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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