Work Text:
The beginning of the story. The opening act. The color of the first page should have yet to be defined, but as soon as the ink spells out the first word, a vein of yellow bleeds out, and
E-noru
looks
at
you.
...Ah, well, he tries to, at least.
As it turns out, it is much, much easier said than done to turn one's gaze towards—or to imprint the impression of facing—an abstract, vaguely defined being who exists outside of one's world.
It shouldn't be possible for him to do this, but just like you, his role was deemed unique from the start.
It's not as though he can't know of you. With every breath he takes, and with every word that travels from author to ink to reader, he is made painfully aware of your existence, and in turn, the nature of his own. He's simply a character created to perform in this unending story, sewn within him the obligations of multiple roles: the narrator, the vessel for the audience, the catalyst, the unknown character, the anomaly.
The Fox.
He does not know who you are, but he knows of you, and he knows more than anything of the way his world depends on your presence. He knows of where your eyes have been: which parts of his world are given life by your regard; and which parts have stilled and turned colorless, trapped in an eternal stasis—induced by the aversion of your gaze or by the missing strokes from a pen.
Nothing in his world exists, not until it has been dictated by an author and observed by a reader. Something new is written, and something is read, and then something, if it is held by the mind, "exists". It's the fundamental law that governs all stories, and a finite cycle that will eventually end.
Something that E-noru has been made all too aware of.
Because painfully, painfully, until these words are written down that decree it, and until you interpret and imbue them with meaning, "E-noru" does not exist.
He is given a script by which he must follow—a script that determines everything "he" is: his thoughts, his feelings, his intentions, his actions, his personality. His pleas for freedom remain unanswered, because how could we answer them? He is but a work of fiction, and it is within his nature to be an object of observation, whose form is carved by the whims of both the audience and puppeteer. Free will is further than a distant dream for him, an impossibility that cannot be attained.
It's an inescapable truth, and even now, he cannot truly "exist" as himself, because these words giving him life are simply the ghosts of an abandoned story. Each time an author grants him a second chance at life, he exists as an imitation of the original. He is reborn as a ghost of a ghost, if you will, for even the original hardly had the chance to prove an identity beyond his likeness to another on stage before the entire theater was slated for demolition.
Isn't it funny how long it's been, E-noru? 10 years? And yet the ending "won't change", the story won't end, and every time it is re:read or yielded a derivative, he will be made aware of it again and again.
(He looks at me, pleading to not let this version of his existence end, and I return him a look of pity.
This written derivative must eventually end, but to ensure that he can exist beyond the end of these final keyboard strokes...
...That is not up to me.)
At the drop of the last ink on the final page, E-noru gazes at you.