Adventure.

[KirbyVictorious]

This is a continuing thing, comes in chapters and such. The Alchemist by Paulo Cuelho deserved my undying praise, so I picked it to be The Book. A tribute, of sorts.

On we go.

Adventure

I want to know what love is.
I want to know why people think and feel.
I want to know why everyone is different.

I’ll go on a journey.
I’ll talk to many people.
I’ll ask them my questions.
And then I will know everything.

Oakley, TX
December 2007

An ordinary town, nothing special. Why a butterfly becomes trapped amongst worms is a simple phenomenon; when everything is small, an infant, everything looks the same.

The girl was as ordinary as the town. Ordinary hair, ordinary eyes, nothing striking, pretty in her own way—but without the airbrushed beauty of a model, it amounted to nothing. She behaved in school and out of school, had a few friends, was a good student. Average was the word a normal, sensible adult would use. Just like everyone else.

But when everyone else became abnormal, strange became the norm. And suddenly she was an alien, a strange creature, a zebra amongst horses.

Abnormal—in that beauty turned to spite and envy; hatred turned to casual conversation; technology turned to another tool of enforcing the norm; materials turned into God. Those with values intact became strange, unique—wrong. Though some still preached, bleated feebly about ancient words, the world had turned backwards.

She was ordinary. So when she decided to run away, it took everyone by surprise. Running away was a rebellious gesture and nothing else, a product of some insurmountable chasm between one and one’s parents, caused by something so completely out of the norm as to be considered unnatural, sinful. She had done nothing; nor had anyone else. She simply wanted to go.

So one day she emptied her backpack neatly onto the floor and filled it with a toothbrush, a change of durable, warm, comfortable clothes, soap, socks, a pencil, a pen, a sketchpad, a notebook, cans of food and bottles of water, all the money she had in the world, and one book: The Alchemist. She left a note.

I’ve gone to find some answers.
I won’t be back too soon.

The note was a lie—she would never return.

She left her key in the doorknob and journeyed into the world.

~

Years, perhaps decades, from the time she had left home, a confused, lonely child stumbled into the library out of the pouring rain. The world was cold and harsh in more ways than one, the child thought, shivering as he hurried inside.

Bewildered by the clutter, he asked a librarian where he could find the book. She had never heard of it.

In desperate need of company, in the only form company for him had ever taken, he resolved to search himself.

Libraries had not grown smaller over time—they had grown larger; every library had every book ever written that had lived through the fires. People had realized, finally, that books could save them, and technology would—already had—come to nothing.

The fires had destroyed everything. He had nothing left—except the libraries.

He had traveled across the new divisions, sneaking past guards and soldiers, to each new library, searching for a book that was never there—a book he had read long ago, when the cities were polluted and foggy but so tall and majestic….

The book was not in its section, or in its letter in any section. Sighing, he sat in the very corner of the library and curled up, still shivering from the chill of the ashen rain. He fell asleep, but awoke rather suddenly with his book right in front of his nose.

He grabbed The Alchemist off of the shelf and devoured it eagerly with his eyes, elated, hugging it to his chest; it was a long time, until he noticed that another had fallen into his lap.

He picked it up. There was nothing written on the front except COMPOSITION BOOK, 200 COUNT. How strange…lined paper…paper…only the really ancient books still had this, as the trees had died out long ago….

He opened it to the first page, on which a single line, written in old-fashioned stick pen, jumped out at him:

“Where your heart is, there also will be your treasure; where your treasure is, there also will be your heart.”

The quote from the book at his side surprised him; even more surprising to him was that he remembered it after so long. Perhaps some things never changed.

He turned the page. It read:

December 7, 2007
Just outside of Oakley, TX

My name is Isabelle. I am sixteen years old. I’ve never done anything daring or out of line in my life, so I suppose I can’t explain to you why I ran away from home…not in a way you would understand.

But I decided that I wanted to find answers; I wanted to know why people act the way they do, why humans think and love and feel and hate, if it is a human’s soul, if everything has a soul. I wanted to know if the world was all like Oakley, Texas, if places like the Pyramids and Spain and Paris were all just a lie; and I wanted to know if those places were better.

Nothing really triggered it; one day, I just left. Perhaps I didn’t want to do my math homework…perhaps I was hallucinating with boredom…perhaps I was fed up with my life. Those are reasons, but I had none. I simply packed and walked away from my life, for what I imagined was forever.

And after that…well….

The things I hope to find, the things I already know, lie within. If you have ever read The Alchemist, you know about Personal Legends—this is mine. My heart tells me that only one soul will ever read this, so I place it beside my Bible, my best friend—my favorite book. If you know the story, if you picked it out of the millions of other books and would pick it again forevermore, you will understand.

Hello, my friend…you have found the other half of your soul.

Read on, and I will tell you the answers to everything you have ever asked.

Read The Alchemist. Damn good book. If you haven't, no sweat. You just missed out.

more adventures to come. don't depend on this to be an ongoing thing for too long, though. Only Ametris exists eternally for me.  

[UsakoTenshi]

Kirbs! You've convinced me to go and buy The Alchemist {{As soon as I can }} like how you conviced me to go buy Inkspell and Inkheart! 3nodding

I really am enjoying this so far, so I'm positive I'll enjoy your future adventures. It makes me wonder if Isabella has found the answers she went looking for and if so, how they came to be.  

[Spastic waffles]

This was really cool.

I LOVELOVELOVE the ending. Seriously, perfect.

I can't wait to read on, and find out what she figured out.  

[KirbyVictorious]

Waffles: Woooooo!!! Yay! I wrote more, I did. ^^

Oukow: sweatdrop Um, Isabelle...and I hated Inkheart! *sob*

Kidding. <33333 READ THE ALCHEMIST! BEST BOOK EVAAAAH!!!

By Paulo Coelho.  

[KirbyVictorious]

1. Houston

Houston, Texas

It is winter, and cold—to me, at least, a person who has never even seen snow. To, perhaps, a Canadian, it would be summer weather, but here, it is the time for red-and-green sweaters and boots.

Houston is a strange place. So many people…the third largest city in America…but it keeps itself to itself. There is no walking, only driving, and the sky is clouded by smog…no one walks, even to visit each other’s houses. It is considered impolite to drop by randomly…but I wish that, at home, someone would have done that to me.

I went to a high school today, a public one, and mingled with the crowds; no one noticed me, save to stare at my plain outfit, a t-shirt and jeans. No jewelry, no makeup seemed to be an ostracizing fault in the teenage world.

I never went to a class, but I went to lunch—I sat outside on the grass and watched as the groups formed. Dark skin mixed with light, Asian with Mexican, but there was a different kind of segregation here—girls that wore ordinary clothes, the kind on Hollister models, and gossiped and laughed, across the courtyard from girls that dressed plainly, like me, or extravagantly to the point of a one-man show, who spoke of random things with a lightheartedness that lifted my own heart from its silent contemplation. Perhaps it was the fondness between all of them that made them different; or their obvious inequality in intelligence, fashion choices, or thought processes, that nonetheless were disregarded; or perhaps it was the simple fact that, when someone left, no one bent their heads to whisper gossip about them behind their backs.

I went up to the former group, the Hollister models, first. “Excuse me,” I said. They looked at me like I had horns and green skin. I introduced myself and asked them for their names; one asked me who I was, demanded almost, and I said I was from Oakley, which they would not have heard of. It was a long walk from here. They glared at me, immediately hostile; even though I used all the right words, and slang, for their sort of group, I was rejected. It was not unexpected; I moved away—towards the others, the outcasts.

They watched me curiously as I approached.

“Hi. I’m Isabelle.”

“Hiii!” one said immediately, a brunette that took the privilege of free dress to its limit. She smiled easily; I liked her. “Wanna sit with us?”

I nodded and sat next to her, only then noticing that the group sat in a rough circle on the ground. On my other side was a blue-eyed blonde, seeming distant; upset, or perhaps a little sad, by the seriousness of her expression—she hunched over a thick notebook with typed pages stapled inside, a pen poised in her hand, and ignored me.

“Why are all of you sitting on the ground?” I asked. The brunette laughed; she would look ordinary to the average passerby, with brown hair and eyes, but there was a bold unconformity to her features that made her striking—as if, whether she was pretty or not, she was going to stand out anyway. She told me, as if it was an inside joke that I should know, that there was not enough room on the tables for all of us.

“Don’t you have any lunch?” another girl asked me, a friendly-sounding blonde that smiled easily at me. I shook my head…and immediately, a French fry, pretzel, bag of chips, and pudding cup were shoved at me. I thanked them and took it, alarmed by their friendliness—and I was hungry, after all.

While we ate, I joined into their conversation, answering their questions with easy lies: Yes, I was a new student, I had moved from Oakley, I didn’t know what I was taking yet, I would love help finding my classes if I stayed. The brunette made me feel welcome, introducing everyone, including the ones that came and went, primarily a group of boys playing a guitar, whose small Filipino owner panicked when ice cubes flew in its direction. She was Nikki; the brunette was Caroline; the helpful blonde Kay, the unhelpful one Kirby. There was a Derek, a Salimah, a Desaray…odd names next to ordinary, like the people themselves.

I asked them what their names meant, and got strange answers; Caroline shrugged and said something about a princess and a dead singer, Kay shrugged and laughed, thinking hers completely ordinary, Salimah automatically answered “It means peace in Arabic,” as if she answered that question every day. I received sarcasm, nonchalance, amusement, but no unfriendliness.

Caroline prodded Kirby, and she jumped, as if jerking out of a trance; she stared at me as if she had forgotten who I was, and then apologized and smiled. I was wrong to think that she was being hostile; she was childishly adorable, with a high, fast voice that squeaked a little but seemed to fit her perfectly. She explained that she was always like that when she was reading, and—laughing—said it was like her version of an acid trip; I asked her what the book was, and she said it was her own, which needed editing terribly. Three or four denials rang out, and she grinned shamelessly, acknowledging her greatness without modesty; good friends, I thought. I asked her to tell me about it, but she said it would bore me, maybe some other time. She added that Kirby was a fluffy pink ball from Nintendo that ate everything, invented by Shigeru Miyamoto, and added proudly that she was indeed a Kirby.

I asked them where they were from—here? Or somewhere else? Salimah immediately said Pluto, ranting something about their war with the Martians and their new evil overlord who banished her, but then seriously added that she had moved here last year from some small Texas town. Caroline said something about taking the subway from hell after they kicked her out, Kirby said something in some language I didn’t recognize, shrugging, and a deep-voiced boy who had just arrived stated Margaritaville. The rest were slightly more ordinary; I decided that there were a few that were crazier than the others, and liked them all the more for it.

And then I asked them what they were doing when they had a vacation, and the circle exploded; beach trips, mall excursions, skating, sleeping, Europe, Pluto, shrugs, and a widely concurred trip to Hell, Texas, “so we can say that we were kicked out of Hell.”

The conversation took a random turn, and I joined in; it was easy, natural. Kirby reminded a boy that she had finished a chapter of her book, then, as he followed her around, pleading for a hint, excitedly gave it to him and sat down again, resolving to ramble on about her book to me. It was rather interesting, though hard to follow as she kept losing her focus or forgetting what had happened next, and kept informing me of what she knew that “they” were not supposed to yet.

And then the best part; before lunch ended, Caroline offered that we celebrate for no reason with a party at her house that night. I was wary of parties, knowing how easily people lost control, but since it was obviously in my honor—or that my arrival was an excuse to have some fun—I accepted. Kirby immediately agreed to the plans and chattered on with Caroline about what they should do; the others deliberated, the boys excluding themselves on Caroline’s orders, and then hesitantly gave their assents, but said they had to check.

They were fun, carefree, and though a few of them changed when the bell rang, turning stressed and hurried, they waved goodbye to each other and to me, and one or two offered to show me to my next class, inquiring what it was, but I headed them off and went on alone. They would never miss me in the crowds; I would be invisible even if I had planned to be there.

I’m at the library now, writing this while I read; I have learned something, but I can’t put words to it, really. I wondered what caused it all—Salimah’s sarcastic, know-it-all insanity; Kirby’s vagueness, like everything moved too fast for her, and her willingness to jump into any plan; Caroline’s warmth and clear, easy intelligence of the kind that laced one’s speech and offered random knowledge at useless times; Nikki’s dramatics; Kay and Derek’s easy nonchalance. And the strangest part is, they were sincere and kind; there was no hostility. They welcomed me, even the ones I thought would not; Brian’s sarcastic jokes at my expense, Salimah’s superior bossiness, Kirby’s distant carelessness.

Maybe what I’ve learned is that old lesson about judging a book by its cover; or something about friends in low places; or just, in general, that there was good in some people. Maybe all people. That was what I had left home to find out.

~

Houston? Texas? Canada? Only America struck a bell, the fallen empire. A no-man’s land now, the first to perish in the fires….

The weather, too, struck him as strange. Warmth in the winter…when it was always cold wherever he had been…and SNOW, who had snow anymore? Unless the ashes counted as snow…and eating outside in a high school…and GRASS….

And the way the friends acted, and the way it surprised them both. He didn’t know people could be like that. Like any of the people she described.

He turned the page and read on.

~


All of this is feasible, would happen if a) the posse and I lived in Houston (ew) and b) Isabelle really existed. Start with what you know, right?

Next Adventure: Slumber Party  

[BlackHawkGS]

I loved The Alchemist. I read it a few years ago, so I can't recall all that happened very clearly. But still, very good inspirational book.  

[blu_sour_skittle]

~::~
Questing 2

~[I remember when we'd
Stay up late and we'd talk all night
in a dark room lit by the TV light.
Through all the hard times in my life
those nights kept me alive

<3

Gah gonk @.@
*makes mental note to come back and read this later*
I read the first 1/5 of it (maybe) and my attention is flying away. Not that it's boring or anything; it's very lovely. My mind has been off and away all day long. Too much stuff to read in one sitting.
Not to mention I'm attempting to do my math homework at the same time. >_> I can multi-task like nobody's business, most times, but multi-tasking anything with math does not work for me.

Promise I'll be back to read it later and leave a proper review when I do.

Listen to the radio play all night;
didn't wanna go home to another fight.
Through all the hard times in my life
those nights kept me alive.]~

155/240k
~::~

Chorus from Those Nights by Skillet  

[KirbyVictorious]

...kay.  

[Voxxx]

Kaaaaabiii-chan, why didn't you tell me you had written another story? 3nodding It was nice. I liked the part about the libraries, although the rest is rather sad.


You're a too harsh in regarding yourself, you know, and too kind in regarding me. You're not unhelpful.  

[KirbyVictorious]

When I'm reading I am.

Dunno. Just trying something new.

And I diiiiid tell you...didn't I? I told you that you were in it, somewhat.  

[Voxxx]

Nah, I thought you were talking about Ametris, and I was like, squee~, I'm going to be featured in one of the best books of all time. whee 'Cause you know, Ametris is pretty freaking sweet.

surprised I wonder who wrote that beautiful book? Yay for subliminal compliments!

But this is infinitely nice, too.  

[KirbyVictorious]

I told you, you ARE in Ametris. Remember the fox chimera?  

[Voxxx]

Depends. Would you go novelist on my a** if I said no? sweatdrop  

[KirbyVictorious]

No, but babbling will ensue.

Fox-Chimera-lady named Cara (changed it 'cause I can) who totally saves both twin's asses at the end of Sirtema.

Remeeeeeeember?  

[Sedec]

I adored it! The idea was very intriguing and the characters very real.

I always try to find something to critique so here it goes 3nodding

1. the " ~ " confused me to no ends! Not the symbol in itself but just the fact that I didn't know you were transitioning. So maybe just put a few more spaces in there or a quick italicized...173402974 years later...

annnnnnnnnnnddddddddddd that was it biggrin

Great job, I liked it a lot. And because you talked about it so much I think I will go pick up The Alchemist tomorrow at the library- sounds like a good read.

~Sedec