There is a blank page. There is a sheer white, with nothing but little blue lines interrupting the blank sheet of snow.
Then, there is the first press of a pen, pencil, marker, or highlighter, against the stark white paper. The first rush of a capital letter, the envy as the pen’s wielder urges themselves onward, gaining speed like a hurricane in clear, uninterrupted waters.
The swish of one line, two lines, three lines down the page. A paragraph has formed. Half the page, three quarters, the beginning of something huge and astronomical is forming. The wielder is making history.
The wielder’s consciousness, his sanity, his sense of life and the world around him, is gone. He is lost in a world of living dreams. He is lost in a land, shaped by letters, by words, by imagination of someone who never lost that child, hidden deep inside his soul.
The wielder is king. He rules the world that is shaped by his whispers and his barest, most vulnerable of thoughts. The wielder is the master of an art, long forgotten. An art from a time before XBOX, before Wii and the television were even an idea.
He is a warrior. He is a doctor. He is a maiden girl who works all day night to help feed her desperate family. He is a widower with depression, and the sweetheart of a forbidden neighbor. He is a monster, a murderess, a neighbor who isn’t quite what anyone expects. He is the fortune teller, lurking in the shadows, ready to tell you your future- if only, you give him the chance.
The wielder is every person, every fiber of a world only known to those who have the will and the imagination to look beyond the torn up outer layer. The wielder is the king who has the courage to charge into a battle with certain death, just to protect his family, and his people. The wielder is the key, to the past, the present, and the future.
The first page is complete. There is a swish as a crisp white sheet, now covered in a swirly script is turned over. The pen leaps back to the page. It is quicker, sleeker and more pronounced then a sword could ever hope to be. It quietly whispers, as it glides across the page, telling the story of another world, another family, not unlike the wielder’s own.
One page. Two pages. Three pages, four. The clock is ticking, unheard by the wielder.
He moves his hand in jerk. A member of his army died.
Another fluid motion of his hand passes across the barren white desert. A baby is born.
This is how the wielder survives. He feeds off his words. The wielder is like a vampire, sucking blood or a hummingbird sipping sweet, sweet nectar. He uses his pen like a sword, tearing into the soul of his characters, of the audience that is watching secretly over his shoulder.
He stopped his pen for a moment, resting his tired hand. His characters are frozen in time. The audience surface back to the “real” world for a moment before diving back in with the wielder.
Hours have passed. A meal has come and gone untouched by the wielder. He is currently fasting on words. The day draws to close, and without looking up from the notebook, the wielder turns on his desk lamp.
This is the long, lonely life of the wielder.
He works long hours, toiling in fields, in a shop, on a battlefield, at a desk. He has family and friends, enemies and saviors that bend with the twitch of finger.
The wielder takes a break. He eats, sleeps, runs errands and comes home. He dives back into his world, putting his velvet and gold crown back upon his mighty head.
The wielder heaves his sword from its sheathe and watches as the tip glows in the dying sun.
There is commotion behind him. It is the messenger from the battle. The war is over. The country is saved. The warriors have returned home and the day has drawn to a close.
Faintly, he can feel someone shaking his shoulder and saying something. The wielder turns to see who dares to interrupt his conversation and-
The wielder has resurfaced. A woman is shaking his shoulder.
“Are you going to come down for supper or what? The food’s getting cold,” the wielder’s mother says, smiling at the half full notebook on the desk.
“Yeah, sure.” The wielder says. The magic has disappeared. The messenger is gone; the last light of day has vanished. His crown had shrunk into a mere baseball hat and his sword is leaking ink onto a fresh page.
He recaps the pen and grabs the notebook, pages rattling as he flips back to the first page. He races back downstairs, greeting his father who is already starting to load his plate with some lasagna.
“Hey, Dad. Will you do me a favor and listen to this story I’m writing?” the wielder says.
The father nods in consent, used to the words flowing from his child’s mouth.
“There is a blank page. There is a sheer white with nothing…” the child begins.
Soon, the story is beginning to unveil itself, coming out from behind the curtain and the small audience allow themselves to swept away into another world, once more.
The wielder smiles as he reads. His story is like a fairy sprinkling magic dust over his listeners, enchanting them by the buttery words.
The smile grows wider, as he reads. This is the wielder’s life. He weaves letters into words and words into sentences. He takes sentences and arranges them into a story.
The wielder realizes that this is how he is going to live his life. To create a place for the overburdened, or even under burdened, people of Earth to escape to. A fairytale vacation, for humans, that costs less than twenty dollars in a troubled economy.
The wielder realizes, for the first time, the writing stories are not just an escape for his audience, but an escape for him as well. The pen’s wielder notices that every time he tumbled back into one of his stories, he is returning to his own paradise.
The wielder finally, after nine years of telling stories, figures out what he is meant to do with his life, and how he is supposed to live it.
The child finishes reading and eats his meal quickly before returning to his room.
He grabs his pen, uncapping it.
In a fluid moment, he presses the pen back to the page and it turns back into sword. The messenger has returned and all his characters are unfrozen. The dying light returns and the king smiles as the crown appears back on his head.
The wielder turns and walks out onto the balcony of his throne room. A golden city is far below.
The wielder smiles. This is the life of a king. Of a true wielder of a pen. Of a master of a dying art.
This is the life of a writer.