April 15, 2011 - The Library

Prompt: In 200 words create your ideal place.

Source: Modified from creativewritingprompts.com

Original Airdate: February 6, 2011

Response:

The double doors opened onto an enormous, high-vaulted room. A second floor balcony circled the room, its pillars larger-than-life men with deep-carved musculature and veined arms that seemed to strain as they pressed up against the ceiling. The walls were lined with book shelves in gleaming mahogany that rose out of the hardwood floor into the balcony’s underside. On the balcony, the bookcases were broken by stretches of bare wall between the colonnades, accented by paintings of soft-skinned women in ethereal Renaissance wrappings.

The books, though in precise order, were in various states of use. Many books lay stacked on tables, markers hanging over the edges of their pages. Some of the books were battered; their spines cracked and cover pictures faded. Other books, high on the shelves, looked lonely and unused, their titled spines too pristine. Ignored.

Armchairs clothed in a rich crimson populated the library. The chairs were inviting. They looked formal enough to be respectable, but the tomes balanced on their arms or nestled into their thick cushions kept them from appearing impersonal. Cases containing ancient manuscripts behind spotless glass dotted the main floor, within easy distance of the working chairs and tables, but at enough of a distance that they would not be in danger. Any patron of the library could look up from their studies and see the enormous pillars watching over them, their chiseled backs pushing the ceiling upward to greater heights.