Luna kept looking at the book, pursuing it. Squinting her eyes and tilting her head and moving the pages back and forth. Nothing changed until she held it by the spine and shook it.

The words all fell out, splashing on the floor and rolling together to create a hole blacker than night. It was as dark as Ink Pen, but less menacing. The hole itself, benign and inanimate, had nothing to do with anything except existing in this moment. Called forth as it had been called in the past, with no consciousness to speak of and no idea of its meaning to the world.

Luna had no idea of its meaning either and it wasn’t giving her any answers no matter how she tried to ask. As far as she could tell it was nothing more than a black hole in the floor, one that was never going away. No sound came from within, no flash of light or color. When she reached a hand inside, she felt nothing at all. It wasn’t icy or hot. Dry or wet.

She stepped around it and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and poured the liquid down the floor drain, but there was no noise of the water hitting the bottom.

Luna had no idea where the water was going or where the bottle went when she tossed it inside, just as the child who found himself doused with cold and hit on the head with an empty plastic container had no idea why it happened.

“Hey!” he shouted to the ceiling, uncaring for the others in the room whom he woke at the crack of dawn. None dared say a word to him. The little king of the world.

While Luna heard nothing, he heard a voice like floating in sleep. Formless. What it said he could never repeat. Not even on the day he died, killed for the throne. Slashed from behind. As he lay in red, he remembered the words and the water and the strange container he’d kept with him all his life. He would never know where it came from and it died with him as his residence burned; his body was left ashes. Scattered to the wind.

Luna held the emptied book, put it to the floor, and with a scoop took back the black. It returned to the pages, rearranged, and when she flipped through it again, she found a new set of images, as incomprehensible as the rest, and the tissue-paper pages... She thought there were more than before, but didn’t know what it meant. When she tried shaking it again nothing fell out and nothing else changed.

There were strange things in this world; she’d suspected there was more to life than met the eye though she’d never been witness to something like this before. Ink Pen was one thing and that was weirder still because she now remembered all the times she’d met it that she didn’t recall before. An empty space in her mind, where the train resided in her dreams, was suddenly full, and she wondered if that was all real or a construct of her imagination. Ink Pen was something beyond the usual bounds of the universe and perhaps the train was something like him. Or her.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Was Ink Pen a girl?

No, she thought Ink Pen was somehow male, though it wouldn’t care one way or the other. Maybe it was neither. That seemed most reasonable. Whatever Ink Pen was didn’t matter because as soon as he won, and he would someday, it would all be over. No more Ink Pen. No more nothing, which was hard to think about. So blank that nothing wasn’t even there.

As if it never was at all.

And if that was the end, truly the end, then what was everything else for? Why was Pink living like this if, when everything was over, it was all for nothing?

She couldn’t believe it was all for nothing.

Luna smirked as she felt the frustration in the air. Ink Pen was fading again and he’d tried as hard as he could to make her give up the train, but she wasn’t that weak.

But then she heard Pink, yelling from down the hall, "Luna!"

The fire alarm went off.

When the door burst open, when Pink shoved her arms through the straps of the new pink plastic child-sized backpack, Luna wasn’t sure what was going on. A fire. She understood that, but there was no smoke here and it wasn’t hot, so weren’t they fine?

Pink was panicking.

But not a moment later it was right outside their door and the smoke began coming in through the crack at the base. Pink tried to cover it with a wet towel, but already the air was different. Luna could smell the burning.

She heard the girl across the hall crying and screaming.

Then she stopped.

Their window was smashed open when it refused to be pushed and all at once she could hear everything. Sirens and people shouting.

Luna still held the book.

As the fire raged the air wavered with the heat and she saw an expression she’d never seen before, not on anyone. Not on the television, not on the internet, never in the world outside.

“I made only one good choice in my life,” Pink’s eyes were full to the brim and she could hardly speak. “They said I shouldn’t have you, but I did.”

She was in Pink’s arms and they turned for a moment, so quickly, and the phone was ripped from the charger and stuffed into Luna’s bag. “You like that phone a lot, right? It’s your favorite thing in the world.” She was choking on her words.

Luna didn’t know why, but her eyes were full too and she said, “That’s not true. My favorite thing is being alive.”

Because if she wasn’t alive, she wouldn’t have anything.

And Ink Pen would win.

Tears fell in earnest now, dripping down Pink’s cheeks as she held Luna out the broken window. From below the people called out, but she couldn’t tell what they said. The red lights were so bright. “They’ll c-catch you,” Pink stuttered. “Remember me nice, if you can.”

Somehow, Luna knew too. That Pink wouldn’t make it out with her. She wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck for the first time ever and cried, “Goodbye, Pink. Goodbye, Mama!”

She fell.

And Pink exploded.