sunnydalealum | (no subject)

Who doesn't seem to have any trouble at all finding her way through the labyrinthine turnings in the stacks. She's worked here too long.

"Here we are," she says, stopping and running her fingers lightly over the spines of several books. "The Wars for the Dustrealm, volumes one through eight. Are you going to need all eight, or is there one in particular you wanted?"

She glances from Andrew to Nita, hand hovering over the shelf.

. . . With great feeling: "Oof."

Would saying she looks enchanted be in poor taste?

"Start at the beginning, you think?" she asks Andrew.

"Start at the beginning," he agrees, "and we'll see if we need to go any farther."

"Very good," says Rachel, carefully sliding one heavy book out from among its companions.

"And the syllabaries will be under language reference," she adds, turning to lead them off in a different direction.

"Great."

She peers at the spines of the other volumes as she follows.

Most of them in this section aren't in English, or indeed in any human language. Some of them have smaller English letters underneath the titles, with phrases like ANNOTATED or WITH TRANSLATION added.

One is titled in a flowing script that looks at first glance startlingly like the written form of the Speech, but a second glance shows it to be nothing of the kind.

That last gets a double-take.

The fascinating thing is that they're not just non-human languages -- they're not alien languages, either. She's never seen anything like them.

You could say they're alien. Just ... not from the same set (sheaf) of worlds Nita knows.

But by this time they're already out of the demonic languages and into the human-but-not-English languages: Welsh, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, German, French, Etruscan, Arabic, moving too quickly to see all of them.

"Language reference," Rachel announces, "and ... yes, here's the Sulcaric syllabary." As she reaches for the book, she adds "Is there anything else you'll need?"

"I don't think so. If I run into anything, can I come find you?"

She smiles. "You certainly can. Or you can see Ms St. John at the center desk -- which you should also do once you're through, either one of us. And in case Andrew hasn't told you the rules yet," she adds, "this is a reading library, not a lending library, so the books stay here. You can make copies, except for actual spells; talk to me about those if there's anything you need.

"On that topic, one more thing: no magic in the library." She says that last very firmly. "Not without specific permission obtained in advance from Ms St. John and from Ms Harkness."

"Oh -- oh, sure, okay. Um, I've got a reference manual with me that I was planning on using, but it's in a temporospatial claudication. It'd need a little bit of power to get it out. Should I go ask them about that? . . ."

Rachel's eyebrows go up again. "A temporospatial...?"

"A pocket tesseract," Andrew explains. "Invisible Bag of Holding?"

"Oh," she says in evident relief -- but then shakes her head. "But no, that's the kind of thing that could affect some of the books here. I can tell you now Ms St. John's not likely to allow it. Sorry."

A pause. "I'll tell you what, though -- if you just step out of the library, you could access your pocket from there, and then just carry the book in by hand."

Nita perks up. "That'd work. Thank you."

"Thanks, Rachel," Andrew adds, taking the syllabary. "We'll find a table?"

As they put down the books, he says to Nita in an undertone: "We can leave them here while we go retrieve your manual."

"They'll be okay unsupervised?" she murmurs back, only half-joking.

"These? Oh, sure. We didn't take out anything dangerous. I mean, nothing actively dangerous. Rachel knows better than that."

...Yeah, the half-joke's gone right over his head.

. . . She shakes her head a little, grinning.

"Okay. Awesome."

As the double doors of the library proper close behind them, Andrew glances quickly around the vestibule (empty) before nodding to Nita.

"Okay, we're good. Go ahead."

"Great."

She murmurs a few quick words, makes an unzipping motion, and reaches into thin air to rummage. A moment later, she pulls out her manual, then reaches back in; a moment after that, she retrieves a spiral-bound notebook and a battered silver pen, and closes the claudication.

"All set!"

Andrew glances at the pen -- silver barrel, grooved around the lower half to keep the user's fingers from slipping -- and grins, for no immediately apparent reason.

"After you," he says, opening one of the double doors and gesturing with absurd formality.

She grins, tucking her books under her arm, and leads the way.

As far as the threshold, anyway. Because that's where the wards kick in, and for a split second --

alien magic intruder PROTECT

-- for a split second, the air in the doorway solidifies around Nita.

"--Oh crap."