The Book of Two

Chapter 4: Louise 2

A lot can happen in three days.

In so much time, my world had seen entire armies numbering hundreds of thousands be whittled down to hundreds in the Holy Lands. The Reconquista Rebellion was said to have formed in three days. The plague of D'Angleterre festered for three days before it was decided that the village be burned. Brimir took three days to unite the human tribes against the elves. The four saints took three days after Brimir's death to determine what to do with his lands.

With how much can be accomplished - had been accomplished - in three days, it's almost amazing to think about how little could be done in such an amount of time.

Like how someone could just stare at a book for three days.

.

.

.

I spent three days essentially just staring at that book.

I did do things, but it amounted to nothing.

Like, nothing to the point that I have trouble even remembering what I tried.

I know I didn't bother writing anything in it again. The first time around it didn't work, so why would it with further attempts of the same? After all, the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result". I am not insane.

I hope.

By the end of those three days I had decided to try and use that dictionary to reverse engineer the language of the runes, but it was extremely hard. The symbols just made no sense, and there were a lot of them too. Some had as few as two strokes to them but others had over a dozen and they made no sense. Not to mention that there wasn't any punctuation, at all, except weird little circles on occasion. There weren't even any spaces. The fact it was all vertical too… It was just too weird for my young brain to understand.

Not that any of that mattered.

After all, on the fourth day, the book gave me the answers.

I had woken up that morning to my face vibrating.

I had spent so long working on that language that I had fallen asleep face first on the book… again.

As I opened my eyes I saw that the book was glowing again. I was immediately awake and alert as I practically threw the book open.

"Hello, my name is Naruto. What's your name?"

...Three days of the hardest thinking my poor little brain had ever managed and the book just ups and starts writing in Tristanian. I was a little irritated.

Not to mention it also apparently has a name now…

I mean, that's normal for heroes' blades and such, but for a book?

Granted, it's a sentient book, but still.

I still decided that being cordial with it would be a good idea. It might be able to spit fireballs if it gets irritated.

.

.

.

Probably not, but still.

"My name is Louise."

As I tried to gather my thoughts and think of something else to write, the book responded almost immediately by - very quickly - writing out the words:

"It is very nice to meet you, Louise. Where are you from?"

Would a book even have any idea about geography?

"Tristain. Where we currently are. Do you know where you were made? Or when?"

After that, there was a pause. One that felt like an eternity.

"So, I'm not really sure how to explain this, but I'm not the book."

Huh.

There was another pause.

"You see, there are actually two books that are connected through runes to each other across any amount of space. Everything that gets written in one is also written in the other."

"That doesn't really make sense."

"Well, it is written about earlier in the book. All you have to do is think 'what is the purpose of this book' and it'll flip back to it."

All I have to do is think it… really?

Was it really that easy?

I remember staring at all of the paper I had around my vanity in defeat for a matter of seconds.

What is the purpose of this book?

With that thought, the book flipped back a page, like I had seen it do before. I felt like smacking my head from the simplicity of it and what I thought was the stupidity of myself. Then I read the passage.

I tried to read the passage.

I flipped the page forward to where our discussion had been occurring.

"So… I can't read that language. At all. I've never even seen it before."

"I am an idiot. I apologize. I should have realized. You are, after all, writing in a language that I'd never seen before. And you claim to be from a place called Tristain. I have never heard of a village with such a name before. The only interaction I have had with it was in the dictionary that taught me your language. Then there is the matter of these books being capable of working across dimensions. I really shouldn't have made such assumptions. Perhaps I can-"

"Uhm, Naruto?"

"Yes?"

"Are you really another person writing in a different book?"

"I told you as much before, and you better believe that I never lie."

Okay, I'll admit that I didn't have the best of childhoods. At that point, outside of my family and my family's staff, I didn't really have any friends. Anne was the only person outside of the family I'd really played with but at that point she had started training to become queen as her father had passed recently. I guess there was that one tan little redhead girl that insisted on calling me "older sister" but she was the daughter of one of the servants so that still doesn't really count.

The point is, I was starved for actual human connection, even if it was just via letters… or instant writing between two books. I was starving for someone to talk with. So I decided to talk. A lot.

Thankfully, my conversation partner was the same.

I remember him saying he was from a village hidden by trees, in a land of fire. That he thought we might be from different worlds. That he thought the idea of nobility being the only ones to wield magic made no sense…

Was I writing to an ELF?

The realization shocked me, but it lined up well with what I knew of them. They all could wield monstrous magics that could level a battlefield. They all had the same status in society, despite their birth rights. They loved nature, and could withstand the most violent of natural disasters - such as raging wildfires. There were even rumors that they had come from another plane of existence.

One that this book's supposed counterpart could possibly be in.

But… I was still starved of personal connection… Even if I was talking to an elf, he seemed to be friendly enough. Not that I told him I was a human, though.

I still wasn't sure if the book could spit out fireballs or not…

But he never once asked, anyway. Instead, he wrote. A lot. He told me in depth that we were writing in two different books that acted as one, and how he thought it was possible (most of that went over my head). He told me about how most of the characters that glowed on our books were ones that he'd not learned how to write, that they were ancient in his own land. Then, he told me stories.

Stories of warriors whose fights tore valleys out of the plains. Stories of tailed beasts the size of mountains that were capable of leveling cities in a single attack. Stories of leaders who were so great to their people that the people themselves chose to carve their likeness out of the mountains.

Then, he'd ask for stories of my own.

The ones I told felt a lot less heroic. Kings who were assassinated. Armies that were crushed. Villages that were burned. I wasn't really good at writing them either, just stating the facts of what I knew happened.

There was some teasing on his end about it and how I should read something that isn't a textbook.

But he still seemed to pay attention to every word I wrote. Asking questions and making assumptions on the way the story was going to go. Never in an annoying way, though. Just, making conversation.

This pattern of us telling each other stories continued for a few weeks.

It was nice.

It was a distraction. One wherein I didn't have to worry about my life. I never brought it up. Naruto never brought his up either. We just shared stories every chance that I could sneak my little book out without anyone else in the household noticing. Between useless magic lessons, annoying etiquette training, and necessary sleeping times, every time I wrote, he'd be there, all the way until I had to hide the book again.

He was always there.

Until that one day, where he wasn't.

Author's Note:

So… yeah…

That last author's note…

So, that was a f***ing lie…

But hey, I'm not dead.

This chapter was just really hard for me to write, and I'm not really sure why. It's here now, though. Finally out of the way and hopefully not going to happen again.

I knocked on wood with every keystroke of that last sentence.

Anyway, until next time, stay safe!

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