How Can You Miss Someone You Never Met?

The last page of the book fell closed and the room filled with silence. This was the part she hated most. The story has come to an end and the world fell into silence. Warm brown eyes cast their gaze across the various shelves stacked high with books all of types that decorated her room. Every shape, size and genre could be found nestled among the shelves and each one brought unrivaled joy to the guild’s resident bookworm. The young bluenette could lose, and has lost, herself for hours in her personal library.

It’s not that Levy didn’t enjoy the adventures she went on with her guild mates and friends. She did. She adored them and treasured the memories they made along the way but with her books it was different. Contained behind each cover was a different adventure, a new world to explore and new wonders to discover. It was something, magical. Special. It was something she could experience over and over again without ever getting bored of it. So when their stories came to an end…she felt sad. It sounded strange she knew. Even so, she couldn’t stop the feeling from washing over her. The travels she had ed the characters on had come to an end and she missed them.

“How can you miss someone you never met?” A logical question. One Gajeel often asked her as she stared into the abyss wondering what she’ll do next. He didn’t understand and she didn’t expect him to. He wasn’t much of a reader. How could she expect him to understand the feeling of coming to the end of a story that had you on the edge of your seat and not knowing what to do next. It almost felt like losing a piece of yourself. Levy supposed it was exactly that. Readers find it difficult to pick a favorite book because they leave a piece of themselves in every story. Still, he was right, she didn’t know them. That didn’t feel right though. She does know them!

She’s been with them through it all. She’s there with them from the moment their story began. Shared their tears, laughs, heartache and misery. She saw them fall, give up, battle against themselves and get back up again. She cheered them on and cursed them when they acted like idiots. She cried when one was injured or had their life stolen. She shed tears of joy at their reunions. She ed them on their adventures and saw the world as they did with wonder and curiosity dancing in her eyes.

So they only existed in the world held between the pages of a book. So they didn’t exist in the real world with her. So she’ll never know what their voices truly sound like or how they really look. So she’ll never meet them face to face. None of that matters. None of that means she doesn’t know them or can’t miss them when the last pages of the book fall shut and the world is enveloped in silence. They were her comfort. Her escape from the harshness reality threw at them the majority of the time. She knew them. She knows them and….she misses them.

How can you miss someone you never met? The answer is both simple and somber:

You come to the end of their story.

~ ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ~