The Scribe

Chapter Four

Sadie brushed her fingers along the smooth surface of the wooden desk. She walked around to the other side of it. It was rather large and when she looked up she saw millions of quills writing in their notebooks. She felt like a teacher supervising her class taking a test.

Her notebook was still lying open. The paper was bright white, the pages clean and crisp. The other notebooks had pale, dull pages. Sadie looked at her quill. She turned it around in her hands inspecting it. Other than the bright red feather, there didn't seem to be much of a difference between her quill and all the others.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Professor Hobbs watching her. Sadie turned to her left and he smiled.

"How come I've never seen this room before?" Sadie asked.

Professor Hobbs chuckled. "It's magic, Sadie. We don't want just anyone waltzing in here, do we? No, no."

Sadie put her quill down beside her notebook on the desk. She put her hands in her pockets and stared at them expecting them to do something. Neither moved.

"Magic," Sadie whispered.

"Hm?" Professor Hobbs leaned closer to her.

Sadie looked at him again with narrowed eyes. "What did you call this room?"

"The Room of Destiny,"

"Right..."

"Destiny chose you as her Scribe," Professor Hobbs stated.

Sadie swallowed. How was she supposed to respond to that? She must have been dreaming, right? Quills didn't write in notebooks themselves. They didn't appear out of thin air either. Multiple large rooms could not be hidden from the naked eye in a small college library.

There was no such thing as magic.

"These quills write down the destinies of every person in the world. It's your job to supervise them," the professor continued to explain.

Before Sadie could reply, she noticed a quill pause in midair through the corner of her eye. It was the desk Professor Hobbs was looking at earlier – the first desk in the corner. Sadie leaned forward over her desk to get a better look. The paper suddenly became brown and crinkled. The quill's feather drooped and fell onto the notebook. It twitched a few times in agony.

Sadie looked at Professor Hobbs in worry but he remained staring at her with a blank expression. She turned her gaze back to the shriveled notebook as the quill slowly rose back into the air. A page of the notebook turned revealing fresh paper. The quill's feather shone once more and it began writing.

"What was that...?" Sadie whispered.

"You just witnessed death."

Sadie whipped her head around and stared at her professor. "I'm sorry, death?"

"It must have been a young soul," he stated. He stared at the notebook unblinking mesmerized by the quill's movements. "A young soul who was given a second chance."

Sadie thought for a moment. She looked over her shoulder at the desk again. "You mean to say...?"

"You just witnessed a reincarnation."

"That's not possible." Sadie shook her head.

"How can you say something you've just witnessed with your own eyes is impossible?" he asked.

"I didn't witness anything. It's just a quill and paper."

"The quill never lies."

"It shouldn't be writing on its own."