Her cool hands and her forehead were leaning against the cold window glass. Meggie stood in the library and felt alone, melancholic and overly pensive. Around her only the books, sharing her silence, being so full of stories. Stories that Meggie was assuerd of were better than her own was. Or could ever become.
Outside the world was dark, it had gotten night over the time she stood there. Without any move, her feet slowly starting to hurt, just as her stomach was aching for some food. But she restricted to listen to her body´s needs. She didn´t want to listen to anything right now. Since he´d been gone, there was nothing she wanted to do still. She felt alone. Left in her story, without the protagonist by her side.
Oh, how she missed his flame-like reddish mane, his sparkling and piercing grey eyes. The softness of his palms, playing with fire like other people play with marbles. How she missed that scent that always surround that him. Piercing and chemically like the fuels he used for blowing fire.
Meggie lowered her hands, her arms aching from having them hold up for so long, laying her hands on her stomach she sighted softly and continued to stare out into the night. She didn´t feel good the last times. Not only because of missing him, the man who had set her heart on fire - a hurting and badly burning one - and left her shortly afterwards, without naming any reason. No, Meggie felt like being air in that house. Just another book. One more in a collection of books no one would ever read again. She hadn´t seen Eleanor in days and after her telling Mortimer about Dustfinger and herself he didn´t speak a word with her for almost a week, now he was gone for another to fix a book someone still seemed to care for.
Another sigh escaped her rosy, pale lips, lay steamy on the old cold glass for a couple of seconds until it faded away as Eleanor entered the room.

The older woman's brows furrowed whne she saw the girl standing at the window – still! How long had it been now that this was the only thing Meggie was doing all day long? Days? A week? – She´d gotten smaller. Well, if that girl eats nothing the whole day long..
"Aren´t you hungry, Meg?" Eleanor asked in a tone that tried to be friendly but sounded overly acted.
"No, thanks," Meggie lied, her hands still resting on her stomach. At some point she´d come to learn to embrace the hunger pain. At least she felt something besides the numbed emptiness that had occupied her body.
"You really should have a small snack.." Eleanor persisted.
"I´m not hungry.." it was a lie. Meggie knew it and Eleanor did so, too. But she couldn´t force her to eat.
"I´m gonna leave you a plate with the leftovers from this nights dinner in the fridge, okay?" this time Eleanors voice really did sound soft.

"Thanks," Meggie turned around and smiled weekly at her aunt. She noticed the worried expression on the older woman's face, "I´ll go soon and eat some of it, okay?" Another weak smile that seemed to convince her aunt who nodded and left the library.
Should she really go? Meggie was struggling with herself. After some weeks she´d started to like th enew way she looked now. In some way she had achieved that look, hadn´t she? So .. she just couldn´t destroy it now. "He wouldn´t want you starve the way he did in the forests of Inkheart, ages ago," her inner self raised it´s voice in her head. Slowly Meggie turned around and walked towards the door. Her fingers slid over the backs of the books in the shelves she passed. Taller and smaller ones. Old and new. Interesting and boring ones. But none of them seemed to call for her to step in, to walk through it´s pages into a foreign world.

Clear soup with noodles and vegetables. The full plate stood in front of her.
It was half past ten and the kitchen clock's ticking was the only sound in the room. Meggie looked at the soup, the way the globules of fat floating on the soup covered it´s whole surface, the softened noodls in it and the pieces of vegetables. Meggie stirred it slowly with the cold spoon she´d found in one of the few drawers the small kitchen had. Eleanor clearly wasn´t a woman that laid much worth into making a delicious meal every evening.
And the soup didn´t look any delicious at all. Stirring it she watched the noodles and vegetables whirl around in it, mix up and disappear from the surface, just to return again.