A broken-down scribbler

It is cold, and snowing. Snowing, in space. Your mind attempts to make sense of the blatant defiance of the laws of physics (those are so overrated, anyway), before just simply ignoring it. The whole place seems to be a snowglobe of the mind, left on some old dusty shelf in a dark room and forgotten. The snow is surprised by your appearance, being forcibly transplanted from its usual environment of, well, snow (cold) to your unexpected body heat (almost a volcano in comparison).

Indeed, it is a tiny bubble of life in the endless void of the universe. It's like a snowglobe in more ways than one; the land just stops abruptly at the edge of the invisible but obviously there atmosphere, beyond which colorful nebulae can be seen. The only sign of life is a small stone cottage in the exact center, its merrily flickering lights seeming to be stars on the other side at first glance. You trudge through the steadily growing snowdrifts towards the cottage, wondering what you will find inside. Surprisingly, the door of the cottage is ornate, covered in strange glittering runes and studded with gems with hidden fires in their hearts. You raise your hand to knock, but the door senses your intentions and obligingly swings open without a sound. Cautiously, you step through.

The snow on your clothes and hair is gone; not melted, but gone, as though you had never even been outside in the first place. The light inside is soft and golden, not coming from any particular source but around you, truly ambient. There is a wooden table, covered by stacks of paper, and bookshelves fill the remaining space, paradoxically filled with ancient dusty scrolls and brand new trade paperbacks. Something shifts behind the papers, and it sticks its sleepy-looking head up to stare at you with brilliant eyes--green, or perhaps blue?--behind crystal lenses before there is the sound of a chair being scraped back and papers rustling. It, no, he stands up and walks towards you, smiling like an owner who just taught a puppy a clever new trick.

Great fluffy white wings trail behind him, oddly speckled with ink. His hands are, too. In fact, almost everything about him is inkstained, even his sort-of spiky blond hair. A quill is tucked behind his ear, probably made from one of his own feathers. Surprisingly, his gold and silver-trimmed white robe is one of the only things that is almost free of ink spots. He holds out his hand to you, notices that there's another quill in it, and tucks it behind his other ear, causing him to look like an inkstained Caesar with a laurel wreath made of feathers. He pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose absently, and you have to smile. He's kind of attractive, if you like the bookish sort.

"Ah! Hello!" His voice is light and warm, with a trace of a familiar accent you can't quite name. "I'm the Recorder." He looks back at the table, which is creaking under the weight of the papers. "I'm writing right now, but I'm sure you'd like to read some of what has already been written." He takes you by the hand and steers you to a massive leatherbound tome on the table, with yet another quill lying on top of it. "If you'll just make your mark there, I can let you read anything you want, anything at all." He smiles shyly, a genuine one, and scurries back to his own stack of papers to scribble on. Smiling, you poise the quill over the parchment page dutifully and prepare to write your name so you can get lost in a thousand different worlds.

After all, that is what you're here for, isn't it?

*

This journal is Friends Only.