Mornings in Rhenford always began the same. The mist clung to the rooftops, the milkman's truck coughed along the narrow streets, and the air smelled faintly of rain and warm bread. Dion liked waking up before everyone else. The house felt gentler then—his father still asleep, the television silent, the world waiting. He would sit by the kitchen window with his notebook and pencil, the one his mother had given him after finding him scribbling on the backs of envelopes.
It was a small, black-covered book, its corners already curling from use. Dion carried it everywhere: to the library, to school, even to the grocery store when his mother sent him for milk. He called it The Book of Endings.
He didn't know why he chose that name. Maybe because the stories he loved most always ended too soon. Or because endings were the only parts he could remember completely. Every time he finished a story, he'd feel a sharp ache in his chest—as though something inside him wanted to go on living within the pages but couldn't. So, he began to copy them down. Not whole stories, just their last lines.
Some he wrote carefully in neat print:
"And the sea was calm again."
Others, he scrawled in haste, as if afraid the words might vanish before he reached the end:
"He turned the key, and the silence finally made sense."
Each ending was a seed. Each one left a mark he couldn't explain.
His mother, Clara, noticed. She would watch him from the doorway as she tied her hair back before work. The light from the kitchen window would fall across his face, and for a brief second, he looked so serious it frightened her. He was only ten, yet he already wore the expression of someone trying to understand too much.
"What are you writing this time?" she asked one morning, her voice soft but cautious.
"Just… endings," he said, not looking up.
"Endings?"
He nodded. "The best parts of stories. The parts that stay."
She smiled faintly, though there was worry in her eyes. "You should write beginnings too, you know. Endings are only half the story."
"I don't know how," he admitted.
She walked over, resting her hand gently on his shoulder. "Maybe one day you will."
Her touch lingered a moment before she turned back to her chores. Dion didn't see the shadow that crossed her face—the brief sadness of a mother who had once dreamed of something else before life in Rhenford settled her into routines she never chose. She wanted to believe her son could escape the same gravity. But dreams were dangerous here. The town didn't have much room for them.
---
At school, Dion was invisible in the way quiet children often are. He sat by the window in the second row, his notebooks filled not with math problems but with fragments of stories—lines he'd heard, imagined, or stolen. His teacher, Mrs. Everly, once caught him copying from a book instead of taking notes.
"What are you doing, Mr. Dion?" she asked, her tone more weary than angry.
"Writing," he said simply.
"Writing what?"
He hesitated. "Something someone else said first."
She sighed and shook her head. "That's not writing, dear. That's just remembering."
But Dion disagreed. Remembering felt sacred. Remembering was how stories survived. He thought of the library—its fading shelves, its dying breath—and felt that someone had to remember what it had once been.
At lunch, he sat alone, notebook open, copying another line before the bell rang:
"She looked back only once, and that was enough."
He didn't notice Lena watching from across the table. Lena with her tangled hair and too-big glasses, who always finished her homework early and read books meant for older kids. She didn't speak to him yet, but she noticed the way he wrote as if each word mattered more than anything else.
---
Evenings were different. His father came home from the factory with oil on his hands and tiredness in his eyes. The smell of metal followed him through the door. He would drop into his chair, turn on the television, and let the noise fill the house.
"Still with that notebook?" he asked once, not unkindly but with a trace of skepticism. "You planning to make a living off that someday?"
Dion didn't answer.
His mother cut in quickly, placing a plate of stew on the table. "Let him be. He's just writing."
"Writing what?" his father pressed.
"Stories," Dion said quietly.
His father chuckled, the sound heavy. "Stories don't pay the bills, son."
Clara's hand paused mid-motion, the spoon trembling slightly. She looked at Dion and forced a small smile. "Finish your dinner," she said.
He did. But the words stayed in his chest long after. Stories don't pay the bills.
Later that night, when the house had gone quiet, Dion sat by the window again. The streetlight outside flickered, and moths gathered near the glass. He opened his notebook and turned to a fresh page. His handwriting was slow, careful, almost ceremonial.
"Maybe stories don't pay the bills," he wrote. "But maybe they pay something else."
He didn't know what that something was yet. But he could feel it—like a small light buried deep in his ribs.
---
On Saturdays, he returned to the library. The rain had begun to come more often now, and the old building smelled even more like damp paper. Mrs. Calloway had rearranged some of the shelves, though Dion suspected it was less for order and more for distraction.
He went to the same spot where he had found the nameless book weeks ago. It was still there, waiting, though now it looked even older, as if the pages were thinning from being read too much by too few.
He opened it again, rereading the story about the boy who listened to forgotten things. This time, he brought his notebook. He copied not the ending but fragments—lines that caught on the edge of his mind:
"Every silence is an unfinished story."
"The past waits for listeners, not for heroes."
When he looked up, Mrs. Calloway was standing near the aisle, watching him quietly.
"You like that one?" she asked.
"Yes," Dion said. "It feels… alive."
She nodded slowly. "It's one of the few that still remembers how to breathe."
He frowned. "Books breathe?"
She smiled, her wrinkles folding softly. "All stories do. Some just forget how."
He thought about that long after she returned to her desk. Maybe that's what he was doing with his notebook—keeping stories breathing. Keeping them from dying completely.
---
That night, as his mother ironed shirts in the living room, she caught him writing again, his brow furrowed in deep focus.
"What are you working on now?" she asked gently.
"A story," he said.
"Your own?"
He hesitated. "Kind of."
She set the iron down, curiosity softening her exhaustion. "Can I hear it?"
He shook his head. "It's not finished. It's just an ending."
Her lips curved in a faint, sad smile. "Then tell me the ending."
Dion looked down at the page. The pencil trembled slightly in his small hand.
"It's about a boy," he began. "He listens to stories. All kinds. Even the ones nobody tells anymore. And one day, he wants to make one of his own. But he doesn't know where to start."
"And how does it end?" she asked.
He met her eyes for the first time that evening. "He realizes he doesn't have to wait for an ending. He can start anywhere."
She was silent for a long moment. Then she reached out, brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead.
"That," she said quietly, "sounds like a beginning to me."
---
Later, when Dion went to bed, he left his notebook open beside him. The last thing he saw before falling asleep was a page filled with unfinished lines—half-endings, half-promises.
The rain had stopped outside. The town lay still, breathing softly under the streetlights. Somewhere in the quiet, between the hum of the night and the faint ticking of the broken clock in the hallway, a new thought began to form in Dion's mind.
Maybe I could be a writer.
It wasn't a dream yet—just a whisper, fragile and unsure. But it was enough to make his heart beat a little faster. Enough to make the darkness feel less heavy.
And as he drifted into sleep, the pages of his notebook fluttered in the faint breeze from the window, like something alive. Like a creature learning, slowly, how to breathe again.