DELAY
When Later Takes the Place of Now
In the Hall of Future Days, the scrolls were arranged with impeccable precision.
Every shelf bore a date, and every date guarded a promise.
Auryn stopped in front of a particularly elegant scroll.
Its seal read: “Tomorrow.”
Farther along, he found another.
“When I Have Time.”
Then another.
“Later.”
“Strange,” he said.
He opened one scroll.
It was empty.
He opened a second.
Empty as well.
The last contained only a single line:
“To Be Completed Soon.”
Pyrion burst out laughing.
Cineris tilted his head.
Azhuris studied the shelves with growing suspicion.
“But there’s almost nothing here.”
“Exactly.”
Scriptorath’s voice crossed the hall.
The old archivist walked between the aisles, studying the scrolls.
“This is one of the largest sections of the Archive.”
Auryn blinked.
“Even though it’s nearly empty?”
Scriptorath smiled.
“It is full of things everyone intends to do.”
He led them to the upper shelves of the Archive, touched the wood with a claw, and at once a great floating window opened before them.
It showed no reflection.
It showed the world.
The Master slowly traced a claw along its luminous edge.
The images shifted one after another: libraries, desks covered with books, unfinished scrolls, and readers asleep with an open volume resting on their chest.
“Look.”
The young archivists stepped closer.
On the other side appeared a woman surrounded by towering piles of books.
In her hands she held a long list.
“Do you see that woman, full of good intentions?” asked Scriptorath.
Auryn nodded.
“She has read a great many books.”
“No.”
Scriptorath smiled.
“Those are the books she plans to read this summer.”
Pyrion stared at the mountain of volumes.
“All of them?”
“It is what she promises every year, in June.”
“And does she succeed?”
“Very rarely.”
The dragonets looked at the list again.
It seemed endless.
“Why does she keep writing it?” asked Cineris.
Scriptorath waited a moment.
“Because imagining something is pleasant.”
Then he pointed toward the shelves of the hall.
“Beginning it, however, makes it real.”
Auryn looked at the woman again: her reading list nearly reached the floor.
“So Delay is a bad thing?” he asked.
Scriptorath slowly shook his head.
“No.”
He brushed a still-sealed scroll with a claw.
“Sometimes waiting is wise.”
Then he turned and pointed to hundreds of rolls that had remained closed for years.
“The problem begins when tomorrow becomes a house we move into forever.”
The hall fell silent.
Somewhere, a shelf dropped a scroll.
Upon its seal was written:
Someday.
Dragon Lexicon
Delay (n.)
Presence:
The habit of continually entrusting to tomorrow something that could begin today.
Integrity:
Recognizing the moment when waiting stops preparing and starts taking away.
Threshold:
Understanding the difference between necessary time and postponed time.
Archivist’s Note
During the celebrated Year of the Thirty-Two Springs in the Calendar of Mists, the dragonet Varel compiled one hundred and fifteen lists entitled:
“Very Important Things I Will Start Tomorrow.”
The chronicles record that he spent the entire year refining those lists.
The following year he finally began the first item.
By accident.
Epigraph of the Archive
“Every undertaking begins on the day it ceases to be postponed.”
— Tables of the Archive, Wing of Future Days
Dragon Scale
The Right Day
He searched for the perfect moment, rare and bright,
and waited for it through many a night.
A moon went by, then an entire season,
while his collection grew without reason.
But one fine morning, without knowing why,
he took a small step, as light as a sigh.
And so all his fears were traded for a grin:
the right day arrives...
when you finally begin!
𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮𝓻𝔂 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓐𝓻𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓿𝓮 💧✨