She sat by the window on a cold wintry morning, curled up with a book on her lap and a blanket covering her legs. She sat with dog-eared copy of a book she had tried to read several times, but couldn’t for reasons, like life got in the way! It seemed like a book with over 1000 pages. A project in hand for the weekend. A target — to be completed. It was an old copy of Anna Karenina. She lifted the old rusty book and held it to her nose, smelling the reassuring scent of aged paper and dust. She also smelled a hint of smokiness. Perhaps a previous reader smoked while reading this book, contented in silence, uninterrupted solitude, lost within the pages. She wondered longing to know all the readers who read this book before her. Her thoughts were interrupted by a bird which flew and sat next to her window on the other side of the glass pane. She moved and the bird was startled and it flew away. As she saw the bird fly into nothingness, she opened the book and began to read.
