A drabble submitted to Singapore Unbound’s 1st Flash Fiction Contest. The prompt was “The Infinite Library.”
Varis, in the gray robe of a peer, raises a torch. There is no need. Above are impossible stars hiding a vaulted ceiling. Between the shelves are lanterns white. Licking cracked lips, Varis scans spines and checks a tea-colored map. He’s close. Soon he will find a gap among dark covers, where he will place a book before sliding down in exhaustion. His thoughts will toss downward, past the tomes between the walls, to the black ocean. There are shelves down there. Books preserved against the cold and miry, against man’s finding, writ on something enduring, driftwood maybe, on water.