fandomhigh | Library [1/28]

At first, Wes was enjoying his book too much to notice that there was someone at the desk. (Apparently a fully-grown giraffe's neck could weigh as much as 500 pounds!) Then he became aware that someone was there, so he reluctantly looked up.

"Can I help you?"

"I hope so?" Karla said. Darkness, this was probably going to be awkward. "I need to find out how people can be brought back from the dead. And also, about hands made out of flames that can snatch people away. And if there's an overlap between the two, I need to start with that one. Uhh, does the library have anything like that?"

Awkward? Psh... no...

"Er," he said. "Resurrection spells... you should be able to find them over there," he said, pointing over to a dusty row of shelves toward the back. "There might not be all that many, as I think the majority of them are in Special Collections, but there should be a few books with theoretical passages, at least."

The other part was trickier. "I'm not certain about the flaming hands bit. Perhaps you could start your search with the resurrection spells and I can check the computer database?"

And hopefully figure out how to use it?

Edited 2011-01-28 19:26 (UTC)

Karla gave Wesley a look of pure gratitude and relief. She's expected a lot more in the way of questions and weird expressions. "Would you?" she asked. "That would be amazing. Thank you so much."

Theoretical passages would hopefully be enough, since Karla wasn't actually planning on resurrecting anyone. But if she could get an idea how such a thing would be done, she might have a better idea of what happened to Raven.

Presuming she could make heads or tails of the books, of course. "Please, let me know as soon as you find something!"

Oh, there were questions and weird expressions, but he saved them for once she walked away. Huh. That was a nice distraction from the giraffe book, anyway.

After a few minutes of tentative exploration of the database, he came up with exactly one book that had information about flaming hands. And it just so happened to be in the wrong section! Awesome. Wesley went on a mission to find it, and eventually found it stashed somewhere in the middle of Children's Literature. That was definitely not where it belonged.

Grousing a bit about people who didn't shelve things properly, he brought it over to Karla. "This should have something about what you're looking for," he said.

Yay being helpful!

Karla looked up from her book, where she was following a flow chart about whether or not a resurrection was a good thing (so far the answer seemed to be 'unless the dead person in question was the messiah, or was being resurrected by a good-aligned god, no no oh dear lord no!'). "Thank you," she said, setting it aside to reach for the book Wesley had found. "Maybe this one will have some useful information in it."

Namely, something more than a treatise on the best kind of blood to use for a resurrection or a handy guide to raising your own phoenix.

"Possibly," he said, and crouched down to look at the other books in the section. Mm. Not too promising.

"Is there any chance you could get a Special Collections note? I'm sure you could find much more helpful things in there..."

He was pretty sure that he wasn't supposed to advocate for the use of Special Collections. But he was helpful, see?

"Possibly?" Karla said, drumming her fingers against the table. "I need to get an okay from a teacher, right?"

Were Max or Anakin around today? One of them would probably give her a permission slip once she explained what had happened at the bowling alley.

"I don't suppose you can give permission...?" she asked, darting a look Wesley's way?

"Sorry, no," he said regretfully. "Henry would have my head." Possibly literally. "But I'm sure there are teachers who would help, if it's... academic..."

God, he hoped it was academic.

Edited 2011-01-28 20:12 (UTC)

"It's not really academic," Karla said, dashing that hope to itty, bitty pieces. "And I don't know any of the teachers around today."

Aw. Very unfortunate. But since he quite liked his library job, he didn't know if there was all that much he could do about helping her.

"You could try back on Monday?" he offered. "Maybe by then you can find a teacher who's especially, er, lenient?"

"I will," Karla said. She's be able to get a pass out of Max on Monday, she knew that much. "I just wish I knew how much time we had," she fretted. Beat. "I don't suppose you've ever heard of flaming hands coming to snatch someone away?"

Look, Karla was just going to keep grasping at straws till she found something.

"Unfortunately, no," he said.

Well, fortunately, really. He didn't think it would be a very fun thing to know about.

But she seemed so urgent that he felt like a jerk, standing in the way of her fixing whatever this was. And yet.

"Although," he said thoughtfully. "I do have a book in my personal collection that relates to resurrection magic. I'm not certain if it talks about flaming hands, but I could check for you?"

It was the right thing to say, because Karla was suddenly beaming at him. "I will make you an entire batch of cookies just for checking," she promised fervently. "And another if you find something. I don't even know what to look for, exactly, so anything you get will be more than we have."

The cookies were meant to serve as an enticement, they really were.

Wes was just going to assume that her cookies would be good. Sometimes a dangerous assumption, but he liked to give people the benefit of the doubt.

"I'll look as soon as I get back to my dorm," he promised. "I can find you sometime tonight or over the weekend to let you know if I find anything."

She was one of those people, sadly enough. But maybe Warren would step in before she delivered them? It would be hard to enact whatever their zoo plans were when Wesley was getting his stomach pumped.

"I would be ever so grateful," Karla said, digging out her cell phone so she could look up her number. Almost two years and she hadn't memorized it yet. "Feel free to give me a call if you find something and I'm not around."

She had no current plans to be unfindable, but this was Fandom.

Ah, well. If nothing else, he could share the cookies with his roommate's dog. Or, you know, not share so much as give the dog all of them.

"I'll make sure to do that," he said as he programmed Karla's number into his phone. "And if anything else comes up that would give some indication of what you're looking for, be sure to let me know so I can narrow my search."

Yup, his Friday night plans were so exciting.

Karla frowned. "I don't have much to go on," she admitted. "Last week, we...lost a friend. Last night she appeared in the bowling alley, looking exactly the same as she had before, and gabbled out something about needing help before flamey hands showed up and snatched her away again. But she was...there was no mistaking what had happened to her. But it was definitely her, I know that much."

Oh.

"I'm so sorry," Wesley said quietly. That was awful. He'd snippets about this, and even though he hadn't known Raven very well, he knew a lot of people who did.

Then, getting right down to business, because that was kind of a downer: "Well, if it was her, and she was corporeal, there's a very real chance that she can be recovered somehow. I'll see what I can find out about the flamey hands and so forth and give you a call later tonight."

"Thank you," Karla said softly. "If it was her...in some kind of...corporeal form, like you said, then we have to get her back. The problem is, I don't know how or where or anything. She just showed up and said 'Help!' before getting dragged away again. So I'm hoping there's something in any of these books that can tell me."

Library [1/28]

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