"Because everything changes when we read." World book night. Tonight.

It's World Book Night, tonight.

Celebrating reading, volunteers give away books tonight, hundreds of thousands of books. Everyone should be able to have the chance to read and not everyone has the means to access books, so tonight is about spreading the joy and power of reading and letting others benefit from the inspiration, revelations and journeys that books provide, fact or fiction. #WorldBookNight

Me. Well I have taken some adult and children's books down to the local community late surgery to enable those waiting to be able to see a world of imagination and information. Adults that have not had the experience or availability. Children that so very often don't have that advantage at home. It's not much, but I hope the books bring joy.

I have also written a piece of flash fiction, inspired by tonight.

I started with an A.

I have no name yet, but my journey has begun.

Every day, in the light of the big bay window, upon the old, scratched wooden desk, I grow. Letter by letter, word by word, characters entwining and vistas stretching as far as the imagination can see. I feel pain, I feel love, I feel loss and I feel adventure. My story is unravelling with every strike of the key, every burst of ink on the paper and every adjective, comma, speech mark and new page.

Born in an idea sparked from an impressionable moment in life, I have become a book. A story of words jumbled into scenes and tales of lives in places of descriptions. I stand proudly in the bookshop window, my jacket adorned with illustrations of beauty and allure. Watching, waiting for my covers to be parted and my pages turned.

The cash register rings out and I slide into a crisp, card bag, the handles shadowing across the sheen of my cover. Sounds of the street mirror the words inside me, the city a part of the story I am going to share. For days I captivate her, curled on the sofa wrapped in her warmth and firing her imagination, taking her to a world she yearns for, but fears. Night falls and I rest next to her as she sleeps, her dreams filled with the lust of my characters, the depths of their deceit and the heart of betrayal.

Finished. A silent pause as my revelation sinks in, robbing her of the anticipation and greed for more. She smiles.

I sit now on my shelf, my story out there but I am stuck. Read me. Take me. Touch me and despise me.

He is angry, the train is late. I am folded apart, strewn against his case. He hasn’t got lost inside me yet, drawn deeper and deeper in to my world of war and new lands of hope and isolation. The train rattles on, slow and purposeless, heated by the bodies trying not to touch, bump or glance. He picks me up and I take him away, take him far away, wrapping him in the world which will taint his mouth and arouse his sensations. His breath will quieten and his pulse will race. I have him. He is mine, my story all that surrounds him.

He took the climax hard. He was angry again. I had disappointed his loins, but I had lit his passion and fired ambition at him. He left the train, driven and determined. He left the train and he left me.

Kicked to the floor, I slide under the seats and dark in to the shadows. I have lost my sheen long ago, with every storytelling I lose a little outer lustre and allure. My story does not change, its power and its beauty, but I do not entice anymore, I do not glisten my secrets from my cover. I am creased. I am frayed. I am stained. I am soiled. My story hidden away inside.

He smells. Old tar, uncleansed and unkempt. He is young, but so grey he is not noticed, passed by, skirted round, avoided, unseen. His home is now my home. A crate, old papers and blankets envelope us from reality. He is a lost soul, lost in his own world. So I lose him in my world. I take him away from the cold and the hunger, the abuse and the despair, to a new world of bitter feuds and heated love, passion knotted to vistas of new moons in green skies, of angels and knights. Romance breeding death and death breeding new beginnings.

Our worlds collide. His world of no joy and my world of no limits. They collide and magic happens. Sparks flicker in his dry eyes, deep in the depths of the darkness comes light and energy. He puts me down, rummages in his crate, tossing aside the newspapers and styrofoam cups. He stops, picks it up and then opens me up. Just my cover, flattening me out. He pauses, a twitch of his lips then he writes. He fills me. New words. New imaginations. New beginnings and new directions.

He writes.

A new story is born. A new book to be.