Cutie and the Crazed

~{-I 6.1 I-}~

Clement slipped off the bed, a sinuous cat stalking a horrifyingly wondrous prey. He had been watching the door for what seemed like an eternity, yet nothing had happened. The never-ending state of being on edge had slowly grated at his fear, and soon it had seemed like there was no need to be so scared. His stiffness dissolved, making way for curiosity.

He stepped forward to the door and set one, long finger on it. Nothing. He let his whole hand touch the door, millimeters away from the blue light. Then, he pushed forward, opening the door all the way.

In front of him lay a hallway that seemed about five paces long. At the end, there was a chestnut door embossed with a large cursive L. A smile took over Clement's face. This could be his way out! His determination wavered for a moment.  It could also be a trap of some sort, or simply another entrance to the hallway.  Still, he would take the chance.  Clement stepped forward and opened the next door.

He found himself on a balcony, overlooking a vast room filled with bookshelves. It both delighted and intimidated him. In his hometown, a small village called Rien, the "library" was run in the town hall and had a hundred books at most. There simply wasn't enough demand or tax money to pay for any more; the people had little time to spend on reading when they could be farming or working. Any other desired books would have to be requested from travelling salesmen, but the price of a book was often doubled, tripled with surcharges to allow for a better profit. Clement's family had once been able to afford the hefty sum required to buy a book, before the crushing debt that had recently become Clement's standard of normalcy.

Clement looked around, in a daze of sorts. This library was on a scale that he could only have dreamt about. It contained nine, ten bookcases of elephantine width, each reaching from the ground, twenty feet below him, to the ceiling, twenty feet above him. It was almost dizzying to look at the sheer immensity of the room. If someone had told Clement that this library contained all the books in the world, at that moment, he would have believed them in a heartbeat.

Clement held a hand out and stepped forward, yearning to reach a shelf but stopping at the rail of the balcony. There was a leather-bound book there, on a small platform, which seemed to be better described as a relic, or a historic artifact. Clement touched the corner of the cover, velvety from use, and flipped it open. On the first page, there was one question, written in impeccably beautiful cursive.

What would you like to read?

A quill, its feather a richer blue than Clement had ever had the luxury of holding before, rested at the edge of the book, but there was no ink provided. Clement examined the dark tip. It seemed to have already been dipped in ink, so he tried writing down the first book that came to mind.

The Blue Bear

It was a nonsensical book, written by a logger in the village who wished only to entertain his children at bedtime. He had drawn in images of the blue bear's family in black, and the lone blue bear in blue ink brighter than any other available in the town. Even after he had passed away, the book was kept in the town hall in commemoration of the logger and his incredibly blue ink. Clement had borrowed the book more than a few times as a child, running his small hands over the worn pages, dreaming of living in a bear family of his own. Even as he grew older, something in the illustrations, in the story, in his memories of childhood kept bringing him back to the book. And now here it appeared once again in his life.

He tested the quill. Gorgeous royal blue spilled out of the pen, melting its way into words. The color was familiar, yet starkly brighter than the average blue ink. This color didn't match the blue ink Clement had earlier seen in official records or certificates; this blue was distinctively different, yet still familiar. It struck Clement - this was the blue used in his favorite childhood book.

Clement wasn't given much time to process the new information before he was distracted by his changing surroundings. As soon as he had written down the name of the book, the bookcases- the elephantine behemoths of bookcases- began to move.