...Mom's going to kill me. No really, she may finally make good on her threat to turn me into Chris-soufflé.

"Well I had a fine life looks like this is it" I remember thinking as I watched the pages liquefy into nothingness.

Of course I mentioned that she shouldnt worry "dont worry mom! Just think how nice it will be to have it as a souvenir even if we didn't uncover any groundbreaking ancient archivist caches from this last Index!"

Yea that was me a second ago. Before the demon bird...

It tore open the wrap that had until recently kept the humidity and pressure and all kinds of OverMind techy stuff at a point where the ancient reference could, well, be referenced and was rewarded with the quickly oxidizing leather cover falling apart in my hands. The leather peeling away as if it were almost alive. I admit I was crying a bit at this point so I didn't really notice I still had the leather book frame in my hand and that it was, in fact, a metal casing that was ~previously~ wrapped in leather. Eventually I registered that there was strangely something left of the decayed husk the book should be and i was loosely cradling it as I looked skyward for any sign of continuing arial bombardment. I looked down at the pretty old thing in my left hand. It was gold in color but was way too thick to actually BE gold seeing as it was all requisitioned for the OverMind a long time ago now and you could be fined for knowingly having any amount over a certain amount without paying a luxury tax...An old and -or so I thought- irrelevant law that I only knew due to my perpetual reading habit. A good thing to have when your job as "Moms last Lybrarian in the world" demands you make a habit of words. The only thing besides plain gold-colored metal I could see was a set of numbers running down where the spine would be that made no sense and a simple compass rose on the left inside cover along with the right inside cover having a plinth topped by an a curtain of rose petals stylized to seem it seem like they were burning at the tips.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

There's still some "book" left so mom MAY yet let me live-however-first I thought it would be a good bet to see what Dad can make of this before I reconcile myself to facing Moms WRATH.