Dream-howl

A quiet girl went to visit her new neighbors one day. The mother and father were frightened when their daughter brought the quiet girl a glass of water. The new girl was careful not to spill a drop. Outside on the swings, she told the quiet girl that she was made of salt, and would melt if water touched her skin. She was so brave. Her parents burst out of the house, shouting in panic. The new girl leaped into the air, no longer a girl; she was a dragon, made of salt. She flew away. The quiet girl smiled.

As far as I was concerned, I was always a level lower than everyone else. I knew the members of the archery club, interacted with them, enjoyed their company, but I never had conversations with them. They were college students, just like I was, but we were not the same. They could socialize with an offhandedness that I could never aspire to, a universal likeness that was so different from me. When it came down to it, I was certain that I was less valuable, and didn’t mind leaving when no one else showed up for club that Saturday.
And I was going to leave, bow case in one hand and plastic tube in the other (it held my arrows), when Ryan showed up. Ryan was the unanimously elected president of the archery club, and for good reason; he made his own longbows and atl atls, and was incredibly accurate with both of them. When he came to the door and saw only me standing there, I was sure practice was canceled. I could go back to my dorm and spend the rest of my day in safe solitude.
Ins

“Stop!” she shouted, holding her hand outstretched toward me, a pleading look in her eyes. “You can’t go any further, trust me!”
Trust her? I looked her up and down, from her oversized black sweatshirt down to her blue jeans, fraying at the ends like little tufts of hair. That straight brown hair hanging down her back, those green eyes … she could have been me once, from another time. But still, she wasn’t me, not a part of me, so how could I trust her? A smile twisted up the sides of my mouth, and I took another step toward the precipice before me.
“There’s nothing down there,” she cried, running toward me with surprising speed. “You’re going the wrong way!”
“I don’t know you,” I said, turning my head to the side to watch her again. I felt like I should know her, should be able to understand what she was trying to tell me. Another time, years ago, she was like me, but not really. She went t

She had read the old musty book from cover to cover, the brittle pages threatening to crumble between her fingers at each gentle turn, almost begging for release from their ageless task. No human had touched a book in decades, breathed in the smell of old parchment, felt the sleek form of a pen between their fingers as they crafted words from an endless vocabulary, the perfect words to finish a sentence. So the volumes of books sat on their shelves in abandoned libraries, some moldy from water damage, some stolen for firestarter, none read by eager minds.
As much as people could still speak and think in words, the ability to read and write had faded. Due to technology, most people could surpass language barriers with ease, through a system of feelings and images. The new method of communication was spreading, even among the less wealthy of the population. The “mindspeak” was said to be addictive; people who mindspoke became more visibly withdrawn, less physically talkative.