The stall in front of him is lively and packed with many customers demanding to buy from him . His face is full of life and vigor as he counts out potatoes and wraps a squash .
From my portal , I strain to summon his gaze and watch as he refuses to see me . In fact , his eyes refuse to see anyone at all . Somehow he is no longer there , his mouth is speaking , but his eyes betray the truth -- The Last Storyteller is gone . He has gone with the blue sparrow . The Last Storyteller is dead , and The Vegetable Seller now lives in his body . I now know I reside in a world without stories , full of bodies that will never truly live .
I return to my table and take the scattered papers I have dotted with bits and pieces of the Story . I shred them into small pieces , and scatter their remains through my three Windows . Some pieces land on the ‘ corpse ’ of The Last Storyteller . He smirks at me , and in his smile I hear The Vegetable Seller tells me that our world does not need stories , it wants commodities .
In the last dirge of The Storyteller , he extols , “ I told the stories of beauty and magic , as well as of love and loneliness and none of it matters . The world only desires tangible things - items that can be bought and owned . Life necessitates biting in order to continue fleshly existence , and to feed the soul is an abstract task .”
I peer one last time through the Twilight Window and shut it forever .
The End
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