A house in the Cantal

A house, in the Cantal, there we stood, my brother and I, the two of us, inseparable. Upon visiting our uncle, a man of science and words, ophthalmologist by design, poet by desire, we would make our way to his study, a room where every surface, floors, walls, books, was permeated by the shadows of time. The latter had drawn us here to begin with. Their spines facing outwards, revealing the bare minimum, heightening our curiosity. What would lie within? What stories would unfold, be embedded in the depths of our minds?  Who would we be after we had encountered the words? 

We take our seats, as always next to each other, our feet skimming the floor. We wait with bated breath, blinking in the shadows of knowledge. Unhurried, my uncle lays down his fountain pen, the one with which he pens his lines, then, focusing his gaze first upon my brother, then upon me, he bores through irises into my mind and soul. He knows. He rises. He runs his fingers down each spine one after the other, lingering for a mere second before passing to the next, and then the next. The blood is pounding in my ears, I take short breaths feeling that if a pin were to drop, it would reverberate through my eardrums, scatter microbeads of silence through my brain and leave me deaf to the sounds of reality. Through the pulsing of the blood, I hear the scrape of a cover and the flicking of pages. Then, lending his voice to the words, the authors speak to me, penetrating the air like cerebral ischemia, oxygen bubbling through my blood vessels. The extracts are few, the content sometimes confusing, the meaning obscure. With a  noiseless closing of the last book, he wishes us a good night. 

Tomorrow, we would find our way back here.