You've always had trouble staying focused on an idea. You're on your computer, elbows resting on pages outlining a freshly-abandoned sci-fi concept, combing through Wikipedia links and history sites last updated in the 90s. You're looking for a name. Names are always the hard part, and this name has to be... different. Eventually, you give up on these purple hyperlinks; if something's on a website, it's not old enough.
You've already graduated, but no one at the campus library knows you that well. You can't get into the databases, but the card catal--cardless catalogue--directs you to Greek history. You match call numbers to the list you jotted down with a golf pencil at the computer. The blurbs on these books' dust covers usually tell you enough to know you're wasting your time. You scratch out the penultimate book on your list and set the failed book aside with the others.
There's a smaller book in the space you emptied. apparently double-shelved with the book you just failed. First you think it's bound in those terrible cloth covers with text that wears away instantly, but you touch its blank spine, and it's softer than woven cloth. You pull the book from the shelf; the dusky purple cover is as blank as the spine. The book opens with a crack of newness, but that companionable smell of old books rises up to you as you flip through the pages.
The book's text is in faded brown ink; you bring it to your carrel and prop it up toward the desk light on a stack of less interesting texts. You can't tell whether these words have been printed or written. It's English, but your eyes skim over the text without reading. You search for capital letters, combinations of pleasing sounds, maybe a title you can repurpose into a name, since no one should know what it is, anyway.
Your eyes light on a few interesting phrases and names you jot down on the scrap paper for your call numbers. The lights flicker off and on overhead: closing time. You rise and sling your bag over your shoulder. There's a phrase on the page, slightly darker than the rest: Nessayle. You murmur the name to yourself as you reach for your golf pencil, but your bag slips down your arm, and the lights flicker again. Easy enough to remember, though. You close the book and stack it with the rest on a shelf for a library page to put back later. Nessayle you think to yourself, but by the time you make it to the exit, you've forgotten.
Your online search resumes later that night, but nothing grabs you. You go to bed defeated. Your mind races; the story can't grow without a name, but you can't leave it alone. You trace the shadows of streetlit trees on your wall with your eyes, letting the familiar shapes lure you into restfulness instead of restiveness. There, in the liminal space between sleep and dream, your eyes follow a different silhouette. There's light there, but it's not the sodium glare from outside, and there's a weight at the foot of the bed. You look at the shape with bravery born of dreaming. It looks back, and the white lights shift. It breathes, and you smell fresh water.
Thank you.
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