Grandpa's Secret Reading Place

My submission for the CGBoost Library challenge.

This artwork is accompanied by a short story of the same name: http://josephfarah.co/librarycontest/AGuideToYourOwnSecretReadingPlace.pdf

The footnotes in the short story correspond to an annotated version of the render (see second image), which allows you to see how the story and render are connected and play off of each other.

A mysterious rune-based script can be seen throughout the render. Using the short story to guide you, can you decode any of them?