fandomhigh | Library, Monday (12/6)

The volume of Edgar Allan Poe's complete works (unabridged) that was sitting on the desk this morning once Gabrielle had arrived and gotten the coffee brewed seemed perfectly innocuous, and Gabrielle, out of habitual literary curiosity, had to pick it up and page through it. Naturally.

She put it down quickly enough; Karla hadn't come back to the room last night and, despite her best efforts to convince herself to the contrary, that circumstance was a little worrying. (It could have been perfectly innocuous, sure, but given her roommate's track record, if you played the percentages . . . yeah.)

"You're not helping," she told the book as she snapped it shut and carried it back into the stacks for reshelving. As a parting shot, just after she'd reshelved it and begun to walk away, she added over her shoulder, "You're way too gloomy."

Halfway back to the desk she had to pause, blink, and shake her head. There was no way she'd heard a faint snarky retort from it. That would've been silly.

"Great, now I'm worried enough that I'm hearing things . . ."

The rest of her shift might very well be loaded with occasional suspicious looks back toward the stacks, but at least she didn't hear anything else. She didn't think so, anyway.

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"Just odd so far," Henry assured her. "Walls where there normally aren't walls, spooky noises ... do we really have to be due?" He wasn't whining. Not much. "Might go away the way the raining food did last week."

"And you're right about Poe. Don't tell me you met him, too."

"Oh, no, I haven't met him. He's way after my time. Or I haven't met him yet; I'd remember that." She'd probably have tried doggedly to talk him into a better mood, and that would have been . . . a spectacle. "However? I've come to the conclusion that the semi-regular crop-ups of strangeness are as much a part of the cycle of life as the seasons are in Fandom," Gabrielle declared with a decisive nod, and the odds were very good that she didn't realize that might have come out sounding silly and a touch pretentious.

"It's just like rain; sometimes it's a nice, gentle shower, and sometimes it's a raging thunderstorm." She clearly hadn't thought that metaphor all the way through yet. ". . . and sometimes it's delicious sugary treats." She frowned. She'd have to work on that metaphor, definitely.

"Although Fandom's strangeness doesn't seem to be as easily predictable as the weather is in this day and age, does it? Walls appearing, that's a new one."

But spooky noises? Cue another curious look back toward that book . . .

"That," Henry observed tactfully, "is very philosophical."

And silly, and pretentious, and a bit dismissive. But he wasn't in a mood to insult a teenage girl who was, after all, ultimately right: This would blow over like a storm, because things always blew over.

He shook his head. "Just a little extra spookiness to start the week off right, I guess. Probably we're past due for it."

It was all of the above, yes.

"I'm sure it's just another thing like the pastry rain or the sparkly little trees," Gabrielle tried with dogged if misguided optimism. "Unless it isn't . . . but we always figure it out, in those cases. Don't we?"

"Island's still here," Henry said, with a smile that tried hard to be reassuring. "And we have records of way worse stuff than a couple random walls. I'm just going to stay on guard for a bit, maybe get the research space into shape."

"Yes. Exactly," Gabrielle replied, patting the desk for overly-earnest emphasis. "We'll keep an eye out in case anything does happen, and if it doesn't we can all laugh at ourselves later for being so worried. Do you need any help with that?"

"No," Henry said, then reconsidered. "How do you feel about dusting, Gabrielle?"

Because Henry felt that he didn't really like doing it.

"I have no hard feelings toward dusting," Gabrielle assured him. "Even if dusting has it in for me; I think that goes for everyone."

She grinned and hopped up from her seat. "I sing of Gabrielle, conqueror of dust bunnies . . ."

Oh, gods.

As long as she was reciting verse, she was happy and everything was okay. Henry was going with that theory until it was proven wrong. He flashed a grin at her and went about his own tasks.

Library, Monday (12/6)

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