“It’s different for everybody. My inspiration isn’t rooted in those kind of genres.” I quipped. Cutting the conversation short, just in case it would just turn into another argument or debate that I might be forced to engaged in.

I tend to put my thoughts in a back burner until I’m sure that they’re good enough to be served. The rest of the words here might be what I hold back during that day.

The truth is, I can’t imagine a world – or a life – without fiction books. How can I? When at a young age I was able to visit Wonderland and Oz? I fell down the rabbit hole and followed the yellow brick road that led me to the joys of reading. After meeting the characters from these worlds, it has been a never ending journey through different stories.  Nothing melts my heart more when I landed on the Sahara desert and met the Little Prince, up to this day I am one of the people who believes that he would return, or maybe he’s laughing with us through the stars. I can go on and on, but I just refuse to deprive myself of the escape that Narnia, Middle-earth, and London Below can provide. Oh, I won’t deny that I’m still waiting for my acceptance letter at Hogwarts.

It’s not just about the worlds, it’s also the comfort of words. The unexplainable experience of being soaked in endless feelings, of not wanting a story to end, of crying because your favorite character died, of holding them close to your heart just like how you would a family or a friend. Sometimes they even help make more sense of this life we’re living in.

There’s so much that these pages can contain. So if my mother, would come around and ask me to give it up once again. My answer would always be a resounding no. Fiction is forever.

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Tiny Stories is inspired by the book curated by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (bearing the same title) that says: The universe is not made of atoms; it’s made of tiny stories. This is my attempt to compile mine, something to push me to write even if there’s not a lot of words for me to grasp.