The morning passed slowly, with only a handful of customers browsing the shelves. Alex helped where he could, dusting books, organizing inventory, and manning the counter when Mrs. Gable stepped out to speak with suppliers.
During the quiet moments, his mind wandered to those vivid dreams, to the memories of creating something beautiful and meaningful that could touch people's lives.
Around midday, the sound of raised voices from the street drew his attention to the window. A small crowd had gathered around a street performer, a young man in his twenties attempting to recite what Alex recognized as a passage from Shakespeare's "Hamlet." The performance was... painful to watch.
The actor's delivery was wooden, his gestures tense and disconnected from the emotional content of the words.
He seemed to be performing for an audience in the back row of a massive theater, despite standing mere feet from his viewers. The crowd watched with polite attention, but Alex could see the glazed look in their eyes, the way they shifted restlessly as the performance dragged on.
"To be or not to be, that is the question!" the performer declared, throwing his arms wide in a gesture that would have been more appropriate for a circus ringmaster than a Danish prince contemplating mortality.
Alex found himself mentally directing the scene, imagining how it could be transformed with a proper understanding of the text's emotional weight.
The monologue wasn't meant to be a grand declaration; it was an intimate moment of doubt and despair, a man wrestling with the fundamental question of existence. The performance should draw the audience in, make them feel Hamlet's anguish as their own.
"Quite the spectacle, isn't it?" Mrs. Gable said, joining him at the window.
"He's trying too hard," Alex said without thinking. "The words are powerful enough on their own. He doesn't need to shout them."
Mrs. Gable looked at him with surprise. "That's quite an observation for someone your age. Have you been reading Shakespeare?"
Alex felt heat rise in his cheeks. "I... I found a copy of 'Hamlet' in the back room. The language is beautiful when you understand what it means."
It wasn't entirely a lie. He had found the book, though his understanding came from sources he couldn't explain.
In his dreams, he had worked with actors who could make Shakespeare's words sing with truth and emotion. He had seen performances that could reduce audiences to tears or lift them to heights of inspiration.
The street performer finished his recitation to polite applause, and the crowd began to disperse.
As Alex watched them go, he noticed that the expressions on their faces did not move or get inspired, but simply relieved that the ordeal was over. It was the same look he'd seen on Mrs. Gable's face when she mentioned the cinema.
This world, Alex realized with growing clarity, was starving for real art.
The people here had been fed such a steady diet of mediocrity that they had forgotten what genuine beauty looked like. They accepted poor performances and shallow stories because they had never experienced anything better.
But Alex remembered better.
In his dreams, he had seen what entertainment could be when it was crafted with skill, passion, and respect for the audience's intelligence. He had witnessed the power of stories to change hearts and minds, to make people see the world in new ways.
The question was: what could a twelve-year-old boy in a struggling bookshop possibly do about it?
As the afternoon wore on, Alex found himself drawn to the small section of books about theater and performance.
Most were basic guides to stagecraft or collections of popular plays, but one slim volume caught his attention: "The Art of Storytelling" by Professor Edmund Blackwood.
The book was old and worn, its pages yellowed with age, but as Alex flipped through it, he found ideas that resonated with the knowledge from his dreams.
"Stories are the foundation of human connection," Blackwood wrote. "They allow us to share experiences, emotions, and truths that transcend the boundaries of individual existence. A well-told story can make a stranger feel like a friend, an enemy seem human, and the impossible appear inevitable."
Alex felt a spark of recognition. This was what he remembered from his other life, the understanding that entertainment wasn't just about distraction or amusement.
It was about communication at the deepest level, about finding the universal truths that connected all human experience.
As closing time approached, Mrs. Gable began her evening routine of securing the cash drawer and extinguishing the lamps. Alex helped by returning books to their proper places and sweeping the floors, but his mind was elsewhere, turning over the events of the day.
The rent payment, the street performer, the book on storytelling they all seemed to be pieces of a puzzle he was only beginning to understand.
This world needed what he could offer, but he was trapped in the body of a child with no resources, no connections, and no way to prove that his dreams were more than just the fantasies of an overactive imagination.
That night, as Alex lay in his narrow bed listening to the sounds of the town settling into sleep, he stared at the ceiling and tried to make sense of his situation.
The dreams felt too real to be mere imagination, too detailed and consistent to be random neural firing. But if they were memories of another life, how had he come to be here? And more importantly, what was he supposed to do with the knowledge he possessed?
Outside his window, a horse-drawn carriage clattered over the cobblestones, its wheels creating a rhythm that seemed to echo the questions spinning through his mind.
Somewhere in the distance, a church bell tolled the hour, marking another day in a life that felt both foreign and familiar.
As sleep began to claim him, Alex made a silent promise to himself and to the woman who had given him a home.
Somehow, he would find a way to use what he knew to make their lives better. He would find a way to bring real art to this world, to show people what stories could be when they were crafted with skill and told with truth.
He didn't know how yet, but he would find a way.
The dreams that came that night were different from the usual memories of his past life. Instead of reliving moments of triumph and recognition, he found himself standing in an empty theater, facing rows of vacant seats that seemed to stretch into infinity.
The stage was bare except for a single spotlight that illuminated nothing but dust motes dancing in the air.
But as he stood there, Alex felt something stirring within him, not just the memories of what he had been, but the potential of what he could become. The empty theater wasn't a symbol of failure or loss. It was a blank canvas, waiting for him to fill it with stories that mattered.
When he woke the next morning, Alex carried that feeling with him like a secret flame.
The world around him might not understand his vision yet, but that didn't make it any less real. He had been given a second chance, a new beginning in a place that desperately needed what he could offer.
Now he just had to figure out how to offer it.