The Archive

Inhabited places, as they exist with their people - their friends - slowly develop an understanding of themselves and a strength to exist in a deeper fashion.

The archive existed from will alone. A will of its own. Unlike a lot of places, it wasn't ancient, nor created by some modern mastermind. It simply appeared one day, not yet as an archive but as a small playful space, the odd book, the odd film, toys abound.

Hidden away, it held a small community who would happen across it over time. These wanderers played with it, enjoyed its personality and all that it contained. At first, it held itself there in what some would call a quiet anxiety. This anxiety, however, wasn't one of paralysis. With a determination, it and its small community started to fill its walls. Visitors and inhabitants would bring books, films and trinkets. It learnt and developed, watching the world outside and watching those within it playing. It felt itself, and through critique, listening and comparison - both with the outside world and with its community - it filled itself.

Those within who enjoyed its toys aged, as did it and as time passed it filled itself with all number of other spaces as well: galleries filled with stretching masses of art from the inhabitants, and gardens, their walls covered in vines, trees and ponds, vibrant and active.

As with most things, the archive slowly rolled through changes. People would come, people would leave, often those who did would return later. It always kept growing, valuing its small community, its insides, its history and its thoughts.

Those within the archive lived happy lives. They would come and go as they pleased. Some would spend their lives within it, living as part of it's ecosystem, sitting in its trees to read, listening to its worries and bringing new works regularly. Other would visit less frequently, taking books, returning them once read, bringing parts of their world into it to share. Some would appear hardly ever, though their appearance was still valued. They'd bring what they had, rest and recover from their journeys within its walls and share tales of their lives. These tales were often mundane but the archive liked this; it held dear the lenses their tales were told through, for although it could see the world, it found such joy in the energy and perspective of others.

Within its depths, the archive still held its old rooms, littered with toys and children’s books. Far from hidden or forgotten, these rooms would often be the first to greet a new visitor, opening a door to a half completed puzzle or a ball rolling, inviting them in. Amongst these rooms sat wardrobes full of costumes, jukeboxes and of course, numerous books and films.

Soon 20 years passed and the archive was no longer a quiet hidden place. Its halls regularly held host innumerable recurring guests and its community was larger than ever.

It now held rooms, upon rooms, upon rooms, alongside gardens, balconies and large playfully winding corridors (for it enjoys keeping its inhabitants on their toes). One could spend days alone conversing with it, reading its books, or thinking about stories it had written itself, learning of the views it held, which by then were rather well steeled. Whilst reading, ther was a non-zero chance one would still come across its toys, both new and old, lying on a shelf, on the floor or behind their chair, left with the intentions of a jester child. The best finds were often those of toys from its original room, all denoted with a perpetual familiar warmth to their surface, as if recently held.

Though valuing flat truth, the archive valued its fiction most of all. In terms of these, the archives community would often throw the oddest of events, celebrations of their stories, knowingly fruitless hunts for fake cryptids, starting secret societies in jest or simply hosting costume parties themed around their favourite tales.

It was a stronghold visited by many, though still only known about in given circles. Those who did, saw it not only as a location with an unquestioning welcome, a taste for the silly and an unparalleled collection of works, but also, they saw it as one of the strongest friends they had ever come to know.