Painted Book

Looking through the pages as Emi was explaining to Sterling, he glanced back and forth constantly between her and the book he was flipping through. Meticulously inspecting the quality of each of the pages as if expecting them to change every time he flipped them over.

“The story inside is pretty cliché all things considered,” she told him. “I haven’t read through the whole thing. There’s a lot of it. It’s thicker than it looks for such a simple story, don’t you think?”

“Hmm…” slightly nodding his head, still lost in thought.

Turning a few more pages, he then held the flashlight on his phone onto the parchment, studying the texture like a mapmaker inspecting a scroll that had been freshly dug up out of the ground, in a more improvised manner all things considered.

“This thing,” he explained, “is not paper.”

“Wait, what?”

“It’s not leather parchment either.”

“I… I don’t understand.”

Tapping his chin for a moment, as he was searching for a way to explain this in simpler terms. After a brief period of contemplation, he then told her:

“Do you know about String Theory?”

Nodding her head, she said:

“Yeah, we covered that in class… last year, I think? But we only really went over the basics.”

“Right. Right. You already know that there’s no microscope on Earth powerful enough to see things down to the subatomic level required to see these strings, yes? But what if I tell you – we on Gigas has that power?”

Widening her eyes in awe, Sterling continued:

“The material in this book here is very similar to an artifact I’ve studied back home. To put it in layman’s terms, it’s a universe holder. It is immensely powerful, since it is literally holding a world inside.”

“WHAT?”

“And when I say ‘world’ here, I do mean a whole universe. And the universe inside isn’t necessarily microscopic, though it can be. Being microscopic is simply the method by which we can access and traverse these planes of existence.”

“That is… a lot.” Emi fell back down onto her seat, rubbing her messy hair.

“There’s an ironic poetry to this, wouldn’t you say?” Sterling stroked his beard. “Our home world of Giants, larger than anything we can imagine, being housed inside this teeny tiny little space.”

“Yeah… I suppose so,” Emi muttered, still trying to process this whole thing.

“A word of warning, Miss Emi,” his expression suddenly turned gloomy. “There is some serious magick being involved here. Metaphysical, unexplainable. The reason why you haven’t finished reading it – that’s no coincidence.”

Letting it sink in with a pause, Emi had no words. Sterling continued:

“It’s not necessarily dangerous per se, I do suggest you keep reading. But it might take a while. Some things won’t make sense, and pages you’ve never read before might pop up here and there.”

“So… kind of like… Orion’s story is still being written?”

“Or… perhaps – it’s simply secret history being uncovered.”

In class, Emi sat at her desk reading through the first few chapters once again. The story here described an enchanted land, magical and beautiful. It did not name-drop the locations in its descriptions, instead preferring to get lost in the intricate designs of tree branches that housed powerful fairy gods and bizarre talking bears, monkeys, donkeys. The leaves fell from these branches onto tiny mushroom villages that lived in the shadows of giant trolls, whose skin hardened into stone and magma.

The creatures flew about in their bountiful simplistic majesty, carrying known characteristics she had seen in plenty of other stories before, but there were combinations that were unfamiliar, like this dog holding a book in its mouth, or a headless priest holding…

His club and silver shield…

The familiar image quickly slipped out of her mind, as she felt the urge to open up her sketchbook and pick up her pencil. The lines came out of the lead and onto the paper like smooth water pouring out of a river of Dream. Her pencil danced, not with purpose, but with hunger – as though her hand had waited for a challenge as strong as these shapes.

Trees bloomed first. Not ordinary ones, these had glassy bark and spiral roots that curled like frozen whirlpools. Their branches stretched like dancers in slow motion, holding strange fruits that looked like melting stars. She drew villages tucked beneath them – the mushroom houses with windows glowing like fireflies. Cobblestone paths wound between them, interrupted by patches of fog, as though parts of the world refused to be seen just yet.

Above the canopy, clouds curled into fractals, framing the silhouette of something vast in the sky. A presence of a star? Or a moon? Her hand hesitated to define it.

Fairies fluttered in the margins, but they were wrong somehow: too many wings, too many eyes. A donkey peered out from behind a tree, staring directly at her. She gave it a little bell on its tail from the descriptions in the book. Then after that, a flock of birds flew past, each one with a tiny glowing rune etched on their feathers.

And then finally – a dog. Simple, loyal, steady. Holding the tome gently in its mouth, walking alone across a high bridge made of bone-white branches, looking like it was on its way somewhere important.

Emi paused for breath. The world she’d drawn had unfolded fast, a bit… too fast. She hadn’t planned any of it. The pencil in her hand felt warm, her knuckles aching slightly, as though she had been holding on too tight.

She looked at the paper.

It was beautiful. But a little unsettling. Like it was one of those dreams you weren’t sure was yours. Fleeting and blurry, like mists hovering and whispering into your ears.

“Doodling again?” came Kana’s voice as she plopped into the seat beside Emi, leaning over with a grin. “You look like you’ve stayed up all night.”

“She’s in the zone again,” Misaki added, adjusting her glasses as she sat on Emi’s other side. “This will take days, I say.”

Emi blinked herself back into the classroom. She hadn’t even realized they were there.

“Oh, hey guys. Yeah, um… just practicing I guess.”

“Right… anyway, tell us about that new guy, girl,” Kana grinned, poking her.

“Who?”

“You know,” giggling, Kana leaned forward, “that elf guy who showed up out of nowhere. What’s up with him?”

“Oh, you mean Terran.”

“Oh my gosh, so dreamy. Tall, blonde, sharp ears. He’s perfect, isn’t he?”

“Is that even his real name?” Misaki asked.

“I don’t care if it’s fake. It’s hot,” Kana said, turning back to Emi. “Tell us everything! He showed up with you and Orion yesterday, right? What’s the deal? Is he, like, the hero who opposes our local dark lord?”

“Eh… I guess?” Emi shrugged. “Something like that. They don’t really get along.”

“Ugh,” Kana slumped. “Enemies. Even better. I really want to see them fight over you. How romantic is that, right?”

Shaking her head as she drew a large X mark on Kana’s cheek, Emi responded:

“Don’t get any ideas, you dolt.”