The Library Is So Much More Than Just That.

• Rachel Chopping, Grade 8, Alfred Deakin High School
• Short Story
• 2013

Excellence Award in the 'Dream Big 2013' competition

There is a place where dreams come true. The dream begins as a small seed of thought, it grows into a spark of an idea and then into a blossom of hope. All this time, it is being cultivated by the imagination. Soon, the hope grows louder and louder until it trumpets through the mind. From there, it pervades every other waking moment and becomes the sole thought. It could be a wondrous quest to fulfill, a spellbinding person to meet or the understanding of life. This is a dream. And for every dream, there is a dreamer. The same, but different all at once, dreamers hold the keys to unlocking the doors of possibility. Without the dreamer, there can be no dream, and without a dream, what are we really? After all, the future belongs to those who live in the beauty of their dreams.
There is a place where these dreams are started, stored and even destroyed. The place where they can be as wildly fanatical as they wish and yet still understood as the bittersweet yearnings of the heart. The place where dreams can come true, but can just as easily be broken. The place; this incredible, impossible world, is called one simple thing.

The Library.

The library; where thousands of words drift in the air forming memories and stories. The ancient shelves whispering to you as you meander past the aisles blissfully. This place is where people who dare to dream come. People who ingeniously thought to write their dreams down for others to read have come here. The authors, the writers and the poets. They all have their place in the library. For they are the true wizards of this world. They are the ones who ask the important questions. What is life? What is love? What am I? They research the human race and report their findings back to us in the form of books. For that is what books are really, one person’s musings on the meaning of life, but how we decipher that meaning is another question altogether. No two persons have ever read the same book, for the worth of a book is what you can carry away from it. And for the nonbelievers, the pessimistic, negative realists. Books are our message to you. Magic exists. Just not in the form you expect. We are the true immortal race.

For I shall live a thousand lives before I die and the man who never reads shall live only one.