Story 1 wasn't about a damsel or a dragon, a quest or a kingdom. Story 1 was about a sentient stapler. Not just any stapler, mind you. This was Bartholomew, a chrome-plated behemoth of a stapler, with a personality as sharp as his needles and a wit drier than the Sahara. He resided on the cluttered desk of Elias Thorne, a struggling novelist whose caffeine intake rivaled the Amazon River's flow.
Elias, perpetually surrounded by crumpled manuscripts and half-eaten energy bars, barely registered Bartholomew's existence, except when his fingers, shaking from writer's block, needed a firm clamp. But Bartholomew saw it all – the frantic scribbling, the frustrated sighs, the tear-stained pages tossed aside. He observed Elias's life through the lens of his meticulously aligned staples, each one a tiny, metallic memory.