Tiktora and the Ghost of Pages

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The clock had stopped ticking. Not because it had stopped—but because time itself had paused, as if it wanted to listen. Tiktora had stepped from the table. Her joints clanked more quietly than usual, as if the room itself commanded her to be silent. The shelves stretched like sleepy giants of dark wood, and shadows seemed to breathe between the spines. A flicker. Not a light—a sound that sounded like the turning of a very old page. It came from a shelf too deep in the room to be reached by the window light. Tiktora tilted her head. The small hand on her forehead twitched—a sign. An echo of foreboding. She crept closer. And then, as if born from the dust, something rose from the shadows: a wisp of a figure, constructed of loose paper, yellowed bookmarks, fluttering book covers. Eyes like inkblots, deep and mobile, hovered amidst a body that had no fixed edges—but rewrote itself with every movement. The book ghost. "You tick loudly for one who doesn't read," it croaked, its voice like scratching parchment. Tiktora bowed. "I count time, not words." The ghost rippled. Individual pages detached themselves, swirling around it, inscribed with forgotten languages. One sounded like whispered moss, another like the breathing of coal. "And yet here you are," it said, "in the silence of stories, where only time is forgotten." It glided closer. Tiktora felt the chill of past thoughts. The backpack on her back vibrated—a warning signal. "I was the chronicler," the ghost whispered. "I wrote what no one dared, until I was pressed between covers. Now I write with wind." It held out a hand made only of lines. "Give me your hour. I'll show you what you'll become." Tiktora hesitated. Her inner pendulum swung faster. And yet—a cog within her clicked in agreement. Perhaps it was courage, perhaps curiosity. She handed him her minute hand. The genie touched it—and in that moment, Tiktora saw: not future, not past, but possibilities. A thousand and one times how she forgot time to be something else: a fairy-tale clock, a poem in metal, a story in motion. Then he let go. "Time belongs to those who ask," breathed the genie. "But beware the answer." And he was gone. Only a loose bookmark remained on the floor—written on it in slanted ink: "Never turn three times in the dust." Tiktora picked it up. It vibrated slightly. And the clock began to tick again—but not as before.