The sun crept across the stone alleys like a shy intruder, casting long, gold-streaked shadows over the library's weathered steps. The town outside murmured with the rituals of morning—vendors unlocking their stalls, hawkers warming their voices, and pigeons taking ceremonial laps around broken lantern poles. Inside the library, however, silence clung to the walls like old paper.
Assim K. Tarik sat cross-legged on a woven mat in the centre of the reading hall, a cup of lukewarm milk tea by his side and a book cracked open in his lap. He looked younger than he was but wearier than he should have been. He wasn't reading. Not really. His eyes were on the door, half-expecting it to open again with the same creak it made the night before, when the stranger had arrived and left with a copy of Ode to the Rose in the Sand. A strange meeting, a stranger-still reaction, and yet nothing he could name out loud.
He had reread the final lines of the book—his own lines—more than ten times that morning, each reading accompanied by a mounting sensation in his chest: curiosity and a quiet tingle of dread.
I found you, whisper of crimson, among dunes that knew no bloom.
A rose blooming where no eye watched, in a silence deeper than time.
Were you waiting for me, or have I stumbled upon your loneliness?You reached toward a sun that forgot you, and I—toward a home I never knew
"Too sentimental", he muttered, though he didn't mean it.
The library's ancient door creaked open—hesitantly, as though unsure whether it should allow the morning's visitor to pass. A girl stepped in, thin-framed and wide-eyed, her hair in a loose braid like the kind worn by academy students. She was young, perhaps fifteen, with a leather satchel strapped diagonally across her chest. Her fingers bore the telltale stains of cheap ink, violet smudges across her knuckles and the side of her hand.
She stopped just inside the threshold, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the filtered light that fell through stained-glass windows. Rows of shelves loomed like sentinels in the quiet.
Assim watched her from his place behind a low desk carved from hollowed windwood. He didn't greet her at first. He waited, as he always did, to see how people moved in the library. Whether they drifted like tourists or tread carefully like seekers.
This one walked like someone chasing a specific silence.
"Looking for something?" he finally asked.
The girl flinched slightly. "I'm... not sure."
Assim tilted his head, his gaze unreadable. "Most people come here for stories. But you don't read for fun, do you?"
Her chin lifted, defensive. "I read to learn."
"Same thing," he said, rising to his feet. "You just haven't found the right kind of fun yet."
She didn't smile. "I'm studying elemental channelling. The academy said I need to specialise soon, but I'm not sure what suits me."
He studied her a moment. Then, without asking her name, he moved to the back of the library, where books with worn covers and obscure titles rested in crooked piles. He drew out a small tome wrapped in grey linen and offered it to her.
The title was embossed in silver: The Weaver of Gentle Storms.
"Is this... fiction?" She asked, uncertain.
"Yes," he said. "And no."
She looked unimpressed. "I was hoping for diagrams. Spells. Not romantic fluff."
Assim gave a soft chuckle. "What if I told you the protagonist never casts a spell, but every emotion she writes becomes the weather around her? No diagrams, no incantations—just memory and metaphor."
The girl frowned, her fingers running along the soft edge of the book's cloth wrap. "And it'll help me specialise?"
"I can't promise that," he said. "But it might help you understand the question you're really asking."
"What question is that?"
He smiled, eyes distant. "What your magic listens to when you think no one's watching."
The girl stood there a moment, unsure whether he was mocking her or offering something rare.
"I don't have money," she said plainly.
"Good," Assim replied. "Then the book won't owe you anything."
She blinked. "You mean—I can borrow it?"
"No. You can read it. Here. In this room."
"Why not take it home?"
He looked toward the lantern light stretching over the floorboards like long shadows. "Some books don't like leaving."
She said nothing more and found a quiet corner near the windows. The book opened with stiff resistance, like it hadn't been touched in years. Yet the words welcomed her. The sentences curled around her senses, whispering something meant only for her.
And Assim, back at his desk, watched her out of the corner of his eye—not out of suspicion, but reverence. He had written that book years ago. He no longer remembered all its secrets.
And for every reader, it told a different tale.
Later that day, after the girl left with quiet certainty promising to return with money, Mina arrived. His older sister, wrapped in warm browns and louder opinions, carried with her two bags—one full of food, the other full of unsolicited criticism.
"You still open this place every day like it matters," she said, placing figs and bread on his counter. "Still playing writer?"
"I'm not playing," he replied, barely looking up.
"Right. You're the magician of words," she teased. "A grandiose way of saying you're unemployed."
Assim chuckled. "Unemployed, yes. Unread? Not quite."
He handed her a copy of his second book, the one still without a proper title. She skimmed the first pages and frowned.
"You know, in a world where people summon fire and fly on carpets, writing about a ghost tailor in love with a librarian seems... quaint."
Assim leaned back, smiling. "Everyone's casting spells. I'm writing one long incantation."
Mina rolled her eyes. "You always were dramatic."
She stayed a while. The siblings spoke of nothing important and everything essential. Before she left, Mina held the book in her hands longer than needed.
"It's not real magic, you know," she whispered at the door. "But maybe that's what makes it work."
After her departure, the day passed uneventfully…
That evening, Assim lit the lanterns in the back room and sorted letters from his tiny, dusty inbox. Among the usual bills and blank pages returned by failed publishing houses, he found a letter. No name. No seal. Written in a script he didn't know—yet somehow understood.
It began with one line:
"Your ink has teeth."
He folded the letter carefully, tucked it into his coat, and sat in silence for a long while.
Outside, the dusk dustlight deepened. The world had the colour of old parchment. And somewhere between the pages of his life, something had begun to write back.