“Hmmm.” Xion said aloud to himself. He had pulled one of his grandmother’s history books from the shelf and was looking through it. The book felt both sturdy and fragile in his hands. It was big, thick, but its binding was coming loose and the pages were yellowing from age. Nana had said these books had belonged to her grandmother.l, and may have been even older.

Flipping absentmindedly through the pages, as he tended to on lazy days like today, he’d stop when something caught his eye. It was hard to believe the pictures in these books were real. These creature once roamed the earth. He had read about abaddo. No, that wasn’t right. Buffalo, that was the creatures name. He’d read about the crocogator. Or, at least it was called something like that. It’s hard to remember these ridiculous names when animals haven’t seen on earth since their extinction over 100 years ago.

That’s why he liked his grandmother’s books. They were like a time machine. He just needed to pick a place to land.

He stopped turning when he was a peculiar creature. It looked like the lyon…lion? It was just so small!

“House cat.” He said the would to himself out loud. “Why would anyone want something real steps to that giant, man eating, beast I read about?”

He saw words like purring, zoomies, toe beans? These cannot have been real things this animal did.

He closed the book, returned it to its dusty alcove on the shelf and laughed.

“Toe beans,” he chuckled some more, “I wonder how truthful these books are.” He looked out the window at the nothingness beyond. Only robots and droids filled the landscape. No animals. No majestic creatures that stretch the bounds of his imagination.

“Well, believing they existed is better than the alternative I guess.” He thought his to himself as he pulled the book back out and found the pages he had just left.