Every blink, every moment that Portia’s eyes close and she fell back into that library, it clawed at her. That creature, that darkened star, all the things that she poured deep into her bones and pulled her down deep below the waves. Blank swirling ink, a cipher unsolved, she now wondered if they were just figments of her solitude, and that none of the people who she had encountered were real.

The book, she had to get it, even if it was useless, even if the mass of breathing and taunting code stared through her and gave no inclination of reason or motive. A puzzle for the sake of being, not of solving, and nowhere to escape it. Tied to her, staining her mind now as she roused herself and blinked away the darkness.

Sitting on the couch of the place she had taken over, the old Victorian with leaking ceilings, it felt foreign even now. It had to be real; she couldn’t remember if there were such detailed records of this planet in the library. But a thousand years… her memory was good, but for some place that hadn’t been important, she couldn’t have known this much, could she?

Getting up with a start, she grabbed that cursed pen and device the mauvian had thought to help her with and burst out the front door. Smashing on the buttons, she had one goal, even as she fiddled with the metal object Desiree had left her before. Something for lighting candles, something self-contained. It had to work, it just had to.

The shift between places wasn’t jarring, even with the heaviness of miasma in the air of Portia. Standing in the center of the city, she disregarded the crumbled structures and moved with purpose towards what was left of the library. It had always been fortified, always stood strong after each attempt at being breached or exited. Nobody knew that more than she did. Even now, she wondered if she was seeing all this or was in some sort of looping personal punishment for never decrypting that blackened code.

The rotted wood gave no resistance, its fight long lost as she passed through into the library. A place that she once strived for perfection in, pleased with the work she put in, and the good she was doing for the fate of those here. It amounted to nothing, though, and for that she’d been trapped and forced to remain even after the rest of the portians had fallen and crumbled to dust.

Nothing had moved since last time, each open book that had been cast aside showed the same code, a permanent reminder as to what hell she was in. Pulling on the shelves, tearing books down one at a time, she screamed at them and at the curse cast upon them all.

When the shelves were bare, every tome of life piled in the center, she turned back towards the pedestal. One last book, one last connection, she wanted to burn them all to the ground, but the last one. That was hers; no one could have it but her. No one could read it but her. Even if the words of her own life were scrambled and tainted, she wouldn’t let it stay here. Every connection needed to be torn out, every last thread if she could manage it.

Touching the open pages, it wasn’t as blackened as the others. The cream-coloured pages still showed in the center, almost as if there was a barrier keeping it from encroaching and completely consuming the page.

It was heavy, heavier than any other book, its pages ceaselessly expanding for every year she remained. A testament to how long she was trapped, to how long she’d been staring at the maddening black taint and breathed the heavy and sickening miasma that had breached the library so long ago that she couldn’t remember how the air had been before then.

The library, still as ever, seemed to grow anxious. Freezing, even that code seemed to cease as she stepped over the pile while examining the metal device in her hand. These weren't lives anymore, the records long destroyed, the purpose of the volumes long gone. And as her duty was to the care and decryption of these tomes, she flicked open the implement and smiled as the flame flickered yet still burned. Unlike the matches, this one refused to let the miasma snuff it out. A spark, that’s all it would take in a pile of dry and dusty papers. Nothing important remained, and even as she tossed it behind her, she couldn’t look.

What she had done was blasphemy of the highest rank, something completely at odds with who she was, but this was what it had made her. Even if nothing else was real, she felt satisfaction as she stepped out into the ruins of Portia.

The smell of burning paper was new to her, but she couldn’t quite come to hate it. If it worked, she’d remember it as the smell of freedom. It would be nice to make sure it was all burning, but she wanted to get off this planet and away. So she went back, to that blue and green orb that had become a new place to be. Whether it was real or not, whether if it wanted her or not, she was going to be there and only there.

The second she stood back on the porch of her Victorian, she threw the phone to the ground and stomped it with her heel, going until there was no way the thing would ping her or send through another message to help with someone else’s problem. It wasn’t her job to feed into their delusions of grandeur about saving worlds that didn’t care. If anything, she wanted to show them how cruel it really was, to pull back the curtain and show how truly ruined it all was. She needed to figure out how to sever the connection, how to prove that this place was real. Whatever it took, whatever the cost, she wanted to sever herself from her prison.

WC: 1,025