Some stories are written twice—once in ink, once in memory.

  It started with a book I didn’t remember checking out.

  I found it on the nightstand when I got home from work, its linen cover warped slightly at the edges, the title too faded to read. But there was a library card tucked inside, and my name—Madeline Price—was stamped across the top in blue ink. Neat block letters I hadn’t used since middle school.

  I should’ve been unsettled.

  Instead, I opened the book.

  The world shifted before I reached the first line.

  Not with a jolt—more like falling asleep in a warm room and waking in a place that has waited too patiently to disappear. I stood on soft carpet, in what looked like a reading room suspended above an endless sea of clouds.

  High-arched windows framed a sky the color of parchment. Light fell in gentle bands, illuminating bookshelves that curved inward like a spiral shell. The ceiling moved slowly, like the underside of a shallow tide.

  There was only one other person in the room.

  He stood at a wide desk near the windows, back to me, hands resting on a book that hadn’t been opened yet. Tall, lean. His shirt was rolled at the sleeves, suspenders crossed loosely at his back. His hair was dark, curling slightly at the edges, as though he'd forgotten to brush it.

  He turned slowly when I approached, and smiled like he’d been expecting me.

  “You found it,” he said, not as a question.

  “I’m not sure where I am,” I said, feeling the strange press of familiarity rise in my chest.

  “You’re between,” he replied. “You slipped through the margin.”

  My eyes drifted to the book in front of him. The cover was blank, but the edges were ink-stained, as though it had been crying into itself for years.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  He met my gaze without hesitation. “A library of what was left unsaid.”

  His name was written on a slip of parchment tucked between two books: Elias Thorne. I caught it by accident, as I reached for the table to steady myself.

  He didn’t notice. Or maybe he did and let it pass.

  “It collects what people almost wrote,” he said. “Letters never sent. Chapters abandoned mid-thought. The pieces we didn’t finish, but couldn’t throw away.”

  I looked around. The room felt full and hollow all at once.

  “And you?”

  He smiled, but not fully. “I’m the archivist.”

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  “For forgotten things?”

  “For the parts of you that were too quiet to keep speaking.”

  We walked between the stacks, my fingers brushing bindings that felt warm beneath my touch. I didn’t recognize any of the titles, but each one pulsed like something that had once lived in my ribs.

  “I used to write,” I said, softly.

  “I know.”

  I stopped. “How?”

  “You’re in the catalog,” Elias said, and gestured to a large, open ledger beside the desk. I saw my name there. Not once. Dozens of times. With notes I didn’t understand—6:12, second draft left breathing. 8:07, a letter meant for no one.

  I felt something twist inside me. A sense of mourning for something I hadn’t realized I’d lost.

  “I didn’t mean to leave it behind,” I whispered.

  Elias looked at me then, fully, like someone memorizing the edges of a moment he’d dreamed of too often.

  “I know,” he said. “But I kept it anyway.”

  We sat on a small bench beneath the circular window. The air smelled like ink and citrus peel, like something preserved from a forgotten summer. A tea tray rested between us, the cups steaming softly, though I never saw him make it.

  “You’re not a memory,” I said, half to myself.

  “No,” he replied. “But you left me in one.”

  “And you’ve been here all this time?”

  “Not in the way you think,” Elias said. “Time doesn’t pass here. It breathes. Slowly. Enough to let something heal, if you let it.”

  He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, folded letter. Its edges were worn, but carefully kept. He held it out without unfolding it.

  “You left this here,” he said. “Years ago, I think.”

  I took it. The handwriting was mine. The loop of the ‘y’ in goodbye was unmistakable. But the letter was unsealed.

  I opened it.

  Inside was a single line:

  “If someone ever finds this, tell him I didn’t mean to stop writing.”

  The ache behind my ribs broke open.

  Tears came silently. Elias didn’t look away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You don’t have to be,” he answered. “You’re here. That’s the part that matters.”

  “I don’t know how long I can stay.”

  “You can’t,” he said gently. “Not forever.”

  “But I don’t want to forget again.”

  He reached out, not suddenly, but with the careful grace of someone offering something precious. His fingers touched mine—warm, real. Not imagined.

  “You’ll remember the feeling,” he said. “And that will be enough to find your way again, if you want to.”

  The light in the room shifted.

  Books rustled like wind passing through curtains. The walls leaned inward with memory. I felt myself begin to fade—like the last page of a novel you loved but never expected to finish.

  Elias didn’t move.

  “You’ll still be here?” I asked.

  He smiled, quiet and true. “Some version of me always will be.”

  And then, softly, like a phrase left in the margins:

  “Write something when you wake. Even if it’s just my name.”

  I opened my eyes on my couch, the forgotten book still in my lap.

  The cover was blank.

  In my notebook, without remembering, I had already written something new:

  Elias Thorne.

  Archivist. Keeper of the unsaid.

  He waited, and I remembered how to answer.