One Million Days Every Year

It is frightening to open a book for the first time. Always. The hands tremble. The heart races. What if the world turns upside down with the first page, or flies away with the last? What if new horizons open up and so do deep gorges? What will the author leave you with? Deep sorrow? Heavy and frozen happiness?
Who will you be, once the trickle of words stops?

The book travels one million days every year to a library's shelf, stays sandwiched between the ones about war and dynasty, only for a brief period before beginning its journey again. Dropped into a satchel, mulled over a coffee, read aloud to friends.
And then that single everlasting moment in between all these, when the heart races. Because another life's journey is now going to merge with yours. The vivid and wonderful world from someone else's mind is going to open up before you. You follow the lines through their meanderings, you listen in silence to the thoughts and you feel something stir within you.

After the last word is savoured, your life is never the same. Ever.

She sat there, under the sun, for a long time, lost in a book.