The following is by Writers in the Grove member Steve Morse. It is based upon the prompt: “What would Shakespeare make of a modern library?”

Noam Ludwig Shakespere strolled eager through the great glass doors into the mystic halls of the sacred Word. Unfolding infinite in all direction a demesne of towering tomes, each a dedication, a devotion to the Word. Not any particular word, but a world where each word is Holy. Each syllable and sibilant phoneme, each lengthy, nonsensical, joyously opulent example of ostentatious onomatopoeia. From “See Spot Run” to dimestore detectives and the dreadful, dark domains of Dante’s infernal circles. A linguistic lair where Lovecraftian nightmares dance gaily upon gambrel roofs, where George’s Dragon glares greedily at the gleaming golden horde beneath the belly of Smaug, and children sit rapt in tales of Pooh.

Poets and philosophers, scientists and theologians, the Mighty, the mini and the uncounted multitude come to pay homage in these hallowed halls of mystery and imagination, dedication to the sacred words that have changed us all, charting the human course through antediluvian epochs to the star strewn future.

Noam wandered far, seeking and soaking in the sanctified spirit, leaving long behind him the realm of Known, only to look around and find he’d barely begun.