“When A Flame is Lit, Move Toward It”, the moment I met Lark, every­thing about the way I saw the world began to shift. She intro­duced two essen­tial ideas that became cen­tral to my life: the impor­tance of read­ing and the need to embrace new expe­ri­ences, no mat­ter how daunt­ing they might seem. My child­hood had not pre­pared me for these concepts—growing up in a house­hold where lit­er­a­ture wasn’t val­ued, I had always felt dis­con­nect­ed from the world of books. Though I was capa­ble of read­ing, my family’s indif­fer­ence meant that I had nev­er been encour­aged to tru­ly immerse myself in sto­ries. I was often seen as an out­sider, more at home in phys­i­cal tasks and with an unpol­ished approach to life, play­ing the role of a friend­ly but some­what awk­ward per­son, much like a char­ac­ter in a school play who didn’t fit in with the rest of the cast.

At twen­ty-eight, I was mak­ing a liv­ing as a house painter while also dab­bling in music on the side, find­ing solace in the arts as a cre­ative out­let. One bit­ter­ly cold win­ter day, I sought refuge from the harsh weath­er by duck­ing into the library, a qui­et space where I could enjoy my lunch in peace. It was there that I first heard Lark’s voice, soft and melod­ic, as she inter­act­ed with patrons at the help desk. There was some­thing mag­net­ic about the way she calmed the anx­i­eties of those around her, mak­ing them feel under­stood and at ease. I tried to glimpse her, but she remained hid­den behind the desk, leav­ing me curi­ous and eager to know more about her.

Dri­ven by this new­found fas­ci­na­tion, I began vis­it­ing the library every day, lis­ten­ing to the way Lark guid­ed patrons to the books they need­ed. It wasn’t just her knowl­edge of lit­er­a­ture that impressed me—it was the way she seemed to sense people’s unspo­ken ques­tions, offer­ing guid­ance before they even asked. Her insights into books, espe­cial­ly the ones I had nev­er heard of, opened a whole new world to me. I start­ed tak­ing notes, scrib­bling down authors and terms she men­tioned, like “Dick­ens” and “lumi­nous,” and I could feel a grow­ing desire to dive deep­er into these unknown worlds. I began to real­ize that books were more than just words on a page—they were an entry into under­stand­ing life, and Lark’s abil­i­ty to open those doors for oth­ers was some­thing I admired great­ly.

Moti­vat­ed by Lark’s influ­ence, I decid­ed to take my vis­its to the library a step fur­ther. I picked up books I had always heard about but nev­er real­ly con­sid­ered, like works by Dick­ens and Con­nor. Soon, I found myself deeply engrossed in these nov­els, spend­ing hours read­ing instead of work­ing. The sto­ries of Beowulf and The Odyssey spoke to me in ways I hadn’t expect­ed, and I began to see par­al­lels between the strug­gles of the char­ac­ters and the chal­lenges I had faced in my own life. These sto­ries became a refuge, an escape from the mun­dane real­i­ty I had once known, and they filled a void that had been there for as long as I could remem­ber.

Along the way, I dis­cov­ered the work of Mol­ly Thorn, an author who had been the sub­ject of much qui­et talk in the city. Lark had spo­ken fond­ly of her books, and I was intrigued to read one for myself. But the cli­mate around me had shifted—the world seemed to be turn­ing away from intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits, and there was a grow­ing sense of anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism that left me uncer­tain about my grow­ing pas­sion for lit­er­a­ture. Still, my desire to read Mol­ly Thorn’s work became a per­son­al chal­lenge, a mis­sion to prove that even in a world that was increas­ing­ly indif­fer­ent to lit­er­a­ture, there were still those of us who cher­ished the pow­er of a good sto­ry. The pur­suit of this book sym­bol­ized my hope, my refusal to let the world’s apa­thy extin­guish the flame of knowl­edge and cre­ativ­i­ty I had dis­cov­ered through Lark’s guid­ance.