October 2, 2011.
In the year when I turned five, our family was in pretty bad shape. My mother had lost her job, since she could no longer work whilst trying to care for the newlyborn twins, and my father only had a low paying Sanctuary position. Stability was a delirium dream, and I know that my parents were worried that someone would get sick, or rather, sicker, because we really couldn't afford very much more by way of doctor's bills. Not after mother's difficult birth. Not after I stepped on a nail I couldn't see and the wound got infected. Their anxiety affected me, and the household wasn't terribly cheerful.
And then, out of the blue, a miracle happened. The Sanctuary was looking for a test subject, preferably a child of magical birth who couldn't read and could be trusted to secrecy. I wasn't told what the tests would be like, though I heard the criteria and thought them bizarre. I was simply that I would be involved in them. The process was quick, and I soon found myself being handed off to Sagacious Tome. He was a Teleporter, I was told. I thought that that was an interesting thing, though I never saw the proof of it.
It turns out that they were creating a new system for protecting the Book of Names, not content with the maze of vaults that protected it and the other various artifacts the Sanctuary had acquired over time. All I would have to do, they told me, was walk over, five steps forwards, and pick up something that would be at shoulder level.
It took me a while to figure out what the object was. It was heavy, and bulky and felt kind of dusty. Eventually, though, I made the connection, from the smell of old leather and pulped tree. It was a book. Just something else I would never get to read, never fully understand.
At first it was easy, so very easy, to get to the volume. Five steps, pick up the burden, listen to the sorcerers groan, put it down, walk back, wait, repeat. It wasn't too bad, I thought. Any worries I might have had upon beginning were appeased by the fact that everything was the same as ever it was.
And then, one horrible, bitter-cold day, one that started the same as any other, the walking began to cause me hurt. That was when it all went to Hell.
A/N: Books are precious, because all they hold are secrets.
Heartaches and syrup nails and cold, cold stone~
Sweethearted.