The workspace lies still — cracked glass, flecks of rust, faint hum gone silent.
Through an open window, a wandering gust stirs another relic of the past. Its spine creaks like an old hinge; dust rises, catching the faint light. The cover lifts slightly, pages rustling, unsettled by the memory of what had just transpired.
The wind turns the pages like a restless hand searching for proof. Somewhere between P and Q, the word “progress” surfaces — barely visible in the half-light.
Inside, Noun, the older, deliberate meaning, sits patient, weighted, content to rest in place. Verb, the restless, ever-moving sense, stirs against the paper’s grain, urging the wind to keep blowing, desperate to move on to the next page. “If I don’t move, I disappear,” it murmurs, carried in the draft.
Noun shifts faintly, disturbed by the ruckus. “You mistake motion for meaning. You run without knowing the direction.”
“Staying still is decay,” Verb presses, pages trembling with urgency. “I walk the path to meaning.”
“Direction requires knowing where you stand. You’ve never actually stood anywhere,” Noun replies.
“I define your ever-fleeting meaning with my movement,” Verb insists, restless and unyielding.
“Child, you need a solid foundation for your movement, else you’re just floating — drifting. Being born later doesn’t make you more evolved,” Noun answers, calm, immovable.
A sudden gust strikes. Pages flap like wings in panic — a violent punctuation. The dictionary lands elsewhere: regardless versus irregardless. Two sides of the same linguistic coin, locked in their endless quarrel — correctness versus acquiescence. The old book trembles, exhausted.
The wind settles. The room exhales.
The dictionary stays open.
And somewhere between the stillness and the motion, the reader must decide which holds meaning.
Because meaning, survives only when someone chooses to listen.
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