She awoke at 3am. She knew that was the time because the neon green light of her alarm clock burned the numbers into her vision. Outside the window the full moon had begun its sluggish descent toward the horizon, casting long shadows across her back garden that seemed to move independently from the objects which created them. The world was quiet and so was her mind; still caught in that in between stage of sleeping and waking, where dreams dance in amongst reality. She pulled back the covers and shivered in the crisp air of the night. Swinging her feet to the floor, she tip-toed down the stairs and out the back door. No torch was needed, it was a full moon after all.
The outside world was just as quiet as it had seemed from her room; like even the creatures of the night had drifted into a slumber, making the crack of a stick breaking behind her echo louder than it would have otherwise. She spun around and her eyes rested on a small box nestled in the grass, its intricate carvings and smooth wooden edges made a stark contrast to the crooked world around it.
Bending down she found it unlocked, and one peek beneath the lid revealed rows of jars of different shapes and sizes. They were all illuminated by the contents they held within themselves. She gasped,
Stories.
"Stories," came a voice from the shadows, "I see you have found my collection of them."
"These are all yours?" She asked incredulously, "But you must've lived a hundred lifetimes to collect so many of your own."
The voice in the shadows chuckled, or perhaps it was the shadows themselves, she couldn't see anyone there at all.
"I have had only a few more trips around the sun than you, but nevertheless these stories are all mine."
Her head whirling she sat back on the grass in disbelief. She'd heard of stories before, heard friends share one of their own; tales of foreign lands and unimaginable adventure. Sometimes she sat by herself and watched people passing by, imagining what it would be like to have even one jar-full of story to call hers. But she was herself, she was small and sometimes scared of the world and stories didn't come knocking on the doors of girls like her.
She jolted out of her reverie when the shadows spoke again; "I can teach you how to catch some if you wish."
"I don't think there's any to be caught," she replied with a sigh, "I'm always watching the lives of everyone as they go about collecting stories of their own, just incase I can learn from them you see. I read books crammed full with the stories of others. I hear about them all the time, on the news and in the paper. Stories, stories, stories everywhere and yet not one for me."
The shadows chuckled again. It was an odd sort of chuckle, if you listened close enough it sounded strangely like the rustle of leaves.
"You don't see do you? There is a story around you right now."
She looked around, seeing nothing but the moonlight against the trees.
"Perhaps you cannot see it yet, but it is there and it is waiting for you to recognise it. The thing with stories is that the more you blind yourself with those of others the harder it is to see your own. Each time you crave someone else's yours shrinks a little, thinking that perhaps it isn't enough for you." The voice continued, "You stand with your jar open and wait, you wait and wait and stories come in and out of your jar but you don't see them. You're waiting for something bigger, something better, something you think can compete with everyone else whilst hundreds of stories swirl around you."
"But," she whispered, not wanting to scare the story away, "how do I catch them?"
"It's simple," the shadows replied, "you stop looking to everyone else for permission to close the jar."
