The Sound of Pages Turning

Elara Bloom had never been good at saying things out loud. Not the big things, anyway. She could talk about homework and movies and what she wanted for lunch, sure—but the thoughts that lived deeper, the ones tangled in her ribs like ivy? Those only ever made it to the page.

That’s why, at exactly 3:17 p.m. every weekday, she ducked through the peeling green door of Whitmore’s Bookstore, slipped past the “Local Authors” display, and settled into the second armchair in the back corner. It was her routine. Her ritual. Her refuge.

The bookstore wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t even particularly clean. Dust danced in the light that spilled through the mismatched front windows. The floorboards creaked in protest with every step. But to Elara, it was magic. Here, no one asked her what she planned to study in college. No one told her writing was “just a hobby.” Here, she could breathe.

She opened her leather-bound journal—the navy one with worn edges and a frayed ribbon bookmark—and flipped past doodles, snippets of dialogue, and dozens of unfinished stories. She landed on the one that mattered most: Dandelion Summer.

Her pencil hovered.

Lark stood at the edge of the invisible town again, torn between staying in a world that felt like hers and returning to one that never had. Elara had rewritten this scene at least six times in the last month. It never felt quite right. The problem wasn’t the story—it was the ending. Endings were hard. Endings meant deciding. Endings meant closing a door.

“Elara,” came a voice, warm and familiar.

She looked up to see Mr. Whitmore, balancing a stack of mismatched paperbacks. His sweater had a hole in the sleeve, and his glasses perched halfway down his nose.

“Still at it?” he asked, smiling.

“I’m close this time,” she said.

“Close is good.” He paused. “You know, endings are just beginnings in disguise. Sometimes we overthink them.”

“I know,” she said, glancing down at her notebook. “But I want it to be... honest.”

He gave a soft chuckle. “You always do.”

She stayed until the shop lights flickered, the silent signal that closing time was near. She packed up her things, slipping her journal into her worn canvas bag and waving goodbye to Mr. Whitmore as she stepped into the chilled evening.

The walk home was quiet, lined with brittle trees and the scent of early winter. Her house sat on a quiet street at the edge of town, where the stars showed up when the power lines didn’t interfere. It was a narrow two-story with a crooked mailbox and a wind chime that played the same song every night.

Inside, dinner was already on the table.

Her mother ladled stew into mismatched bowls while her father scrolled through something on his tablet. Her older brother, Drew, scrolled through his phone with the kind of focused apathy only teenage boys had mastered.

“So,” her mom said, settling into her seat. “Have you thought more about college programs?”

Elara kept her eyes on the steam rising from her bowl. “A little.”

“Your English teacher said you’ve got a strong voice,” her dad added, looking up. “Maybe education. Or communications. Something with stability.”

“Sure,” she murmured.

The rest of dinner passed in the quiet hum of background noise—cutlery, chewing, a few half-hearted attempts at conversation. Elara mostly listened.

Afterward, she climbed the stairs to the attic room she called her own. The air was colder up there, but she liked it. It had slanted ceilings, a single window, and a view of the moon that felt like a secret.

She sat at her desk, fingers resting on the keys of her battered typewriter. The ‘R’ stuck sometimes, printing tilted and off-kilter, like it was tired. She loved that.

Elara fed a fresh sheet of paper into the machine. The attic was quiet except for the soft tick of the wall clock and the wind pressing gently against the glass.

She wrote late into the night, her thoughts pouring into the story like ink into veins.

Lark wasn’t just a character.

She was Elara’s way of making sense of a world that didn’t always make room for people like her—quiet dreamers who didn’t always fit the mold.

And Elara knew, deep down, that she wasn’t writing just to finish something.

She was writing to begin.

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