I look at the book in my hands. It is lovely, the colour of parchment with gold stamped upon it. I feel awful as there is a slight blue stain, ink most likely, marring the delicate, fibrous cover. I open it to see a very thin leaf made out of the same material as the paper. I would like to affix it to the cover, but I fear glue may damage it. For now it serves as a bookmark.

I gently thumb through the hand-pressed pages, the texture of them unlike anything I have ever felt before. They are barren, empty, not a single stroke or line yet to deface their beauty. Bare landscapes yearning to be filled with abstract thoughts and ideas, messages of love, hope, despair and hate.

This was a gift from a beloved friend who knows my mind far too well. The binding that sealed the book shut, now broken, tells me it is from India, and I tentatively test the paper with my large and clumsy fountain pen, the only thing that neatens my hand. The pores of the paper begin to bleed with rivers of blue ink like blood across an open wound.

I dare not mark a page with my untidy hand, not fit to record my late night ramblings of illogical thoughts. The pages of this noble book should contain creative bursts of energy telling of love and passion lovingly written by a beautiful-handed scribe, not silly writings about a world that is not mine. Writings that are devoid of originality, in my animalistic scrawl, marring this beautiful book. Writings that I would look back upon and cringe. I had to write something that would not be ripped out or scribbled upon in a fit of anger. Nothing that I would re-read and cry over, remembering possible lost love should my heart lead me astray in the future.

But how can I know how far I have come if I did not record where I came from? My last nearly eighteen years of life have been almost unrecorded, my mind erasing my childhood completely.

I look at the blank book again, and then look at the book that contains these hasty words, scrawled at midnight, with the mighty Gandalf upon the cover. Why should these words be unfit for the lovely pages? Why can they grace Gandalf’s pages and not those? It was time to take a risk.

But it is too late in the night for me, night’s daughter, to continue. Even those who walk in the darkness must rest.

I shall have to wait until my mind is clear and my thoughts are unscrambled. How long that will take, I do not know. I could spend the rest of my life writing in that book if I wished. But now I know that any word I write will be fit for its pages. For this is my heart, my soul, my passion, my art and no hurts I have suffered can undermine that. My words are fit for any page, even those as unique and lovely as the ones of the book.