Things Forgotten

~Things Forgotten~

        There is a library, and it is forgotten. Inside this forgotten library is a book (unsurprisingly). Inside the book is a story (obviously).

        (When the library had human patrons rather than ant patrons the book was filed in the fiction section, but to say the book is fictional would be incorrect. However, it is not exactly nonfictional, either. The book would most accurately be filed under the category of “real enough,” but the ants aren’t very picky.)

        The story inside the book is not complete. Not because the author died or abandoned it — the story doesn’t have an author. Nor is its incompletion due to being inside a forgotten library, where the only thing that is remembered is that the place is forgotten.

        Its incompletion is due to the not-so-simple fact that the story isn’t the kind of story normal books tell. It does not have a predetermined plot or the primary character(s) normal stories do. There is no guarantee of a grand climax or character growth or love or happiness, nor is there a guarantee of character decline or despair.

        (This does not mean none of those things are present, it only means one cannot be sure that they are. The story has no guarantees.)

        What the story has is infinite characters and possibilities. It has no ending because if it were to end it would be destroying all the possibilities that still remain for the quite real characters that are a part of it. It is incomplete because no book can truly capture the entirety of one person’s story, let alone the stories of an infinite number of people.

        And though it is forgotten, perhaps the story is not as forgotten as you might think …

[Author’s note: This vignette is part of a larger work codenamed Stories Unfinished. Stories Unfinished is composed of vignette-styled chapters that generally explore an idea, object, and/or place (like this one) as well as more conventionally styled chapters that have characters and a clear plot. I will be posting more vignettes than chapters (for personal reasons) so you may or may not discern a common plot or common elements between vignettes. It’s best to keep an open mind. I hope you enjoy it!]