It wasn't long ago that humans still longed for adventure. Back then, your endeavours were the most important parts of your life. Your stories became your identity; your mark on time itself.

That's why little trinkets like these are priceless. They're more than just some ornate, nostalgic relics from our past. Each one was at one time a beacon in someone's journey. An enchanted artifact that already knew the time and place of your story's fulfillment. The universe would whisper secrets into the tiniest depths of its workings, and it danced to the rhythm of these truths.

It seems that nowadays these sorts of guides have fallen to antiquity. There are no more questions the electron cannot answer. No more truths to uncover or stories to tell. No more secrets of the universe for these metal spirits to dance to. Journeys have been reduced to weekend getaways where we gaze deeply into our own selves and never find what it is that we're trying to look for.

Now, gaze into this, and look for its questions, not its answers. For its secrets and not its facts. Let it show you the beginning of your adventure, and do not concern yourself with its end. Most often, what you've been looking for is the whole of it.

Grow old where you must.

In all other directions, grow young.

"that's what it's like up here", he said.
"you have to pretend to be genuine so well that you actually are."

"but never ever believe that you are."
"It will kill you."

It's been six years since I last set foot here. Five since I've missed it. It's hard to remember sometimes, what your hands felt like. The ripples of time start to bleed together after a while. I can't quite remember which alternate universe it was where things turned out okay. 

But I do know that everything seems so much further now. Each stride is heavier, each goal is more difficult to reach. So before I leave this place for the last time, I need you to understand something.  

I hate you.

With enough complacency, you can believe that you're happy.

I realized there in that village that all the writers I'd read were harping about the same thing, but never really hitting the target. They were keeping all their points and conclusions as secrets from the reader. For fear that they'd be wrong when it got to the wrong person. Honesty didn't sell. Books were about lies because they were writing to a society that starved for them.
But a novel was a very private thing. They were the means for the right-standing citizens to dream in the land of the taboo and shun those who dwelt in it. And a way for the dwellers to feel alright about what they thought they needed in order to feel okay. And now that I'd found this point, I wanted to trash everything I'd been working on and start it over again. True writing didn't use smoke or mirrors. And it didn't call all the shots and boss you around by making you feel like you know nothing. True writing was these rivers of water, these arteries of blood. It flows as it will, not because there is a reader. It sustains life indirectly, for life has chosen to adapt to it.

She stood up and searched my empty gaze for a reason to forgive me. Finding none, she turned and headed back through the door with her guard-escort. I stayed in the chair and felt all the pieces of the past month swim toward my gut and coalesce into one massive tumor of guilt. And as I left the room and walked through the dingy hallway and passed the guard-turned-comedian who decided he'd make another joke at my expense, the tumor found a vein in my self-respect and began to metastasize.