"Mistborn" Wears Away in My Mind

I recently finished rereading Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy. As I mentioned in my post The Dark Lord of Depression in which I talk about the first novel of the installment, I read the trilogy for the first time in the ninth grade. A lot of time has passed since then. A lot more books have been read in that time, including the first three books of Sanderson's epic The Stormlight Archive. Time and life has gone by between my first reading of Mistborn, and to say that I have read The Stormlight Archive alone is to say that I have traveled many pages since. 

But books are not like our own memories. They can be relived any time, returned to by the flip of some pages. And though we return to them slightly changed, they can remind us of who were when we first read them.

 

 

 

Beneath time and other great works, the series, while remembered, wore away till much of it was only remembered vaguely, other parts forgotten entirely. Rereading it now felt a bit like reliving an old dream. I could sense the feelings beneath the story that I remembered from those days: the shock, the tragedy, the parts that blew my mind. I remember tuning out the school halls around me, trading it in for one of ash falls and mist. I remember seeing another girl a year older than me sitting in the hallway at lunch reading one of the books. It was strange to think that, though we did not know each other, we were living in the same made up world; that the same events I was witnessing she was witnessing before me. 

Already, I can feel time taking its toll again, as memory breaks all things apart like ash. 

 

The cover of The Hero of Ages which always looked a bit like an old photograph looks all the more like one now as fine white tears, like the blue lightning which the artist painted in, have marked the cover, separating Vin from Elend along its spine and scarring Vin's face on the front cover. 

No matter how recently it's been touched, the cover always looks like it's covered in a thin layer of dust.

 

I know that this is not the last time I will reread this series. Indeed, someday this book, which already now is marked by wear and reading, will be like a letter unfolded too many times, read many times over, because I do not wish to forget it.