T
There is a place where stories go when the author gives up. It is a labyrinth of shelves, filled with manuscripts that stop mid-sentence.
Elara found herself there after a bad case of writer's block. She walked the aisles, reading the spines. "The Hero Who Never Drew His Sword." "The Lovers Who Never Met." "The Mystery of the Missing..."
She pulled a book down. It was her own. The novel she had abandoned three years ago.
She opened it. The characters were frozen on page 142, sitting in a tavern, waiting for a dialogue line that never came. They looked bored.
"Hello?" Elara whispered.
The main character, a rogue named Kian, looked up from the page. "Oh, look. She's back. The Goddess of Procrastination."
"I didn't procrastinate!" Elara defended. "I got stuck. I didn't know how to get you out of the dragon's lair."
"So you left us there?" Kian snapped. "For three years? Do you know how expensive ale is in this tavern?"
Elara felt a pang of guilt. "I'm sorry. I just... I didn't think you were real."
"We are as real as you make us," a sorceress from page 90 chimed in. "We breathe your ink. We live on your attention."
Elara looked around. Thousands of books. Millions of trapped souls, waiting for an ending.
"What can I do?" she asked.
"Finish it," Kian said. "It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be done. Give us a death, a victory, a tragedy. Anything is better than this limbo."
Elara sat down on the floor of the library. she pulled a pen from her pocket. She opened the book to page 143.
"Okay," she said. "The dragon wakes up. And he's hungry."
Kian grinned, drawing his dagger. "Finally."
As she wrote, the library around her began to fade. The dusty shelves dissolved into the world of her story. She was no longer in the Library of Forgotten Endings. She was at her desk, the sun rising, her hand cramping, and the story finally, beautifully, complete.