He was a major character, and she was a punctuation mark. They only came to life with the energy of a reader.
Despite the importance of the character, she could well be the protagonist if we count the number of appearances. Against her, only another mark of short hair was a competitor for her.
They did not always like each other. Sometimes she would distance him from other words, imposing a pause, but it was precisely these coincidences that had brought them closer.
After several scenes, something seemed to emerge between them. They began to enjoy their encounters.
At first, he was only interested in having some verb of action or emotion nearby, determinants of his life, and his state of mind. But, as the story progressed, he became more concerned with the adjectives that gave him his looks and character. He wanted her to notice his strength and attractiveness. However, she had known who he really was, even though sometimes he disguised as a pseudonym or a vocative.
Both looked for one another between words. They checked the lines below and above.
The reunion was not so frequent, even if they were on the same line: letters, spaces, or words separated them. He daydreamed wanting to be a “but”, a “well” or a “however”, and she, an apostrophe to be together as long as it was himself and not his equivalent.
He was only concerned about losing his independence. It was not appealing to stop being the adventurer, of which the other words spoke. For her, becoming part of him could lead her to lose her identity.
After the first few chapters, they accepted what they were. They suffered to see themselves close without being able to approach, trapped in the task and moment that their creator had assigned to each one.
The power she had to impose the pace, delayed having him by her side again. She wished whoever wrote them hadn’t been careful to put her where she needed to be, although she didn’t complain when it benefited her.
Strange things happened …
“His heart was beating,D’Alazan, was running to get there before the ogre.”
“D’Alazan, was able to save the town’s children thanks to his bravery and skills.”
“Hey, Daniela, why are you placing the comma between the subject and the verb? They are not even relative clauses and you did not respect the spaces either.” Demanded the editor.
“I’m sure I didn’t do that.”
“Maybe not in the first few chapters, but I’m seeing this consistent error starting from chapter five and I couldn’t read any further. I think you better do another review before continuing to edit your manuscript. Please look at the file I just sent you.”
She reviewed the file sent by her editor with the corrections.
“Okay, I just saw what you say. Although I see it, I can’t believe it.”
The writer gave herself the task of rereading and discovered other things that she was sure could not be her doing.
“Everyone in town was yelling D’Alazan,! D’Alazan,! D’Alazan,! Meanwhile, the doctor examined the wounded and was able to save them.”
“How is it possible that those commas are there? Not in my dreams. The publisher would not do that. Something strange happens here. Maybe it’s a computer virus,” Daniela thought. She continued reading…
“D’Alazan, had difficulties controlling the beast contained inside his human body. He used its strength and energy, but it was like a time bomb.”
Another comma misplaced between the protagonist and the verb. There was no logical explanation unless the writer had changed the text while sleepwalking, just before sending it. These strange appearances were damaging her manuscript, and until she found out why this was happening, she could not send it back to the editor. She corrected an entire chapter. The next morning, she reread it and everything was as she had left it the night before. However, she did not feel safe and asked a relative to read.
“Then, the goblins provided,D’Alazan, with a magical suit that adhered to his entire naked body, thus giving him a protective layer that would prevent him from losing control and avoid an energy leak.”
“What madness is this? I will never finish. The first time I checked everything, there was no unintended change, and now the commas are attached to the protagonist. I must observe thoroughly to understand what is happening,” thought the writer and then reread, looking for a pattern.
As long as only she read the manuscript, the text remained unchanged. It was enough that one reader advanced in the story for things to change. To verify this, she placed a mark in such a way as to tell her cousin where to stop. As suspected, up to the limit defined on the page, the comma appeared in places that did not correspond. Everything revolved around the protagonist, nowhere else was the comma lost or misplaced.
Without realizing it, the couple was driving their creator crazy. The mark-in-love acted with orthographic rebellion. The reader’s energy had gone beyond bringing the story to life in their mind.
“Cousin, this is going to sound stupid to you, but I think there’s an alive punctuation mark. Didn’t you notice something change while you were reading?”
“You’re right, it’s stupid.”
“Seriously, I can’t find another explanation. Do you remember the stories of our grandmother? She said that, as a child, she had a book that changed every time she read it.”
“I only believed it as a child.”
“Today, I don’t believe it either, but I don’t have a virus on the laptop. There is no logical explanation. Please read past the mark I made, meanwhile I’m going to stare at the text.”
“When,D’Alazán, reached the top of the mountain the wise man was waiting for him to give him the last challenge to fulfill his destiny and liberate his people.”
Daniela, attentive to any oddity, did not take her eyes off the text and that was how she witnessed something incredible. The comma had moved, jumping over the letters. Reading had the power to energize an entire paragraph at a time, and this rebellious mark had taken advantage of it to get closer to her loved one. He always stayed in the assigned place. She was the one who challenged the system. She had had enough of the separation and looked for a way to change the situation.
It was the first time something like this had happened. How do you talk to and convince a punctuation mark to be obedient? That was the question.
After hours of thinking and thinking, Daniela, not caring what her cousin would think, spoke with her manuscript.
“Comma, you can’t keep changing places. If you don’t stop moving, they will never accept the publication of the book and thus you will lack the energy needed to live your moment. You would deprive yourselves of hundreds of readers. If no one reads, you don’t exist.”
The comma hugged the foot of the “n” in “D’Alazan” with her hair while she listened to the author. She wasn’t convincing her.
“I think I know what’s wrong with you. In each paragraph they read, you think it could be the last, you don’t know whether I’ll get rid of the character because no reader has finished reading the novel yet, but I assure you, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to be together in all the chapters where he takes part. You can be at peace.”
The long-haired punctuation mark let go of the “n,” but she still wasn’t back to her proper position. Something else was bothering her. So, that left the writer thoughtful.
“Cousin, if you were a punctuation mark, what would make you happy?”
“Are you really asking that to me? Better ask the lamp on the table, see what it tells you. Cousin, I thought the worlds you make up resulted from your creativity and not dementia.”
“Didn’t you see what the irreverent comma did?”
“I just saw that you put it several times where it doesn’t go. Which seems strange to me when it comes to you. I think so many late nights writing have left you hallucinating.”
As the writer continued trying to make her cousin understand that she hadn’t lost her sanity, she had a revelation. She would need the support of her editor to make it possible.
She first asked the comma to give a leap of faith and not change anything else so that a reader could finish the novel. Subsequently, she would make an adjustment to the manuscript and give it to her cousin to read.
“Dear comma, if my cousin gets to the end and I see that you stayed in the assigned places, I’ll know I satisfied you with how it ends. So, I will correct what you changed before, then you will be in the hands of the editor. My cousin can finish this weekend. Please be patient until the end. If you consent, please be a good girl and go back to the place you last moved from.”
The comma sealed the deal when she returned to the last place she had moved from.
“What do you say, cousin?”
“If I finish it quickly, will you be normal again? It’s that I like to say ‘my cousin the writer’ more than ‘my crazy cousin’.”
“I suspect I’ll always keep a pinch of madness, but I promise I won’t continue talking to my manuscript if my text and I are on the same page. This was never so literal.” Daniela smiled.
“It’s okay. Send me the recent version.”
On Monday of the following week, the novel was back in the hands of the editor who accepted the writer’s request, although he was not happy with that.
“… overcoming storms, earthquakes, and invasions. He liberated his people and regained the territories that the enemies had taken from him. The supernatural power enclosed in his body was returned to the gods, and henceforth he would live as a mortal among his subjects, leading them into a promising future. They called him King D’Alazan,”
Never had a story ended with a comma. The period used to have that honor. But this is how the author got the comma to cooperate, letting her live her story of orthographic love, with encounters and separations, with space and time in between, but together at last.
Written by Lunyzbreid Lopez
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