An orange glow from the fireplace illuminates my grand library, filled with aisles upon aisles of leather bound volumes. I'm sitting in a leather chair perpendicular to the fire place, reading one of the books I wrote many years ago.
A young woman around the age of sixteen enters the library with a box in her arms. She has brown hair with auburn highlights that reaches down past her shoulder. Deep brown eyes radiate her effervescent nature while her gait gleams of her youthful spirit.
"Grandpa, a package has arrived for you," she tells me as she walks towards me, joyfully offering the box to me.
"Thank you Claris," I tell my granddaughter as she gives me the package. "Do you mind brewing some tea please. I've got some reading to do." I look at the book I'm currently reading noticing that about fifty pages are left.
"Alright but you've got to read me another story about your past okay," she tells me in her usual bubbly nature. She turns around to the large wooden door she previously entered through.
I return my attention to the package and start to cut the tape with my pocketknife. I put away the knife on the coffee table in front of me and open the box, careful that none of the pink packing peanuts jump out onto the floor. Avoiding the packing peanuts as best as possible, I take out the contents within the box and set them on the coffee table in front of me.
One of the items is a fairly large photo album. Brown velum cover, I open it up, careful not to damage the crippling cover. Inside the album there are many pictures of a young man and his Pikachu doing various activities together. Another picture catches my eye as I turn the pages. In that picture, there are two young men with their shoulders over each other as both are laughing together. I close the photo album to look at another day.
Another item is a single photo in a frame. The photo is a mother and father carrying their son as they help him blow out the candle on his first birthday cake. All three of them look happy in the photo. A small date printed in orange is shown in the lower right corner. It reads '2/13/1998'. I put the frame next to the album.
The final item is a large book, worn from constant use. A title is present on the front cover as it reads A Hero is Born by Nate Mendoza. A tracing of a lightning bolt in gold is under his name.
Damn, he finally finished the story he told me about years ago.
Opening the leather binding, I cautiously turn the aging pages of the book so not to tear it. The writing is handwritten but neatly printed for easy legibility. The book itself has many pages, weighing the book down as I carry it in my hands.
Claris opens the door as I'm flipping through the pages. "Grandpa, tea's ready."
I look up to see my granddaughter carrying a tray with a tea set above it. "Ah, thank you Claris." She sets the tea on the coffee table, not disturbing the photo album and frame. She sits in the chair opposite of me, eager to listen to the story that I'll tell her.
I look at her eager eyes, ready for me to tell my story to her. "Claris, I'm going to do something a little different today, okay." As I say that, she sulks in her chair, disappointed that I won't tell her my story.
"But grandpa," she pleads, her eyes watering a little "you always tell a story." She almost bursts into tears, her disheartened quivering of her voice is bringing me down.
"Claris, if you keep up with that sad behavior, I'm going to get sad too." She wipes away a loose tear but eyes are still a little red.
"Grandpa, you normally tell me a story" Claris sadly responds.
"And today won't be any different Claris." I show her Nate's book. "It just won't be about me this time but of my friend."
Her sorrow turns to curiosity, "Grandpa, what do you mean?" She looks at the book unsure what to think of it. "And why a book, don't you normally just speak your stories?"
"In that package you gave me, it came from a very close friend of mine. It came with this book and those two items." I point to the other items on the coffee table. "My friend had written a story depicting a certain portion of his life, a certain part that I can't speak aloud due to him not telling me the whole story." Understanding what I now just said, she regains some of her bubbly personality.
"A Hero is Born by Nate Mendoza," she says as she reads the front cover. "That's the friend who you mention sometimes in your stories, right?"
Glad that she remembers the name, "Yes Claris, he's the very same person I sometimes mention."
"Ok grandpa, let's start!" her bubbly nature explodes as she's been waiting for a story.
"Alright but one more thing, we're both going in blind here. I don't know what's going to happen in this story. Anything could happen so be warned." I tell her as she nods in acknowledgement. Opening the book to the first chapter, I begin to read "Chapter One - The Ring..."
"That's enough for the night Claris." I grab a bookmark to place inside Nate's autobiography before closing it and putting it on the coffee table. The fire, a small flame now only being able to illuminate Claris and me in its orange glow instead of the whole library.
Though her eyes begging for more to be read, she notices that the dwindling fire light would make it harder for me to continue to read. "Grandpa, is Nate really from another world? That's impossible right?"
Remembering how Nate used to tell me he came from place far, far away, "That's what he used to say a long time ago, that he came from somewhere far, far away. It doesn't make sense now but I'm sure he'll elaborate further on in the story."
Is this what Nate meant when he said he came from a far away place, that he came from another world somewhat resembling this world?
"Okay, I hope that's the case grandpa. It's kind of hard to believe his story if this is meant to be a nonfiction, not a fictitious story." Though she's normally bubbly, she has become critical in stories as I have read many types of stories to her from the moment she started living with me ten years ago when her parents passed away in a car crash, sending her to me to be her legal guardian.
"Don't worry, he won't have forgotten such an important piece of information." The fire dwindling as we speak, the library gradually getting darker. "Claris, I think it's time that we go to bed now."
"Alright grandpa." She gets up from the chair, picking up the tea set and leaving the library.
Alone in the library, I grab the photo album and carefully turn to a random page. Even with the dwindling firelight, I can make out the photo on the page. It's a photo of me and the family that adopted me after I was left with amnesia of my past from a car accident which killed my parents, leaving me the only one alive. The photo has my parents in the back, my older sister Holly with Clara in her Pidgey form on her shoulder and I with Natalie snuggled soundly in my embrace.
Without realizing it, a tear falls from my face onto the photo and another one soon following it. I wipe away the tears from my face and the photo. I close the photo album so as to not invoke anymore emotions from me.
It's been so lonely without you Natalie. If you hadn't insisted on going with my son the day he passed away in that horrendous car crash, you could still be here with me.
Returning the photo album back onto the coffee table, I exit my seat and leave the library. Walking up the spiraling stairwell, the second floor leads me to my room. Entering, I lie in my bed, drifting on the edge of consciousness, sleep finally overtaking me.
Nate, I wonder what you're up to now…