disappear somewhere within the words. I become one of them. I become Bastian riding midair on Falcor’s back......

What?!

A spark of memory in your eye?

Then I was right.

You hear them too.

Excellent.

*“He picked up the book and examined it from all sides. It was bound in copper-colored silk that shimmered when he moved it about. Leafing through the pages, he saw the book was printed in two colors. There seemed to be no pictures, but there were large, beautiful capital letters at the beginning of the chapters. Examining the binding more closely, he discovered two snakes on it, one light and one dark. They were biting each other's tail, so forming an oval. And inside the oval, in strangely intricate letters, he saw the title: The Neverending Story”

 *Translation copyright ~ Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1983

Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende (1929 – 1995) Author

Original copyright ~ K. Thienemanns Verlag, 1979

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