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Written for a Crowdfunding Creative Jam prompt: A book turns out to not really be a book, but one of those hiding-places-things-disguised-as-books, and the thing that’s hidden is a portal.
It looked innocuous, just another book on a shelf full of books, until someone opened it. Then… well, it wasn’t just a book. Not for everyone. Most people would pick it up, look inside to find that it was one of those hiding place books, and put it back on the shelf, because they didn’t need the other world. Others would pick it up and the portal would take them to the world on the other side of the portal. Luna had seen it happen, watching different people as they picked it up, interested to see who was chosen and who wasn’t. She didn’t have the courage to pick the book up herself.
One day it was gone. It was a Tuesday, just after Luna had finished her shift, and she’d stepped into the bookstore the same way she did three or four times a week to watch. She knew there had to be a reason it had moved, maybe someone had bought it because they really did need one of those hiding place books, or it was simply time for the book to move on, or there was always a chance that someone else had realised what it was and taken it away so no one else was dragged to another world. For the first time she wished she had picked the book up, not because she thought that she’d be one of those chosen, but just to see what it was that the majority of people saw.
Luna knew, if she hadn’t of accidentally witnessed someone being taken by the portal, she wouldn’t have known what the book did. She might have picked it up, just like everyone else. When she looked into it, like so many people before her, she would have seen a hiding place book, nothing more. There was no reason for it to take her to another world, although… She sighed. Sometimes she did wish for something more and that would be why the book wouldn’t chose her. If she wanted change in her life she was going to have to make that change, even though it was terrifying.
After one last look at the shelf where the book had been Luna made her way towards the door. She looked at the books as she passed, because there were times when she saw something different, something that caught her attention in the way that most books now didn’t. It, the book that caught her attention, was sitting on a shelf between two other paperbacks, and if anyone asked her she wouldn’t know what it was that really caught her attention. Maybe it was the colour, maybe it shimmered slightly, but there was definitely something. With one hand she picked it off the shelf, pulling her bag strap up with the other, before opening the book…
Moments later Luna found herself stood in a corridor that reminded her of the set of flats one of her old school friends had lived in and no book in her hand. Astonished, all she could do was mutter, “Bloody hell.”
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
