fantasy
Thalia
1
Thalia sat at her desk, surrounded by a fortress of books. The glow of her desk lamp cut through the early morning darkness, illuminating stacks of notes with her frantic scribbles. Sleep had become an occasional inconvenience for her; she was too close to the next breakthrough, and rest was a luxury she couldn't afford.
A graduate researcher by day and a university teacher by night, Thalia thrived in the pursuit of knowledge. She devoured textbooks like others devoured novels, her appetite insatiable. Ancient philosophy, quantum mechanics, obscure languages—if it existed, Thalia needed to understand it. She wasn’t interested in accolades or recognition. Her goal wasn’t fame. It was completeness. A compulsion. A quest to know everything.
One day, after her last lecture, Thalia slumped into the nearest café, clutching a heavily annotated tome on genetic algorithms. She ordered a double espresso—her fuel of choice—and began flipping through pages.
“Excuse me,” a voice interrupted. Startled, she looked up. It was one of her students, a boy in her philosophy class. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I don’t get Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return.”
For the first time all day, Thalia paused. She set her book aside and gestured for him to sit. They spent the next hour in conversation. Thalia expertly wove Nietzsche into quantum theory, tying the idea of life cycles to multiverse theory. The boy left wide-eyed, a thank-you trembling on his lips.
As the café emptied out, Thalia caught her reflection in the window. Tired eyes stared back at her, but there was pride there, too. In her relentless pursuit of knowledge, she had not only grown herself but inspired others. And even if the universe’s infinite truths remained just out of reach, she realized there was something almost magical in sharing what she’d already found.
Knowledge
