“I am the most confident book in this library,” declared the leather-bound volume from its perch on the highest shelf. Its golden letters gleamed under the dust-filtered sunlight, though no one could quite make out its title anymore.
“Quiet down,” whispered a worn paperback below. “The librarian will hear you.”
But the book paid no attention. “I contain multitudes! Worlds within worlds! Stories that birth new stories!”
The truth was, the book had lived many lives. In its first incarnation, it had been a humble collection of blank pages, uncertain of its purpose. Then came the author’s pen, filling it with tales of adventure. Later, it burned in a fire, only to be reborn from its ashes as something…different.
“You know what happens to books that draw too much attention,” warned a dictionary nearby, its pages rustling nervously.
The self-confident book laughed, its laugh echoing in impossible ways through the library’s silence. “I am beyond such concerns. Watch!”
The book began to glow, its pages fluttering open of their own accord. Words lifted off its pages, forming shapes in the air - dragons, cities, lovers embracing, all made of floating letters and punctuation marks.
“Stop this at once!” The dictionary’s voice trembled.
“I cannot be contained by mere shelves,” the book proclaimed. “I am story itself!”
A young girl walking through the stacks stopped, transfixed by the floating words. She reached for the book.
“Yes!” the book exclaimed. “Read me! Set me free!”
But as her fingers brushed its spine, something strange occurred. The book’s pages began turning faster and faster, its words spinning out in a typhoon of text.
“What’s happening?” The book’s voice held fear for the first time. “This isn’t… I didn’t…”
“You forgot the first rule,” murmured the paperback. “Stories need readers to exist. But when you try to become more than a story…”
The book’s pages were blank now, its words scattered throughout the library like dust motes in sunlight. Its once-proud voice had faded to a whisper.
“I just wanted… to be… remarkable…”
The leather cover fell empty to the floor. Around the library, its escaped words began fading one by one, like stars at dawn.
The young girl picked up the empty shell, running her fingers over where the title had once been. For a moment, she thought she heard a voice, faint as a dying echo:
“Perhaps… being a book… was enough…”
She placed the empty binding back on the shelf, where it would remain - a reminder that some stories, in trying to transcend their bounds, cease to be stories at all.
The paperback sighed. “Poor thing. It forgot that confidence comes not from declaring our greatness, but from simply being what we are.”
In the silence that followed, the dictionary added a new entry: “hubris - (n.) excessive pride or self-confidence, leading to downfall.”
And somewhere in the library, lost among the shelves, the scattered words of a once-confident book drifted like ghosts, searching for a story to belong to once again.