fandomhigh | Library, Monday [3/29]

It ~~conveniently suited the purposes of the moment~~ was a good thing that Gabrielle had actually learned how to retrieve her voicemail messages by now, as she'd gotten a ~~handwavey~~ message from Henry warning her to steer clear of Special Collections today. Still convinced that she'd managed to have a few minutes of cordial dialogue with one of the lizards on Saturday, and laboring under the cheerful delusion of accomplishment at same, she wasn't too inclined to question the directive. She was going to take it seriously, though, and in between scribbled paragraphs of the new scroll she was working on (the one that started I sing of Gabrielle, Bard of Poteidaia and sower of the seed of a treaty of peace between man and strange creature) she kept glancing toward that section of the library.

Yes, yes, some of the others had ended up fighting a much larger lizard than the one she was sure she'd had a nice chat with in the park (as opposed to the one that had tried to eat her). Sometimes that sort of thing was inevitable, but she liked to think that what she'd done was a peaceable step in the right direction.

So she took those occasional glances toward Special Collections, then went back to writing. Xena might have invented CPR and the Caesarean section among other things, but there was a very good case to be made that Gabrielle invented Mary Sue fanfiction.

. . . just don't tell Gabrielle that.

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Gabrielle paused mid-word and looked up from her parchment. "Good morning, sir," with the tiniest hopeful emphasis on good. "I managed to avoid being something's dinner . . . or late lunch considering the time of day, and I managed to make friends with one of the lizards. I'd say that puts my week on the positive side of the column, wouldn't you? And you, you're in one piece. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume the same, would it?"

"I'm in one piece," Henry confirmed. "I'm a little freaked out that we shove people into Special Collections to get rid of them, and I pretty much didn't leave the library for ... about four days, but I'm in one piece."

As if he'd said nothing abnormal, he added, "How do you make friends with a lizard?"

"It does leave them really close to the books all the time, but . . ." Gabrielle, too soft-hearted to wish a literature-free kind of doom on anyone except a certain crazy warlord, frowned. "At least they won't be bored in there?"

It seemed like a moot kind of question, though, so she grinned. "I'm not completely sure how I did it, actually. The first one I tried to talk to wanted to eat me, but the second was very helpful."

Gabrielle, honey, that part happened after your gas mask got knocked off . . .

"I guess," Henry said, slightly doleful. "There's this whole thing about the right to a trial by jury, but there's also a whole thing about not letting monsters out to eat people. I can let it go, we'll just stay clear for a little bit."

He leaned against the counter. "What did the second one say?"

See, in Gabrielle's world you were lucky if ~~the plot called for~~ you happened to be in an area that even had a court set up; not letting monsters out to eat people at least made constant sense to her.

"I haven't heard any noise out of there yet today, at least," she offered consolingly, then beamed, still far too proud of herself. (Shh. Delusion was a fun place to be.) "It asked me what Xena would think, helped me get out from under the unconscious lizard, and told me to go back to the dorms. So not all of them were completely bent on dinner and destruction, right?"

Yes, Gabrielle. The lizard had heard of Xena.

"You must have met the one friendly one," Henry said.

If libraries could eat people, giant lizard monsters could be helpful.

... or Gabrielle might have been hallucinating. Shhhhh.

Don't crush her hopes, Henry. She'll make the Sad Bard Face.

"There had to be one," Gabrielle declared, little optimist that she was. "I hope no one hurt it. Are we going to put up a sign warning people away from Special Collections, do you think?"

"Make one, please," Henry ... not quite ordered. "I'd put up yellow police caution tape, but they don't have it at the general store. It shouldn't be too much of a problem -- I don't think anybody except you guys has been back there all term."

Even if it wasn't quite an order, Gabrielle knew a Very Imperative Request when she heard one even if she didn't know what police caution tape was. "I can safely say I've never had anyone request access to it," she told him, already up and heading for the supply cabinets in search of a piece of posterboard or something like that. "But we can't be too careful, can we? Not everyone wants to get that immersed in a thrilling tale of danger."

"Life has a way of throwing enough thrilling tales of danger at you even when you don't go looking," Henry said, with the grim tone of a man who spent a fair chunk of his life bouncing around with no control. "Thanks, Gabrielle."

Edited 2010-03-29 17:57 (UTC)

"Ha," Gabrielle said with a knowing huff of laughter as she crouched to go through the contents of a cabinet, "that's the story of my life, at least when I'm home. If it's not a Cyclops or a scheming dead king trying to escape the Underworld, it's someone trying to kidnap Pandora and her box or even just your run-of-the-mill giant."

Gabrielle's take on the statement was a bit more whimsical than Henry's, to say the least, and that might have been in part because she'd picked up on the grimness. "Any time, Mister DeTamble. I'll have these signs up as soon as the ink's dry."

"Perfect," Henry said, and wandered off again.

He was adding 'at least I never have to face off against Cyclops' to his mental list of the advantages of time travel.

Library, Monday [3/29]

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