"Just love her... Love will always win."
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the...
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FOR THE next few days, after the fleeting weekend, Hope buries herself in activist and humanitarian activities. After decluttering their apartment during the weekend, both Alice and Hope found handfuls of outfits that they barely wear anymore. Others, they have never worn even once. They both seemed to have the same mind of donating them to the nearest orphanage in the area.
She and Alice then went ahead to begin a mini-foundation, which is nothing fancy. Since neither of the two have any paying side hustles, they decided that they would take twenty five percent out of their allowances each and save. After each semester, the allowance is to be taken out and donated.
Hope is convicted that it is a good idea and afterwards, good karma will come knocking on her door.
That, coupled with her volunteering at the library and her other commitment to write the CU blog, is enough to block away the path of bad karma.
The week flies by quickly, with Hope repeating the same routine; wake up, attend classes, avoid the twins, go back home, eat, sleep and repeat.
Surprisingly, the part about avoiding the twins goes by smoothly, so much so that it surprises even her. Still, she has to admit that it feels like like the quiet before a storm. The storm befalls her at the library, during her shift on Wednesday.
She had previously checked with the librarian whether it was okay to work two hours at any time of the day and the librarian had replied that as long as she was free there was no reason not to take your shift whenever you liked. Hope had then taken to finishing her shift during lunch hour but today, she was swamped with multiple assignments that she had no choice but to show up in the evening with the rest.
Once she entered the library, the silence swallowed her, leading her down the columns of knowledge upon knowledge. She would occasionally stop and peruse through some books and afterwards return them to their spot. A few people approached her asking for this book and that, this section and that and she directed them, each according to their need.
At this time, the building is quiet with only the faint sound of pages turning, books opening and closing and pens scraping away on delicate pages. Standing there, in the middle of the library, with filled shelves forming a shield around her, she feels like all the knowledge could penetrate through to her by diffusion. It is almost as if the words in those pages hang in the air like bubbles, waiting to be popped so that they can befall you.
Surreal.
Every other time that she has been in this library she has been so aggravated that she never once thought to pause and be still for a moment, to smell the air around her which carries a strong aroma of ancient knowledge, to look into the trials and errors of all the iconic philosophers, astronomists, physicists and the likes. She can taste the surrealism of all this on her tongue and when she picks up a book, The Problem of Pain by C. S Lewis, she could swear that she feels as if a plunger attached to her back is pulled with such forceful energy, plunging her back into the 40s, right beside Lewis as he makes his discoveries and hurries to jot them down for ages to come before the wind can steal them away.
