Atlasmino
By
Edition 2025
Mariones Books®
Writing is my survival, Writing is my life
Discover the world of Atlasmino
Part I of the Atlasmino Chronicles
Copyright
© 2025 Mario van Loon & Younes Chelaghmi
First digital edition, 2025
Published by Mariones Books®
ISBN: 9789083620718
info@marionesbooks.nl
www.marionesbooks.nl
Mariones Books® is a registered trademark at the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP), protected under classes 9, 16, and 41. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer
All characters, names, and events in this book are entirely fictitious.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or to real events, is purely coincidental.
References to mythological or spiritual figures are used solely as literary symbols and metaphors.
This work is intended as fiction and as an invitation to reflection, not as doctrine or factual representation.
Foreword
This book did not emerge from a single moment, but from a long journey. Conversations that went deep, silences that spoke more than words, and memories that claimed their own place together formed the foundations of Atlasmino.
Atlasmino is not a character standing far from us. He is a mirror, a symbol of searching and growing. His path reflects the struggle of every human: the transition from youth to adulthood, the conflict between light and shadow, and the courage to choose a path of one’s own— even when that path is still unknown.
This is not a traditional story with fixed lines and clear answers. It is a journey of layers, where questions matter more than certainties, and where each chapter invites you to pause for a moment.
We hope you read this book with an open heart. Not to fully understand everything, but to be moved. Because Atlasmino does not live only in these pages— he lives in the dreams, doubts, and memories of every one of us.
Table of Contents
1 — The Youth of Atlasmino
2 — The Transition
3 — The Train Journey
Atlasmino – Opening
This book is not a collection of loose words. It is a journey you do not make outward, but deep within. Not a path of miles, but of layers. Not a journey toward a distant horizon, but toward the core of memory. Atlasmino is not a hero far away, but a mirror close by. His story is an invitation to pause, to listen, and to recognize something within yourself that may have long remained hidden. Everything you read here is meant as a key— not as a truth you must accept, but as a gate opening toward new questions and insights. Welcome to the journey of Atlasmino.
1 — The Youth of Atlasmino
The youth of Atlasmino was like a river constantly changing its course. His family moved from city to city, never allowing him to put down deep roots. Each place brought new streets, different sounds, and unfamiliar faces. For many children that would have been a burden, but he always managed to make something special of it. In unfamiliar surroundings he recognized patterns, as if he instinctively understood that change itself was a teacher.
At school he stood out—not because he was the hardest worker, but because he noticed what others overlooked. While classmates practiced math or language, he observed how winter light fell through the windows, how chalk left a trail of dust, how a voice trembled slightly while reading aloud. That attentiveness made him a student teachers didn’t forget easily.
During breaks, the playground of the Crystalfall School became a stage. He didn’t need to be the strongest; he wanted to be the creator. He invented rules, created worlds where ordinary stones became gold coins. Everywhere he looked, mirrors appeared in which children recognized their own dreams. They listened to him, not because he demanded it, but because his imagination created space where everyone felt welcome— a natural kind of leadership, not forceful but inviting.
Alongside this playful side, he discovered his creative soul early on. Singing, acting, storytelling—it all seemed to flow from him naturally. Once he stood on a small stage, however humble, his shyness disappeared. There, under the soft glow of lamplight or candles, he felt at home. He dreamed of creating a world in which people could lose themselves in imagination, just as he did.
Yet he carried another side within him, silently. For hours he could sink into thought, staring at the sky or at a wall that seemed empty to others— for him, windows to invisible worlds. He struggled with the slowness of the everyday, with the dull assignments teachers gave. Why, he wondered, should I imprison my mind in numbers and rules, when my head is filled with worlds no one has ever seen?
He remained a boy of contrasts: lively and quiet, creative and lazy, cheerful and shy. As if two forces lived within him, alternating between strengthening and resisting. In that tension lay his uniqueness. He was still young, but within him lived a depth few others his age possessed.
Perhaps he didn’t yet understand it himself, but in that searching—in that balancing between light and shadow— lay a promise. Not just a life, but a destiny that would someday make others pause, as if they saw in him a reflection of their own hidden dreams.
2 — The Transition
His youth lay behind him like a dreamlike landscape slowly fading. He stood at the edge of something new, though he did not yet know what it would be. His days felt different: the air seemed lighter, the colors sharper. In the silence of his mind he heard a soft call pulling him forward.
One fresh spring day he entered a small exhibition. Not a grand museum with marble halls and endless lines of visitors, but a modest space filled with paintings, masks, and sculptures from distant worlds. For most, they were objects behind glass; for him, they were windows—gateways to something unknown.
He paused before a canvas where Celestra rose above a strange landscape. It seemed to breathe, as if it were a living being whispering to him. Something in that light recognized him, as though it shone not only upon the depicted land, but into his inner world as well.
Others walked by quickly, but he remained rooted to the floor. The longer he looked, the more the painting enveloped him. It was no longer looking, but receiving— a message without words, a call without a voice.
From that day everything changed. A quiet restlessness settled within him; not sharp or painful, but a soft urge pushing him forward. The familiar lost its shine. City, school, and games suddenly felt like clothes that had grown too small.
He spoke to no one about it, but inwardly a decision grew. He no longer wanted to wait for life to unfold on its own. He wanted to travel, to look beyond boundaries, to discover whether there truly existed a place where he belonged.
And so the transition began—silent, but irreversible. An inner train had departed without a final station. For him, it was the first step toward a world larger, wider, and more mysterious than he had ever dared imagine.
3 — The Train Journey
The first light tingled in the sky. He stood on the platform, without coins in his pocket, without bread in his suitcase, but with a heart beating faster than the rhythm of the rails. Before him the train waited—large and dark, like a promise of movement. He knew he wasn’t invited, but something in him whispered: step in, the journey won’t wait.
The doors closed behind him with a sigh. Immediately he felt this would not be an ordinary ride. The seats smelled of dust and adventure, the windows reflected a world he did not yet know.
He had no ticket, but he had a dream. And dreams, he thought, are sometimes stronger than all rules combined. Still, when he heard the footsteps of the conductor, his heart quickened.
The man with the cap walked down the aisle— his gaze sharp, yet tired from seeing so many faces. He looked out the window, pretending the clouds were his greatest concern. When the conductor stopped beside him, he asked softly for the ticket.
He smiled disarmingly, took a breath and said: “I’m sorry, sir… I don’t have a ticket. But I have a reason: I’m following a dream.”
The man looked at him—first stern, then surprised. A boy with no money, but with eyes burning like stars— he didn’t see that every day. A silence followed, then a sigh.
“Stay seated,” he finally said. “But act like you haven’t been anywhere.”
Grateful, he nodded. An invisible door opened. The train sped up. Outside, fields rushed by, trees bending as if greeting him, rivers shimmering like liquid light.
Every turn brought new faces: an old woman offering him bread, a child laughing and asking where he was going, a traveler telling stories of distant mountains.
He listened, watched, and absorbed everything. No longer an intruder, but part of something larger. The train was not merely a vehicle; it was a living river of stories, and he drifted with the current.
When evening fell and the sky turned orange, he knew this journey would take him farther than any map could promise.
He had begun—finally begun. The rattling of the rails turned into a melody, and he smiled. Because even without a ticket, without food, without certainty, he already carried the most precious thing: the beginning of his dream.