Each evening, Paris returned to the tower.

Sometimes, he returned when the sun shone radiantly in the sky, and its warmth still lingered on the walls and windowsills he passed on his route home.  Many people were about at this time, scurrying around like beetles at their agendas and errands.  He passed a scholar on one corner, and a merchant on the next.  He brushed by warriors in splendid armor, and beggars in rags.  He sidestepped both rich and poor, tall and slight, handsome and not.  On occasion, he would meet eyes with a stranger, and a nod would be exchanged.  Conversation might also occur, with a vendor or a friendly passerby, and Paris would smile.

Other times, Paris would be much more tardy in his return.  The moon would be shining brightly in the obsidian sky and Paris no longer saw the normal assemblage of characters so obvious in the daylight.  Encounters were far less frequent and resembled passing human forms, whose features were occluded by plays of shadow and shade. He rarely interacted with the pseudo-wraiths of the eve.  The sunlight revealed, but the moonlight played tricks on his mind.

His terminus was always the wide, wooden, double-doors, at the base of the Tower.  They were each four feet wide by six feet tall.  At the top, where the wood met the dusty, rust-colored wall,  the doors angled inwardly to make a triangle that peaked at approximately eight feet.  The doors were dark wood, faded at places from erosion.  The wind gathered particles from the sandy streets and buffed the door day in and day out. Paris didn’t mind the few spots on the doors though, this was his home, and the winds would continue to come.  The doors swung inwardly when he released the ornate lock with his ancient-looking key.  Instead of outwardly swinging doors which required pulling in when closed, Paris liked the subtle feature of these inwardly swinging doors, it allowed him to push the world out when he shut them for the day

In the square vestibule were several hooks for outer garments, a handmade rack containing several pairs of shoes, a stool in need of several repairs, and a Spanish guitar with a fading rosette and more than its share of dents and dings.  Once in a great while, Paris would set the stool outside the doors, close his eyes, and play into the wind.  Most that passed by did so without acknowledgement, but on rare occasion, a stranger did slow his stride and sigh reflectively whilst holding a blink a split second longer than necessary.

The stairs began at the wall to the left and opposite the doors.  The once rigid planks that wound upwards, in a clockwise manner, creaked and groaned from years of use.  None had splintered or shattered yet, but Paris could sense the inevitable need to replace one, if not all four hundred and seventy-two.

Methodically and reflectively, Paris ascended to his humble bedroom at the top of the stairs.  A small door, seemingly made of the same wood as the larger entryway, was slightly ajar just across the landing.  A roughly hewn, also wooden, ebony ladder was propped at a slight angle against the wall, and lead up to a hatch secured with a rusty iron slide bolt.

Paris shuffled into his meager living quarters and deposited his bag upon the desk at the foot of his bed.  He didn’t have much, but the bed was warm, the gentle glow of the lamp was soothing, and the roof and walls kept him secure from the elements.  He had a rocking chair placed in the corner opposite the bed, his use of which mildly pacified his restless soul.   A small painting of a turbulent sea and a tattered sailboat was the lone adornment upon the bare walls. He didn’t tarry long in this room.  Paris collected his parchment and quill, opened the bedroom door, and proceeded through the hatch to the apex of the tower.

The space he emerged into was open to the air above low, three-foot walls on all four sides.  Sturdy, thick, posts made from the same rusty stone, rose from the corners six additional feet above the walls to the roof.  An X-shaped brace supported the middle of the four-sided pyramid shaped roof topped with dirty ivory slate.

Paris placed his parchment on the small table against the north facing wall, laid the quill to the right of the parchment, placed his hands on the table, and lowered himself into the waiting chair.

Paris sighed, and then breathed deeply in through his nostrils and out through the gap between his lips.  He inhaled the world and its vigor, passion, laughter, vivaciousness, jubilation, and exhaled its languor, apathy, tears, decrepitude, and sorrow.  He heard all the cries, screams, shouts, yells, moans, then hummed and sang songs of joy, hope redemption, elevation, and mirth.

He placed his left arm on the table and rotated until his palm faced upwards,the inside of his forearm towards the four-sided pyramid roof. He took the quill firmly in his right hand, fingers pinched just above the pointed tip for support, and he pierced the vein on his left arm with the quill.

Blood welled at the puncture point, but Paris was used to this by now.  This was part of the sacrifice, the pain and blood intrinsic in his process.  He held the quill in its subcutaneous position for a few seconds, and then withdrew his essence.

He pressed the quill upon the parchment and began to inscribe the frustrations with the lack of courtesy in others.   He wrote about the humorous interactions that he had at work or on the way home.   He recorded the inspiring images of cherry blossom trees in full bloom or sunsets graced with rose and marmalade hues.  He wrote of the spectrum of emotions elicited from listening to majestic pieces of music.  He wrote prose, stories and songs.  He chronicled his deep, lasting sorrows, and yearned for catharsis.

He re-drew essence, and poured out his dreams, hopes and subsequent failures.  He jotted his thoughts on heaven, hell, and the horrors between.  He made note of his great loves and tragic losses and even those in between who still left lasting marks on his suspect heart.  He coped with his sadness and rationalized his happiness.  He wrestled with the emotional elements of decision making over logical process

He revisited memories, both the ones that gave him immense palpitations of joy and the those that still cause him twinges of regret.  He lashed out at the world, and criticized its hypocrisy by harnessing so much beauty and so much evil all at once  He finds way to forgive, and to forget, and to move on from so many things.

Line after line, paragraph after paragraph, and page after page he poured his essence onto the parchment.  Once his soul and heart were exhausted with the efforts of his scrawl, he drank deeply of the cool night air, and rested.

Paris carefully collected his thoughts, musings, utterances, rants, and admissions painstakingly upon the vellum, and threw them out into the night air.  He watched the memory birds glide through the night sky and felt peace.  He observed the glide of the thought dove and felt relief.  He observed the dip and sway of the emotion stork and felt sated.  He then opened the hatch, descended the ebony ladder, and retired for the day.

Nothing about this was strange to him.  It was simply what he did, and who he was.  Every morning he knew that what the wind did not carry far from his immediate sight, the morning street sweeper gathered with his rounds when clearing the streets.  Every evening he returned to the Tower to recreate with his essence.

This routine continued for days, weeks, months, and even years. Still Paris climbed the tower each night, ascended the ladder, opened the hatch, and spilled his essence onto the page.

Until one morning, he noticed a young, ratty looking boy in the alley across from his front door.  The boy stared at him intently and did not budge. Paris, intrigued, approached the boy and came mere feet from him.  At which point the boy hastily turned and ran down the alley.  Paris assumed that the boy had mistaken him for someone else, and continued about his day.

The next day the boy was in the same place, and again the boy ran from him as he approached.  Scratching his head, Paris mulled over possible explanations as he turned away from the alley and continued towards work.

This continued for a week.  Paris would emerge and the boy would be waiting.  But he never got close enough without the boy turning tail and running away.

Then one day, Paris emerged from the tower and the boy wasn’t in the alley.  Paris looked around and the boy didn’t seem to be in any of the adjoining streets.  Paris canvased the area and found no trace of the boy.  While searching, Paris heard the shuffle and swoosh of the street sweeper nearby.  As the sweeper got closer he noticed something curious, the sweeper pushed no papers in his collection of refuse.  Paris thought, perhaps all his previous nights offerings had just blown farther than usual?

But the next day, the boy was nowhere to be found, and the street sweeper had no parchment in his pile.  And it was the same the next day, and the day after that.  No boy to be found, no papers near the street sweeper. Paris continued his routine night after night, and the scenario continued to be the same the following day.

Several weeks later, late in the evening, when the moonlight was creating ghouls and shadow beasts upon the wall, Paris was returning to the tower.  His day was long and arduous and his feet moved imperceptibly slower than most nights.  He was approaching home when he caught sight of a hunched gargoyle in the alleyway across from his door.  He reduced his pace even further, and as fortune would have it, a cloud veiling the moon passed, and bathed the alley in ghostly pale luminescence.

“You there!” Paris shouted, as the sudden brightness revealed none other than the little boy he noticed many weeks ago. But the boy did not wait for Paris to reach him, and vanished down the alley.

Paris pondered why the boy would be out so late, and wondered if the appearance of the youth and the disappearance of his pages might somehow be related.  So, that very evening, when Paris concluded his spilling of essence, he tracked the pages as they floated out into the sky and towards the ground.

As several pages hit the ground near the Tower, he saw a figure moving back and forth in the street.  Paris opened the hatch, raced down the ladder bounded down the four hundred and seventy two steps, and threw open the door.

It was the little boy.  He was the one collecting the pages.  The boy was grabbing a page from the dust when he noticed Paris and turned to run.  But Paris had already started his acceleration, and quickly caught up to the urchin.

“Why are you taking my pages!” Paris roared.

“I need them sir! They are important to me,” the boy whimpered.

“What is it? Do we have a connection?  Are you feeling something when you read my words?” Paris asks.

“I don’t follow,” said the boy.

“Are you mocking me? Are you taking my words for your own?  Is it funny to steal from me? Is this a joke?”

“No sir, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,”

Paris implores, I must know then, I pour myself into these words and these thoughts and feelings, then send them freely out into the world.  What do they mean to you?”

“I don’t know about the words sir, I can’t read, so the words don’t mean much to me.  But my family is poor, and we have used the paper to help start fires to keep us warm. That sure is important.”

Paris nodded thoughtfully, left the boy, and returned to his home.  He then began his slow ascent of the four hundred and seventy-two steps towards the ladder, through the latch, and back to the top of the Tower.

Humbly yours,

J