fandomhigh | Library, Wednesday, All Day

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Library, Wednesday, All Day

Sholeh came into work humming a little bit but was abruptly hushed by the books. At first, she assumed that it was out of respect for the library's noise policy, but going into the stacks, she discovered that was incorrect. Some of the science books had banded together to make a working radio out of random parts and now most of the books were huddled around it, anxiously listening to...some kind of news report?

After listening for a few moments, Sholeh realized she had no idea what was going on (the radio's reception was also pretty fuzzy), shrugged her shoulders, and went back to the circulation desk. She'd make sure all the books got back to their places before her shift was over, but so long as they were being quiet, she couldn't see a problem with letting them listen.

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Just please don't disturb the books. Sholeh is enjoying the peace.

She has no idea what's going on, but she'll be happy to talk to you about anything else!

It had occurred to Yeul that she'd not talked to Sholeh in a while despite them sharing classes. Which was why, hot chocolates in hand (with cinnamon for Sholeh, and peppermint for herself) Yeul wandered into the library.

"Hello Sholeh," she said, setting Sholeh's drink on the desk.

"Yeul!" Sholeh said, delighted to see her friend. "Welcome to the library! Are you done with classes?"

From the stacks came a weird nose, like hundreds of pages being flipped through at once. The books were hushing her again.

"I..." Yeul glanced towards the stacks for a moment before smiling back at Sholeh. "I am done with classes. Monday was my last day of them. How many are there left for you?"

Then, because she was curious, "Do you know what the books are doing?"

"I'm done for the rest of the week, too," Sholeh said. Her sisters had a few more classes, but she'd been done with First Aid yesterday. "I'm very much looking forward to finding out what classes we can take next session, too!"

Because nerd, that was why.

"And...they're listening to something on the radio," she said, turning to face the stacks again and shrug. "I'm not sure what, but I guess it's really important to some of them."

Which was completely normal to say about books, absolutely.

"We'll have to take care to not shout," Yeul said lightly, because Yeul was... not the shouting sort. "Are you also looking forward to a bit of time without class? I know many people are."

"Or talk much above a whisper," Sholeh mumbled into her hot cocoa.

It had been a long morning. Already. The books could be such martinets when they wanted to be.

The cocoa was only warm by now, which meant Sholeh could drink it without fear of scalding. "Mmm, good," she said appreciative before setting it aside. "I think I'd rather just go from one week of classes to the next," she admitted. "Maybe it's because I don't have plans or anything off the island. But most of the sessions are over by noon, so it's not like classes really get in the way of doing anything else that I want to do."

Like...more reading. For example.

"How about you? Are you looking forward to break?"

"I do not mind break," she admitted. "Though I also do not mind classes."

Yeul did not mind much, when all was said and done.

"I haven't any plans for the break though." She smiled. "I'm not good at making them."

"We should have a picnic sometime," Sholeh decided on a whim. "You, me, Evan..."

That was really it for her friends--at least, her friends that knew one another. Maybe Ulrik?

"...other people we might know?" she finished a little weakly. She really needed to get out more. "Then we'll have plans!"

"That sounds fun," Yeul said, nodding. "And if there is someone invited that not all of us know, that is also fun. It will give us a chance to get to know them!"

Perhaps she could invite Liara?

"Absolutely!" Sholeh said. "Aren't there new kids coming soon? That's a nice way for us to get back in the habit of being sociable before we're inundated by new faces."

"They should be here soon," Yeul agreed. "I think they'll show up the weekend before the new classes begin. That's usually when people show up, isn't it?"

She sipped her hot chocolate. "Have you been out of the habit of being sociable?" she teased gently.

"So about a week and a half then," Sholeh said, looking sheepish. "That should be enough time to stretch those socialization muscles, right?"

She was badly out of the habit. Reconnecting with her friends after the dungeon hadn't exactly spread to connecting with the student body as a whole.

[And now I must sleep! It's been a crazy bunch of hours in politics and sleeping wasn't a thing I did!]

"It will help," Yeul said, smiling a little more. "Is everything all right? You haven't been feeling ill or anything? Just... quiet?"

"Just quiet," Sholeh assured Yeul. "The weird weekend kind of threw me for a bit, too, but I don't really remember most of the details."

Except waking up naked next to Evan. That she remembered very well and even the memory made her flush bright red.

"Errr, did that affect you, too? I don't think I remembered seeing you...?"

The blush intrigued her but Yeul was too kind to pry.

"I was there," she said, after a moment's pause. "I don't think a lot of people noticed me. They were all grown up and I was very small."

Sholeh frowned, trying to figure that one out. "Very...small?" she asked, confused. "Like short?"

"No," Yeul said quietly. "Very young."

Though she'd been short as well! Funny how those two went hand-in-hand.

She smiled slightly. "Which probably only gives you more questions than answers but I'm not sure where to begin."

"Can we start with why you were young?" Sholeh asked. "Are you immortal?"

Wait, no. She'd said young, not the same age.

"Uh, are you aging backwards?"

Whatever it was, Sholeh resolved to be understanding and supportive, just as Yeul had been for her, so many, many times.

"Aging backwards?" she echoed, then shook her head. "No, not that. I age the same as you do. Forwards. Immortal is a closer guess, actually, though my immortality comes with many, many... lives."

Yeul thought that sounded better than saying it came with many, many deaths, even though that was how she viewed it.

"Many lives?" Sholeh still wasn't understanding the subtleties what Yeul meant. "So, you mean you live and then once you die, you get born again as someone new?"

She was thinking more along the lines of multiple reincarnations.

"Not as someone new," Yeul corrected softly. "I get reborn as myself again. I live, I die, and then I start all over. I am always Yeul."

"Ohhh," Sholeh said softly. "...Does your mother change each time? Or does she stay the same, too?"

Having three mothers of her own kind of skewed Sholeh's priorities for questions a bit.

"I am born to a different woman every time."

She... couldn't really call any of them her mother though.

"Oooh," Sholeh said. "So it's not like...with me and my sisters. It's something different, then?"

Not a trait she shared with her people, Sholeh meant.

"Is it just you?"

Theo remembered Sholeh telling him about her day in the library and since he was done with classes and had nothing else to do, he decided to stop in for the first time.

All of his teachers back home would be so proud. The library was a lot larger than anything back home and he took a moment to take it all in.

Ange was getting very excited somewhere inside his head. Dev was already bored.

Yeah, well, had Sholeh known about either, she would have been very happy to inform Dev that he was entirely incorrect. The library was awesome!

She glanced up when the doors to the library opened, smiled at Theo's moment, and waved hello as soon as he started to look around. Normally, her greeting would be a little more vocal, but the books were already in a state about something.

Theo waved back and came closer, still glancing around at the massive library. He wouldn't even know where to start if he ever had to find a book in this place.

"Hi," he said when he was close enough that he didn't have to shout. "This library is huge."

Understatement.

"I think it might be bigger on the inside," Sholeh said, though tragically unaware of the reference. "I know Special Collections is, but I think it might apply to the whole library."

Of course, they went to school in a castle, so it wasn't like space was at a premium.

"I think that's why they hire people to work at the desk, though," she said with a smile. "We're here to draw you maps, set up supply lines, and send out search parties if you don't return to the circulation desk withing forty-eight hours."

"What's Special Collections?" Theo asked, showing that he still had some new kid shine on him. "I mean, besides a place for special collections. Unless that's all it is in which case, I asked a dumb question."

"It's not a dumb question, I promise," Sholeh said, grinning a little at that. "I'd offer to show it to you, but you need special permission to get in there. It houses all the books that are potentially dangerous, like spellbooks with black magic and stuff like that. And, umm, monsters live there. Or so I've been told."

Which, considering the gremlins and the alots and the sentient island only sounded mostly ridiculous, right?

[And now I must sleep! It's been a crazy bunch of hours in politics and sleeping wasn't a thing I did!]

"Monsters?" Theo arched an eyebrow and looked around like there might be some monster lurking behind him.

Of course, some might say there was one in his head but Dev was a giant teddy bear. Honest.

"How do they not get out?"

[Sleep well!]

"I think there are..." Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember the word. "...Wards? Something like that? It's a special magic that keeps everything in Special Collections from getting out. They used to keep our evil ex-principal in there."

The things you learned after the island had been taken over and turned into a pink distopian society for a week.

"Evil ex-principal?" Theo repeated, mouth hanging up a bit in both surprise and fascination. "What school have I enrolled in?"

He was mostly joking with that last question but still. Just when he thought he had a handle on the strangeness of the place, it got stranger.

Okay, now Sholeh was giggling. "I don't think I could define Fandom if I tried," she said. "Most of this happened before I enrolled here, but a long time ago, there was a really nasty principal named Delores Umbridge. She was evil. Like, scary, really evil and she had magic. But people got rid of her and threw her into Special Collections."

Sholeh wasn't entirely sure of the whys or hows all of that had happened, but she was pretty sure she had the basic facts straight.

"Last summer, though, she broke out and took over the island again, using time travel to make it as though she'd never left." Sholeh unconsciously rubbed her hand, where she'd written lines that had bled through her skin. "She was keeping students in this weird dungeon place and was brainwashing people to be loyal to her. Eventually, everyone broke out and stopped her and I think she died. But the island went back to normal, because they broke her time-traveling device."

Sholeh was still fuzzy on the details there, but because she'd spent most of her time hiding in the dorms while everything big was going on.

"Wow, that is so..."

There were so many words Theo could use here. So many and he wasn't sure which one would adequately sum up his feelings.

"...confusing." That was the one he went with, yeah. "But, it sounds like it was a good thing she was pretty much permanently fired. Because, she sounds like...a not nice person."

Even Ange could agree with that.

Confusing worked. It also answered his question about what kind of school Fandom was. Handy that.

"She wasn't," Sholeh said gravely. "Not at all."

Zeela was cheerfully offering up a few alternatives to 'not a nice person,' but Sholeh was ignoring her. Not helpful, Zeela, and Sholeh didn't need that kind of vocabulary.

"But our current principal seems very nice!" she offered. "And I think we're out of horrible people locked away in Special Collections?"

They weren't.

"That's good to hear."

Even if they weren't out of horrible people locked away. What Theo didn't know wouldn't hurt him. Unless the island made it so.

"Ordinarily, I would say that's an awful fate," Ange said, shaking her head, "but she really does sound like a terrible person. You're supposed to help humans, not hurt them."

"Not everyone is as angelic as you are," Dev said in one of his wiser moments. "People are bad. Remember Ember Silva?"

"She wasn't a human, Dev," Ange pointed out. "And she wasn't killed."

Dev grumbled but didn't say anything else.

"So, monsters in a special part of the library and books that are a little more lively than actual real books. Anything else I should about this special library?"

"I'm pretty sure it has everything," Sholeh said, looking a little rapturous. "Histories from different timelines, books from across the multiverse, cookbooks for species that don't even exist in this reality. It's amazing!"

Sorry, Theo. But Sholeh was more than a little bit of a book nerd. Working here for almost a year hadn't lessened her awe any.

"You're making me wish I read more," Theo admitted with a laugh. "I mean, I read sometimes and all but I'm not a huge reader."

He liked to sit on the couch and watch TV. He was a product of parents that were never, ever around. The TV was his babysitter.

Whereas Sholeh had never seen anything like the television before coming here. It was fascinating, but most of the stuff the other students watched didn't draw her interest.

"It's never too late to start reading more," Sholeh assured him. "What do you normally like to read? I can help you pick something out if you like!"

Book pusher.

"Uh, I don't really know," Theo said, scratching the side of his head. "Something exciting, I guess. With action? And while I don't think I'm dumb, I'd probably want to read something that's straightforward, if that makes sense."

He wasn't going to be able to comprehend books with flowery language and prose that was deep but difficult.

Sholeh nodded, thinking of some of the books she'd seen while reshelving. "Hmm, let me think...do you think you'd like to read a book about a townful of kids after every adult over sixteen inexplicably vanishes? They have to survive and some of them are getting weird powers, too. It's called Away (http://www.amazon.com/Gone-Special-Edition-Michael-Grant/dp/0062236911/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372386122&sr=8-1&keywords=gone), I could find it if you're interested!"

"That...actually sounds a little interesting," Theo had to admit. Not unlike his own situation though he still had adults around and didn't really have powers.

Just tagalongs who sometimes did a little more than argue with each other.

"It's not a huge book, is it?"

Who knows what this guy knows.

Constantine? Oh, just a bloke who knew a lot about a lot of things, that was all. But if the books were being quiet, he wasn't going to care.

Me? On tenterhooks between one hugely important political decision and another? Really?

Nahhhhh.

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Library, Wednesday, All Day

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