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Once upon an endless vast, there was a library. It was nestled among the galaxies and constellations, high in the cosmos far away and off on its own. Its shelves were stacked high with books on all the stars, and all the planets. Everything from the highest sciences to the most fantastical myths concerning the vastness of the galaxies lived within the golden gilded walls. Its polished tiled floors shone with starlight, great metal supports gleamed lowly and the windowed ceiling gave the Librarian who lived there a perfect view of the heavens.
It was this librarian that kept the celestial librarian aloft with ancient magic that even they didn’t fully understand. All they knew, deep at the very core of their being, was that they could never leave the vast and gilded place. If they did it would collapse into starlight and space dust. The knowledge within its walls would be lost forever. It was their job to protect, catalog, and learn everything this place had to offer. It was a lofty job, but one they treasured. There was never a dull day. It was a lonely existence, however. They had all the books in the universe to keep their mind occupied and, with their magic, they made companions of the constitutions. Orion the hunter, Cetus the Seas Monster, and Vulpecula the Fox among others all kept them company.
One day, as much as there could be day and night in the forever whirling galaxy, the loneliness was too much to bear. In a fit of desperation they wrote a letter. They wrote of everything and nothing. Their thoughts, their feelings, their longings and loneliness. And their Library. They gave it to Corvus the Crow without a destination in mind, only with the hope that it made it into someone’s hands. Never could they have imagined where their faithful crow would take it.
Corvus winged through the galaxies until he came to his place of rest. The night sky of a planet he knew well. The clever consolation handed the letter off to another crow, one of flesh and blood and bone. The two were friends, two sides of the same coin and serving two alike, but opposite masters. The nameless crow took the letter dutifully back to his nest and back to his lonely librarian.
Once upon the deepest corner of the thickest wood there stood a library. It rose up like a castle among the trees and mountains of a secluded forest far away from any civilization. Its shelves were stocked with books containing knowledge of all natural things. Tombs of flora, fauna, myths and legends all having to do with the earth were housed within the walls. Richly polished wood and marble floors gleamed in the golden sunlight and proud floor-to-ceiling windows gave the librarian a perfect view of natural wonders surrounding her.
Just as with the celestial librarian, this caretaker knew in her core she could never leave her library. She could never explore the world outlined in such detail through the books and samples that surrounded her. She knew if she were to leave the library it would crumble to ruin and decay. Her job was sacred to her, the most noble thing she could think of. However, that sense of wanderlust plagued her. The desire to feel grass beneath her feet, feel the sun on her skin directly and not filtered glass, to see the world she read about grew stronger in her everyday.
And then there was the loneliness. The Liberian talked to the plants in the green house, it helped them grow and made her feel less by herself. She had made friends of sorts with a few creatures that wandered into her presence and made nests and burrows around the foundations of her library. Mice and birds and wild cats came to her for company and food. Among these faithful companions was a crow. This crow was known to bring her trinkets and little bits as gifts. She kept them all.
Imagine her surprise when, one day, the clever crow brought her a letter. A letter containing heartbreakingly beautiful descriptions of a library, so much like her own, floating in space. And then there was the loneliness. The bitter and biting loneliness of someone trapped in a place they loved. It was like she’d written it with her own hand. Tears welled in her eyes as she read the words, never thinking she’d find someone who understood.
And so she drafted a reply. She wrote of her own library. Of the woods and mountains and the sea she wished could visit. Of the skies she gazed up at every night with new eyes now knowing that someone was out there that understood her heavy burden. She wrote of the joy and excitement she felt at the thought of a new friend somewhere out in the cosmos.
With her heart poured out onto her parchment, the Liberian sealed the letter with wax and tucked a dried flower inside. Perhaps someone new for the star-dwelling caretaker.
And so their friendship began. Sending letters back and forth. Always delivered by their faithful crows, meeting halfway between the heavens and the earth to bring these two beings together. The letters became more personal, the trinkets more precious. A moonstone, a feather, a crystal, an insect encased in resin.
They learned so much about each other’s worlds and slowly, the librarians fell in love with far off ideas they could never hope to grasp. And then, as fate would have it, they fell in love with each other. Through their letters they bared their hearts to each one another. They shared secrets, theories, stories. They shared the most intimate parts of themselves through these letters.
And yet their tragedy was an eternal one. As close as they felt, the distance between them was impossible to cross. The closest they ever got to one another were through two crows, one of flesh and one stars, meeting as familiars on their mastered behaves. Always carrying letters of love, always doomed to forever be apart.