So I wrote a story for Karanoia Heights but it's only 300 something words so you don't have to include it. 

Anyone want to do art for the cover of the story collection?

Ahh how haven't I seen this yet? Can I do the tapestries/paintings one please?

Opps, sorry. I read through it again and found a mispelled word. It's the word in bold letters. Again, sorry.

_A library of Book safes.

By: Foxwood!

A
brilliant
morning is the perfect morning for going out. Going to
a atheneum, or
more commonly known as a library. I caught wind of a rumor, the rumor
of a recently completed library.
I had never been there, or
contemplated looking it up. I hope to travel there soon, preferably
earlier than later. My curiosity turned into an obsession, the
atheneum opened soon after my founding of it.

The
hill to the Library was steep, and winding. Fortunately, I am a
human of athleticism, and will power. Nothing could stop me from
achieving my goals, and the goal for standing inside that Library was
out of the question. The
thought of millions upon millions of books, pushed me
harder.

Soon,
my ambition had been attained. In front of my stood the most superb,
ravishing and statuesque construction, I had ever laid eyes on. It
glowed with grandeur and nobility. The enclosure fabricated
with the purest of marble and gold. Truly a glorious
sight to behold..

The
innermost part of the Library was bigger than expected. It was built
of varying types of wood, switching
every
other level, the air smelled
of cinnamon and pumpkin. It was, if I do say so my self, a very
calming aroma. Looking around
I saw very over stuffed chairs, and brightly colored bean bags. A
desk stood in the center, with a cordial
looking woman sitting at it. She looked up when I reached the desk.
“Hello”
she said looking up from her
work. I
rested my elbows on the desk “Would you happen to have any Lewis
Carroll?” She looked confused, then flipped through a modest
binder. “Would you happen to be a Leo who identifys with the
They/them pronouns?” I recoiled “No, why do you ask”. She
didn’t answer for a while, the handed me a blue and green card.
There were the four open
slots on it, Name:
.
Nothing filled that spot. Age:
.
Nothing filled that either. Zodiac
.
That was also empty, and the last one was..Biggest Problem
.
That one was barren as well. But some how, that made it mysterious.

I
stared at the card for a moment in confusion, then shoved it in my
back pocket. The woman sat up straight, showing the name tag pined to
her shirt. Squinting at it, the text read
“Hello, my name is:
Evra”. Fidgeting
with the ends of my shirt, I said “ sooo, Evra. What is This
place?” Her eyes landed on me “Why it’s a library of course”
I regarded the library card, after I pulled it from it’s place.
“But, this doesn't look like a normal library card?”

“Why
not? That’s the standard format of a library card. Well for this
library any ways”

“What
did you say the Place was called again?” she smiled “I didn’t,
but now that you ask. I suppose I shall tell you. This, Is the
Library of Book Safes

Your stories are all awesome! I love the descriptions and I love how everyone's writing "voice" is unique, and yet perfect for the city.

Excellent job so far! :) 

this was typed on my phone during humanities/advisory while I should have been studying for my math final, so don’t take it too seriously lol

1 pm

By Silver Crystal

(Written for the ‘talking painting’ prompt)

Word count: 1806

Part 1 of 3 

The Karanoia Heights Public Library is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. 

Soaring ceilings, rows and rows of bookshelves with those sliding ladders, large windows allowing sunlight to bathe the entire scene, dust motes suspended in the midst of it all. Wooden benches and little reading nooks hidden in corners and under tables, furnished with cushions and blankets. Sometimes there’ll be new ones that pop up in different places, and some never change location. Logic is a little wacky around here, in case you didn’t know. 

Of course, there is the fact that I’ve technically never seen any place besides the library, but still. I only see it during the day, when the inhabitants of the town are sound asleep, and it’s just me and the sunlight and the books. 

All I’ve ever known is 1 pm in the afternoon. I’m lucky to have even that, though, because, you know, I’m not alive. Paint on canvas, that’s all there is to me. I don’t know who made it so I can wake up once a day for an hour, but I’m glad that they did; I can’t imagine what it would be like without that one hour of life. It’s everything to me, even if I can’t move past my place on the wall and I’m trapped within the confines of my frame. It’s enough.

Today, when my eyes open and I look around at the familiar scene, I’m surprised to see a person standing a few yards away from me. Usually there’s no one here, given the town’s sleep schedule, and there’s no librarians (the library doesn't need one; it takes care of itself). She looks to be a teenage girl, flipping through pages of a book in one hand. She has a stack of a couple of books at her feet. 

I shift around in my frame, studying her more, but she doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Good book?” I ask. The girl yelps in surprise and jumps back a little, knocking over the books near her feet. I laugh and say, “Sorry, didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Y-you can talk?” she says in awe. “How?”

“You must be new to town,” I say in lieu of an answer.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “I’ve been here for, like, a week and I’m still getting surprised by stuff all the time. This town is so weird.”

“Hm,” I muse. “I guess it is, maybe. But I’ve never been anywhere else, so it all seems normal to me.”

“My uncle says I’ll get used to it, but I really doubt it,” she says as she bends down to collect the books scattered around the floor. “I guess the library was seeming a little too normal. I should have expected something strange like a talking painting.” She blinks, then says, “Not that you’re strange or anything! I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“I’ll think you’ll find that ‘strange’ isn’t considered an insult around here,” I say with a small smile. 

She sits right in front of me, looking up at my place on the wall. “I’m Karolina. You can call me Lina, though. What’s your name?”

“Um.” I think for a second. “I don’t think I have one? Everyone just calls me ‘the talking painting’ or something along those lines.”

“Oh,” Lina says. “Well, could I call you… Sydney? Is that okay? Wait- are you meant to be a boy or a girl?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.” My clothes and appearance in general is fairly androgenous, and I’ve never met my painter, so I have no idea who they meant me to be. “But Sydney could be a name for either, right? So it works.”

“Okay. “ She smiles. “Very nice to meet you, Sydney.”

“You too, Karolina.”

We talk until my hour of life is up. Lina tells me about how she came to be in Karanoia Heights, how her mother and sister died in a car accident and her only remaining family was an uncle who lived in the town. He lives in the underground layer of streets, which was quite a shock to her when she first arrived. She waves her hands around as she describes the things that she thinks are incredibly out of the ordinary, which are just normal occurrences to me. It’s interesting to see the point of view of someone from the outside. 

I tell her about my one hour of life and all the strange little occurrences I have witnessed at one in the afternoon (one time a group of teenagers broke in for fun and were chased out a few minutes later by a flock of snapping romance novels).

It’s nice to have someone talk to me like I’m a person. I don’t think it’s ever happened before. 

Lina leaves right before my time is up, and the last thing that I see is her walking with books in her hands to the door.  

1 pm

Part 2 of 3

When I wake up next, she’s there again. Waiting for me to wake up. That’s never happened before, either. 

“You didn’t have to come again,” I say, feeling a little confused. I’ve had interesting conversations before, but they never came back to talk again. 

“No, I wanted to,” Lina hurries to say, pushing a curl of red hair from her face. “The craziest thing happened to me on the way here! So, I was just walking down the sidewalk and-”

She launches into an elaborate tale involving stray cats and talking flowers. After she’s done I tell her about a time something similar happened with the mayor a few years back and it was all everyone talked about. From there, we dissolve into a stream of steady conversation. No topic, no aim. Just talking. 

I wonder if this is what it’s like to have a friend. 

She leaves again, but she comes back. Every day. I tell her halfheartedly that she should be adapting to the town’s sleep schedule, but she says that she wasn’t going to sleep anyway. I don’t know if I believe her, but I hate the thought of her leaving, so I don’t say anything else. 

One day, she’s lying on a bench nearby me and asks, “So, Syd, what’s your favorite book? And please don’t say Harry Potter.”

“Nah, it’s overrated,” I reply. 

“Exactly!”

“I don’t have a favorite book,” I continue. “I haven’t really, like, read one before, you know?”

Lina sits up. “What do you mean? You live in a library!”

“Yeah, and I’m also a two-dimensional painting, so…”

“We’ll, that’s unacceptable,” she announces, standing. “I’m going to read a book to you. We’ll start with the Lord of the Rings.”

Turns out books are way more interesting when you actually know what the words on the inside are. Sometimes we read, sometimes we talk, sometimes we just sit and do nothing. It’s nice having a friend. 

One day she is quieter than usual. I ask her what’s wrong, and she sighs. 

“I don’t want to go to school this fall,” she says. “I’m so different from the people who grew up here.”

“Well, that’ll just make them more interested in you,” I point out. Lina’ll probably make tons of friends on the first day alone. But she’ll still come and visit, right? Even if it’s not every day. I imagine going back to quiet hours of life, staring at the windows and shelves and listening to nothing but silence. 

Admins, sorry for overwhelming you and posting this all at once!

1 pm

Part 3 of 3

Eventually, school starts, and to my continued surprise, Lina still comes every night. I help with homework and listen to her talking about classrooms that have desks that float and teachers that are able to write in the air with pencils. She tells me that people are curious about her but that she doesn't really have any friends other than me. I try not to feel too happy about that. 

There is a pause in the conversation, and Lina changes the topic rather abruptly by saying:

“The romance novels are on the shelf all the way to the left, right?”

“Yep,” I confirm. I know the entire layout of this building by heart. “You thinking about reading some?” Lina usually only reads sci-fi or fantasy.

“Maybe.” She looks down and fiddles with her hair like she does when she’s nervous. I don’t know whether to talk or not. After a few more moments of silence, Lina looks up at me and quietly asks, “Do you… do you know if there’s any romance novels in there where a girl falls in love with another girl?”

“Of course,” I say. “There’s a whole section there for LGBTQ+ stories, right in the middle.”

“Really?” she asks, disbelieving. “That’s so cool! In my old town, there was nothing like that anywhere. I didn’t even know it was a thing until a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry that it was never available for you,” I say. “But we have a ton, so help yourself!” I wait a few seconds before saying, “Lina? You’re valid. No matter what.”

She grins. “Thanks, Syd.”

A few days later, she talks continuously for almost the whole hour about a girl in her class named Natalie. I smile at her enthusiasm. 

In the few minutes after she leaves, before I reach the end of my hour of life, I think about family. I wonder what it’s like to have people who care so deeply for you. I think about the grief that Lina must have felt when her mother and sister died. Was I a painting of someone in the artist’s life, or simply a figment of their imagination? I could be a depiction of a dead relative, perhaps. Maybe that’s why they never come to see me. 

On one particular day, when the clouds are obscuring most of the sky and casting long shadows across the large room, Lina comes in with a nervous yet excited look on her face. 

She marches up to me right away and says, “Come live with me.”

…huh?

“I mean, you stay here by yourself and you only talk to me, right?” she says. “So wouldn’t it be easier if you just lived in my house? It would be so fun, having you right there all the time.”

I’m more than a little surprised. She wants me to come live with her? Forever? The idea makes me more excited than I’ve been in a long time. 

She mistakes my shocked silence for hesitation, saying, “Of course, you don’t have to-“

“No!” I exclaim. “I want to. I promise.”

She lets out a sigh of relief. “Okay, good.” She smiles. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be so much fun!”

I smile back at her. 

The Karanoia Heights Public Library may be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, but I had never been as happy as the day that I finally left.

~

May I write a poem using the carnival prompt?