Alistair wrote only in the dead of night, using an antique inkwell filled not with ink, but with a swirling, slightly luminous liquid that smelled faintly of cinnamon and ozone. The pen—a simple, elegant quill—translated this substance into reality.
He was meticulous. A single description of a sunny day would result in precisely three hours of clear skies over his perpetually gray city. A paragraph about a warm loaf of bread would cause one to appear, still hot, on his kitchen counter.
His power was both a comfort and a curse. It solved every mundane problem but left him profoundly alone. He couldn't write about love, friendship, or connection without creating elaborate, often temporary, automatons that mimicked human relationships, which always ended in heartbreak when the prose ran out.
One evening, he tried something different. Instead of a description, he wrote a simple, humble question on the page: What would it be like to share this power, just for a moment?
He set the pen down and waited for a new automaton to knock on the door.
The knock came, but the person who stood there wasn't a construct. She was real, a woman with curious eyes holding a piece of paper in her hand. On it was written a single, bold response to his question: Let's find out.
She held up an identical quill and inkwell. Alistair stared, dumbfounded. He hadn't written her; she had written back. The world suddenly felt full of infinite, unscripted possibility. He finally had someone with whom he didn't need to write the ending.
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