Atlasmino
By
Edition 2025
Mariones Books®
Writing is my survival, Writing is my life
Discover the world of Atlasmino
Part I of the Atlasmino Saga
Copyright
© 2025 Mario van Loon & Younes Chelaghmi
First digital edition, 2025
Published by Mariones Books®
ISBN: 9789083620701
info@marionesbooks.nl
www.marionesbooks.nl
Mariones Books® is a registered trademark with the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP), protected under classes 9, 16, and 41.
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 arise from a single moment, but from a long journey. Conversations that ran deep, silences that spoke louder than words, and memories that claimed their own place together formed the foundations of Atlasmino.
Atlasmino is not a character who stands far from us. He is a mirror, a symbol of searching and growing. His path reflects the struggle of every human being: the passage from youth to adulthood, the battle between light and shadow, and the courage to choose one’s own path – even when that path is still unknown.
This is not a traditional story with fixed lines or clear answers. It is a journey of layers, where questions matter more than certainties, and where each chapter is an invitation to pause for a moment.
We hope you read this book with an open heart — not to understand everything completely, but to be moved. For Atlasmino does not live only within these pages — he lives in the dreams, doubts, and memories of each of us.
Table of Contents
I — De Jeugd van Atlasmino
II — De Overgang
III — De Treinreis
Atlasmino – Opening
This book is not a collection of loose words. It is a journey you do not make outward, but inward. Not a path of miles, but of layers. Not a quest 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.
I — De Jeugd van Atlasmino
The youth of Atlasmino was like a river that constantly changed its course. His family moved from city to city, never staying long enough for roots to grow. Each place brought new streets, different sounds, unfamiliar faces. For many children that might have been a burden, yet he always found something extraordinary within it. In unfamiliar surroundings he recognised patterns, as if he instinctively understood that change itself was a teacher.
At school, he stood out — not because he worked the hardest, but because he noticed what others overlooked. While classmates practised sums or grammar, he saw how the winter light fell through the windows, how chalk left a trail of dust, how a voice trembled ever so slightly while reading aloud. That attentiveness made him a pupil teachers never forgot.
During breaks, the playground of Kristalval School became a stage. He did not need to be the strongest — he wanted to be the creator. He invented rules, conjured worlds in which ordinary stones became golden coins. Wherever he looked, mirrors appeared in which children recognised their own dreams. They listened to him — not because he demanded it, but because his imagination created a space where everyone felt welcome: a natural kind of leadership, not forceful, but inviting.
Alongside that playful side, he discovered his creative soul early on. Singing, acting, storytelling — it seemed to flow from him effortlessly. Once he stepped onto a stage, no matter how small, his shyness vanished. There, beneath the gentle glow of lamplight or candles burning like winter’s warmth, he felt at home. He dreamed of one day creating a world where others could lose themselves in imagination as he did.
Yet in silence, he carried another side within him. He could lose hours in thought, staring at the sky or at a wall that to others seemed empty — to him, windows to invisible worlds. He struggled with the slowness of the everyday, with the dull assignments his teachers gave. Why, he wondered, should I imprison my mind in numbers and rules, when my head is filled with worlds no one has yet seen?
He remained a boy of contrasts — lively yet still, creative yet lazy, joyful yet shy — as though two forces lived within him, each alternately strengthening and resisting the other. In that tension lay his uniqueness. He was still young, yet within him already lived a depth few possessed.
Perhaps he did not yet understand it himself, but in that search — that balancing between light and shadow — a promise was hidden. Not merely a life, but a destiny, one that would one day make others pause, as if in him they saw a mirror of their own hidden dreams.
II — De Overgang
Childhood lay behind him like a dreamlike landscape slowly fading away. 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 colours sharper. In the stillness of his thoughts, a soft calling drew him forward.
On a crisp spring day, he stepped into a small exhibition. Not a grand museum of marble halls and endless visitors, but a modest room 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 stopped before a canvas where Celestra rose above a strange landscape. It seemed to breathe, alive and whispering. Something in that light recognised him — as though it shone not only upon the painted land, but also within the world inside his own being.
The others passed quickly by, but he remained, rooted to the floor. The longer he looked, the more the painting enveloped him. It was no longer seeing, but receiving — a message without words, a summons without a voice.
From that day on, everything changed. A quiet restlessness took hold of him; not sharp or painful, but like a gentle current urging him onward. The familiar lost its glow. The city, the school, the games — all felt like clothes grown too small.
He spoke to no one about it, yet in silence a decision began to take form. He no longer wished to wait for life to unfold on its own. He longed to travel, to look beyond borders, to discover whether there truly existed a place where he belonged.
And so the transition began — silent, but irreversible. An inner train had departed, bound for no known destination. For him, it was the first step toward a world greater, wider, and more mysterious than he had ever dared to dream.
III — De Treinreis
The first light shimmered in the air. He stood on the platform, with no coins in his pocket, no bread in his case, but a heart beating faster than the rhythm of the rails. Before him waited the train — vast and dark, a promise of motion. He knew he was not invited aboard, yet something within whispered: step in — the journey will not wait.
The doors closed behind him with a sigh. At once he felt that this would be no ordinary ride. The seats smelled of dust and adventure, the windows reflected a world about to glide past.
He had no ticket, but he had a dream. And dreams, he thought, are sometimes stronger than all the rules combined. Still, when he heard the footsteps of the conductor approaching, his heart began to race.
The man in the cap walked down the corridor — his gaze sharp, yet tired from so many faces. Atlasmino looked out the window, pretending that the clouds were his greatest concern. When the conductor stopped beside him and asked softly for his ticket, he smiled disarmingly, drew a deep breath and said: “I’m sorry, sir… I have no ticket. But I do have a reason: I’m following a dream.”
The man studied him — stern at first, then surprised. A boy without money, but with eyes burning like stars — that was not something he saw every day. There was a silence, then a sigh. “Stay where you are,” he said at last. “But act as if you were never here.”
De man keek hem aan, eerst streng, toen verbaasd. Een jongen zonder geld, maar met ogen die brandden als sterren – dat zag hij niet elke dag. Er viel een stilte, gevolgd door een zucht.
“Stay where you are,” he said at last. “But act as if you were never here.”
Gratefully, Atlasmino nodded. An invisible door had opened. The train gathered speed. Outside, meadows swept by, trees bowed as if in greeting, rivers shimmered like liquid light.
Each bend brought new faces: an old woman offering him bread, a child who laughed and asked where he was headed, a traveller who spoke of distant mountains.
He listened, watched, and absorbed it all. No longer an intruder, but part of a greater whole. The train was not merely a vehicle; it was a living river of stories, and he drifted along its current.
When evening fell and the sky turned orange, he knew this journey would take him farther than any map could ever promise.
He had begun — at last, truly begun. The rattle of the rails became a melody, and he smiled. For even without a ticket, without food, without certainty, he already carried the most precious thing of all: the beginning of his dream.