I had no expectations of the world, no hopes other than for it to exist and to allow me to exist within it. There was therefore in each discovery of those first moments an ecstasy of pure wonder, and time kindly slowed to allow me to take it all in.

  As soon as my cover began to lift, my first breath rushed between my pages, crackling with energy. A flash of power opened me flat against the lectern, pressing me down. My pages fluttered, as though a great wind were rising, and began to riffle by in rising speed. They turned as an impossible amount, more pages than any book ought ever contain, for they were without end.

  But, even though this display of power was quite interesting, my attention was riveted to a wealth of new senses turned to the outside world.

  I could feel! No longer restricted to my mind, I had a body, and though it was only a book’s body, it felt glorious.

  With touch I felt beneath me a wooden lectern, its grain polished smooth, and its lip beneath my lower edge keeping me from sliding off its slope.

  There were also smells, standing out amidst the otherwise neutral air, wafting through the pores of my outer covers as chemical traces: leather slippers; dusty work-robes; the sweat of someone frozen in fear.

  And sounds, beating in physical waves against the drums of my inner covers: the rustling whip of my pages; the staccato breaths of someone beyond panic and well on their way into shock.

  And also, through the internal material of my covers, moved the sensation of waves, electric and magnetic, as well as countless other wave types, painting the world as a swirling, flowing, dance.

  All together these sensations roiled, and there was too much. I couldn’t process it all, and any more would drown me.

  I pulled my senses back as though from a flame, took a deep breath in my mind, and slowly opened again. This time I modulated each sense to an acceptable level, and my surroundings cleared.

  And then, finally, I saw.

  Perhaps sight was last to manifest due to its potency, for it showed me light in all its splendor and wide array. Here too I had to limit the scale, for the full spectrum was truly too much to handle. I opted for a middle range most used by creatures with optical organs.

  Stolen story; please report.

  But even then, the wide angle of my vision took some getting used to, for I saw with all the sides and edges of my pages, all at once, and as they kept shuffling like an endless accordion, the field of vision was daunting.

  I could see the entirety of the room, except the floor beneath and behind the lectern, itself of a dark, knotted wood. A single wall encircled the room to a vaulted ceiling, all of a smooth, bare, grey stone. And centermost, directly in front of me, was the strikingly terrified visage of a youth, who I knew at once to be the mind I had lured here. Little more than an adolescent, dressed in grey woolen robes, she stood on her heels, her entire body rigid in a failed attempt to recoil backwards. She was simultaneously grasping the lectern’s edges and trying to push herself away, her hands white with strain.

  And, most striking of all, was her face, illuminated by arcs of energy coursing from my pages. And, framed by her ear-length charcoal hair, was a grimace frozen in damp, white, wide-eyed terror. She was riveted by my pages, and her eyes seemed at once to be bulging out of their orbits and recoiling back into her skull. I observed with some fascination the frenetic spasms of her pupils following the cycling of my pages - was she reading me?

  I believe I’ll always be haunted by my inaction during this time. I was still so overwhelmed by the wonder, so intrigued someone was reading me, that I didn’t even consider her suffering. I take solace in the fact that only seconds had passed since I’d been opened, and that, in the end, I did all I could.

  It was her breath, caught in a whimper, that woke me to the unfolding catastrophe. I had no desire to cause suffering, and particularly not to this mind, this person who had long been my only companion. Of course I knew little to nothing about her, but still I knew the feeling of her mind more than anything else, and to allow her to be hurt was inadmissible.

  At once I turned away from my senses and poured my will back into myself. I commanded my pages to stop turning and my cover to close once again, but the wind only grew stronger, and the energy snapped and sparked, and the youth’s knees buckled and she groaned, her body sagging forward even closer.

  “Stop,” I spoke, as much to myself as to her, and though my voice now rang out into the room I took no time to appreciate its sound, “stop reading.”

  “I can’t,” she breathed, her voice thinned by fear.

  “Close your eyes, look away!” I said, and this time I heard the worry in my own voice, for as I watched, her eyes were draining of their color, glazing over to a clear, shimmering, white.

  “I- I can’t, I can’t, I can’t! Help me, please!”

  In desperation I cast about for some solution, but there was only one, and so I dove into myself and grasped my heart and squeezed.

  I’d just begun to truly exist, and already I was filled with regret. I’d have gladly returned to the despair of lonely madness if it could save her. And if I needed to throttle my own heart to protect her, I’d do it without hesitation, and so I did, and all was black.