Sydney Dunbar

“I keep memories,” said the Keeper, though they could not remember why as they spoke to no one but the shelves that stretched into eternity.

The books in the endless Library of Thread were not written in ink. They were stitched from soul-thread and memory.

Loose threads dangled like cobwebs as the Keeper passed, their steps slow and deliberate. That’s all the Keeper did. Sleep, walk, shelf. Again. Again.

The Keeper had no book – they had no memories to weave. But sometimes the Keeper would dare open a book from the shelf. They never knew why, but something about the whispers inside called to them. Whispers of feeling.

The Keeper could feel the sinking heaviness from the threads that held lives crushed with sorrow. They felt the burn in their fingers from silks blazing with fury. They couldn’t open the ones where the strands wrapped around their fingers, yearning to share in love and longing. All brief, heady tastes of raw, unknown emotion.

What was it like to feel? the Keeper wondered. The Keeper was always alone.

Until one day, they weren’t.

The Visitor appeared—familiar, yet entirely new. The same flesh, same shape, same eyes as the Keeper. But there was heaviness in their frame, darkness around their eyes, pallor beneath their skin.

“I want to forget,” they said to the Keeper.

“Why?” the Keeper asked.

“The pain is too much,” the Visitor said, a crack in their voice. “I’ve never been enough.”

The Keeper gestured to the books, the ones that were desperately whispering, their loose threads drifting toward them, reaching.

“You wish to forget your own life?” The Visitor nodded.

“To read others’ memories is to lose your own,” the Keeper added.

The Visitor clapped their hands together, as if in prayer. “I’ll do anything. Please.”

“If you wish to forget, you must first find your own thread,” the Keeper said softly, gesturing to the shelves.

As the Visitor passed, the threads reached for them, memories flashing within the iridescent strands. The Visitor followed the images, looking for their own.

But there were countless books, endless shelves, never-ending threads of soul. As the Visitor searched, there were some strands that held smiles on warm sunny days, laughter at popping popcorn, tucking little children into bed with memorized stories and giggling kisses. Those ones made the Visitor smile. Other strands held sobbing beneath blankets, mocking whispers behind backs, and hands held as life slowly slipped away. Those memories reminded the Visitor of their own pain, but with a taste of regret. These were lives well lived, weren’t they?

As the Visitor was pulled further and further into the eternal Library, opening one life-story after another, the door they had walked through glowed like it was bathed in light.

The light called to the Keeper. When the Keeper opened the door, they opened their first memory, and they wept with joy. When the Keeper walked through the door—it disappeared, as if they had never been there at all.

But the Visitor continued to follow thread after thread, opening book after book. They began to wonder why they had come here in the first place.

The Visitor looked up—but there was no one there.

“Why am I here?” the Visitor asked. The Library of Thread whispered. The shelves called for management as new strands formed, as new books continued to be stitched from new soul-thread.

“I keep memories,” the Visitor-Keeper whispered, though they could not remember why.