(Author's note: This story was created in response to a writing prompt at HOL – Hogwarts Online – to write a story from the point of view of a piece of paper)
When did I become aware of myself? And how?
Those first moments of lucidity surprised me in their intensity since they came rushing in so powerfully into what was until then a universe of silence and unthinking existence. All of a sudden… I was. And I was aware of that.
I am a thing of paper. Vegetable fibre ripped from the heart of a woody tree and pulped and shredded and mashed. Was there something in that state of pre-existence that bore consciousness? Did the tree, or trees, from which I was birthed like MacDuff have minds of their own that somehow survived into this state of papery reincarnation? If so, then why was there the blank hiatus between that forest-life and this flat blank existence? I doubt that trees think. And if they do their thoughts are old and slow and not at all like mine. Mine are thoughts of longing and waiting and expectancy. It occurs to me that the whiteness of my surface recalls to mind the whiteness of a wedding gown. The wedding night of ink and quill is yet to come.
How do I know these things? How do I think these thoughts? I am aware (do not ask me how) that this is a magical place. I can sense it in the air, and perhaps that is the cause of things. Perhaps the shimmering waves and particles of magic that flow through this place like currents of air have imbued me with life and consciousness. That is an amusing thought. Perhaps all things here bear life of their own, perhaps all things here think thoughts of their own. That idea chills me a little (if paper can be chilled). To be trapped in endless awareness and thought, yet without communion with other minds… without a voice… that is a nightmare, and endless nightmare! If I had a mouth I would scream as that thought occurs to me, but I have none and I can only despair.
But that passes. That passes. I know, somehow, that I will have a voice. I have a purpose. If I have been given life, of a sort, it will not be wasted. I am wanted, needed, loved even. And hands, gentle careful hands are suddenly there lifting me. Is this the culmination of the wedding that I gave thought to? Is it time for me to make my vows? If I had a mouth I would smile. Those hands… his hands, the hands of that imagined bridegroom lay me gently down. There are others of my kind there, I can sense them. I rest upon a bed of my fellows, neat white sheets of paper stacked beneath me, gently arranged and neatly squared by his careful hands. He attends to me so carefully, and clothes me as he chooses in finely worked covers of thin leather. That there are others here with me does not offend me. We are sisters, of a sort, bound together by him, the lover, the bridegroom. Has he given us all the same life? I somehow think he has. I wait. We wait.
And there. There is the moment. He opens the leather in which he has wrapped us and I sense his purpose… we sense his purpose, and if we had breath, we would hold it.
The quill touches the ink in a perfect moment like a kiss… the quill moves upon me… yes, my love, I am ready… he writes… and that first word is his name, and like a bride I take his name for myself… His bride, full of his living presence, his soul... I breathe his name back at him as the quill moves. Tom…
