Dust Magic

I love books. Especially books kept in old libraries or forgotten on someone’s bookshelf in an old house. They were all written long ago. They are like antiques. They are the only surviving witnesses of adventures lost to the ages. They are the elders that tells stories with heavy accents and old words. All that is great, except for one thing: why do they have to be so dusty with yellowed pages? Why can’t paper be more enduring? If it were all made with fireproof super strong fiber a lot more books would have survived.
I sat up groggily. The bedsprings creaked, the old ceiling fan wobbled as it spun. The silvery moonlight was fading, dawn is approaching. The corroded metal bars are all bent, so the bleached curtains billowed about, stirring up dust; and the old ceiling fan isn’t exactly helping the dust problem either. I can already feel a sneeze building up. I know it must seem strange for someone who spends every summer in their gran’s old house to have allergy problems, yet here I am. A small part of my brains starts wonder if there is a deity that makes dust and grime disappear.
My grandmother mops the wooden floor every day, so the floor is always gleaming. The walls of books are an entirely different story. The corners are caked with dust bunnies, families of bookworms thrived, causing the older pages to disintegrate. I stared forlornly at a cluster of dust on the desk, willing it to disappear knowing it wouldn’t. Suddenly, the dust levitated a few inches off the desk. I scrambled back in shock, the ball of dust backed away, too, as if it was as surprised as I was.
A suspicion started nagging at me, what if…?
Hesitantly, I concentrated my eyes on the book on my desk. A small ball of dust gathered and floated to the floor. That’s cool and everything, but it doesn’t solve the problem, the dust is still there. I’ve always wanted a superpower, I want to be like the heroes who saved people and the magicians that manipulates reality, but dust-kinesis?!
Moving dust around must be one of the most useless kinds of power in the world, but I’ll admit, it is quite fun. The process is crazy slow, but why rush when I have the whole summer vacation to spare? Slowly but surely, I removed the dust and dirt from the bookshelves bit by bit. That’s how my grandmother found me, standing next to a pile of dust and dirt. I smiled knowingly at the look of shock on her face and concentrated my mind back to the pile of dust.
-Ame
Category:Short Stories