Chapter 67 - The Lion Tamer and The Runaway (Lila FIN)
I had not been back to the library in close to a month. Even before, I saw happiness and left them to it. I did not want to interrupt Kara’s happiness, nor that of Lila and Tarne. Yet I sat at the little device again, continuously broken by stresses of everyday life, living in a temporary location that I could not call a home, and working in a toxic environment. I needed a change, or a chance for something else. The strings that held my life together in the metal metropolis were tearing apart. I had to escape before I fell apart.
I appeared within the library in silence, only looking up toward the golden arched ceiling. I did not look around or move for a while. The golden paintings of godlike figures shifted around to depict a miniature story. There was a woman clothed in a billowy golden dress running through a barren wood. On her heel, two lions pulled a cart with a mustached man holding a whip. She took refuge in a golden hut by a blue lake, in the small patch of forest green, white smoke billowing from the chimney.
The lion tamer rushed into the hut to find not the woman, but an old maid. She stoked the fire, casting sparks into the air around her. Rather than fade, the sparks danced in the air, rising and falling, dimming and brightening. The lion tamer drew back his whip, but the sparks flew at him covering him in black. I took that to mean the sparks burned him. The woman stepped out from behind the door as the old woman served colorful soup.
A golden army marched outside the window, panning to the soldiers arriving outside. Their three-horn helmets stood out from otherwise standard plate armor of gold coating, held together by brown leather. The woman looked through the window, and hid. The old woman patted the youth’s back gently, before exiting her hut. The army stood with a speaker at the front against one old lady. Her face was hidden, as she drew out a blue-green bauble from her sleeve.
With that bauble in hand, she offered it to the commander at the side of the speaker, but he knocked it out of her hands. The blue-green orb fell to the ground, breaking into green glass and blue liquid. The old woman smiled mischievously, before walking away. The commander gave an order to kill the woman, but an arm of blue burst from the broken bauble and swiped the army of gold into the sky, flailing as they flew off into the distance.
Something about the story felt familiar, but I had no idea what. Maybe it was after all just another link to the ivy I neglected. The designs did not move in Tiarto’s story, nor did they depict these characters. From what I remembered of the summary I wrote for the whole Tiarto series, the ceiling depicted the Deminitares, angels of his world that withstood eleven days of torment to defend the people of the world from an onslaught of demons. Those eleven were a key part of the main faith of Ahedis, the mainland of Tiarto’s world, and were celebrated every second month with an eleven-day week of rest.
I looked around me and wanted to find Lila, but only sighed with a smile. Wherever she was right now, I hoped she was happy. I did not want to cause any more sentient beings any more upset. In fact, I did not want to write upsetting things anymore, but what was the likelihood of that happening? Drama lived in everything. Upsets created triumphs. I sure hoped the upsets of my so-far life would lead to a triumph by that logic. I fell backward, something that would seriously damage me in reality, and melted to varnish on the wooden floor that spread ever so thin on the surface before vanishing from the space.
break
I came back to the file on the device months later. My life was becoming a struggle against lethargy. My body was giving up on me after I failed to take care of it, and the state of my living and working conditions only amplified my annoyance and anger. I did not want to bring this back here. I did not want to be angry and sad in front of Lila, Kara, and Tarne. They deserved some happiness after what they went through. And yet. And yet, I was back at it, back in it. In pain, in anger, annoyed, I was back. While I should have focused on something else in my reality, I was here again. Maybe I came back to ask for help, not that they could help me.
This was stupid. I did not want to expose them to my mind again. I would keep writing other stories until my life was better off. I could not face them like this, even if they were the only ones who could truly understand the full scope of my anguish. No. They had forgotten a large part of it. They were now just as much a part of my life as my family and the rest of the people I kept distant. The only person who could understand me, was the one who was with me always.
Fyntn was a friend, even if my existence was a job to him. He sacrificed his ten-cut to help me fix the happiness I broke between Kara and Lila. He was always there, but got in trouble because I caused trouble. Still. I could not face Lila like this. I imagined the library in my mind, sighed, and left.
break
On a day much reminded of the start of my search, from a loss and the questions surrounding it, I arrived at the library again, the final stop of my journey. When the whole world celebrated the one figure in life that shaped some aspects, I felt at my weakest.
The library from my past stood still, tweaked through the iterations of Tiarto, Rebecca, Kara, Lila, and Tarne. At one point, the whole building was a flying ship that could go over the created world. I smiled at the thought.
No laughter welcomed me to the high ceilings. No moans of enjoyment from rooms upstairs. No music played in the attic turned ballroom where we all danced at one point, where I considered if Lila was my best outcome after chasing Rebecca away.
I found myself not seizing the life that girl told me to. I let go of her in hopes of giving a damn, but ended up sacrificing my own happiness so that Kara and Lila could raise a life reclaimed happily. I wondered where they ended up. I disappeared for half a year in my time, and they probably moved on.
Then why did I come back to this emptiness? It had to do with having no home to speak of in my reality. I got by on the kindness of strangers, on the back of my family, because of necessity. Day by day, I tried to do what I could, because doing anything else was too much to handle. And this… this beautiful place, home to so much fun throughout the time I spent running from my troubles, being a coward that I was without logic, whimsy, and passion at my side.
This was just a pity party in a hollow place. Maybe that was how the story ended, with a whimper of being left by myself. This place would always be here, connected to me, in the darkness of untethered space. I could always come back and revel in the stories that I put myself into. Meanwhile, Kara, Lila, and Tarne, were off just like Rebecca, hopefully thriving.
I just wished Fyntn would stop by to see me Maybe we could talk more about the Nth Goni. He could tell me what happened to them, if the Rahin people took Tarne, or if the three of them were on the run in the ivy, but that was their story. They were no longer a part of mine. I could focus on the torrent of ideas pouring through my imagination from the Infinity Void, maybe publish something.
I sighed, and sat down on the couch that was always in the library. That was where Tiarto met Sana. I wanted to watch that scene again, but the story needed a rewrite to be at my current level of writing. I wanted to lead that story on a grand adventure, because it set me on one. With my head tilted back to see the golden ceilings, I reached up and started disappearing into golden sparkles to exit one final time.
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