15 Fall 515 AV
Around the 17th Bell
The Valkalah Library
Around the 17th Bell
The Valkalah Library
There was a certain comfort to be found in the warm glow of the lanterns and the dry, almost floral scent of old paper. It smelled like history, she thought, and of her father's study where he'd kept his rows of sketchbooks and documents. It lacked the same bittersweet tinge of paint, of course, but it conjured the memory easily nonetheless, and with it the dual and conflicting sense that she was both at home and out of place. She didn't belong here, surely. She resigned herself to that fact every time she stepped through the heavy wooden doors that marked the library's entrance.
Something oppressive lingered in the air, the weight of hundreds of years systematically stacked and ordered, bearing down upon her shoulders. A reminder that this was the unseen enemy she was tasked to conquer. Control. Structure. It was an abstract pressure, one she so often failed to properly address. She had tried before, at the library in Zeltiva, rearranging shelves to her whimsical desire in an attempt to inject some life into its veins, to return it to a more natural, more healthy state of being. It was ineffective, of course, a task doomed to be undone, though she did idly wonder if there was still a book on goat-care sitting, forgotten and untouched after these couple years, in the maps section.
But that wasn't important now. Today she browsed the rooms for their intended purpose. Her attentions were fixated on a single purpose. It was a rare happening, that Marion would have one goal in mind, but while it was curiosity that left her hands to trail across the spines of books and mouth their titles as she passed, it was with a sense of drive that she kept moving. She shifted fluidly from one aisle to another, searching, letting her fingertips trace idle patterns across leather and wood alike. She stooped for a moment, bending to examine a lower shelf. Her brow furrowed in a look a distaste and she straightened to glare at the upper shelves for a moment. Finding nothing in the way of what she sought, she pursed her lips and roamed to the next shelf, her boots tapping a light rhythm that belied her growing frustration.
She had rifled through the Religion section for nearly half a bell, her coat slung over her shoulder and shelves of books left in varying states of disarray in her wake. It was some small way to vent her irritation, leaving volumes tilted at wrong angles or pulled out slightly further than their neighbors. Some even laid on their sides across the tops of rows from where she'd lifted them completely from their resting places to thumb through their indexes. Marion had wanted to find one book -- just one book -- specific to her goddess. She felt she could be afforded that much, when the patron gods of the city seemed to have entire walls worth of tomes dedicated to them. Even Sylir had at least thirty works to his name -- she'd counted them absently as she swiftly shuffled past, having to ignore that portion of the aisle lest she find herself doing something that would get her escorted from the building.
What were you expecting? she chided herself, and rightfully, as she freed another book from its snug home, and, with a flutter of paper, flipped through it in blind exasperation before setting it back down with a too-audible thunk. She'd come to the conclusion some time ago that she wouldn't find any written works on Ssena. She'd scoured the Sunken Conundrum those few years ago to no avail, and had been met similarly in Zeltiva. It was the assumption that this city's library was no different that had kept her from trying before, when she had more pressing matters to attend than sifting through room after room for knowledge that they may or (more likely) may not contain. And yet she'd hoped that a year was long enough to wait; that perhaps, by now, the scholars of the world had pieced together enough information for her to find. She should have known better than to trust hope. The information simply did not exist, and if it did it was so obscure that Marion wasn't sure it hadn't been based strictly on hearsay or rumor.
Something oppressive lingered in the air, the weight of hundreds of years systematically stacked and ordered, bearing down upon her shoulders. A reminder that this was the unseen enemy she was tasked to conquer. Control. Structure. It was an abstract pressure, one she so often failed to properly address. She had tried before, at the library in Zeltiva, rearranging shelves to her whimsical desire in an attempt to inject some life into its veins, to return it to a more natural, more healthy state of being. It was ineffective, of course, a task doomed to be undone, though she did idly wonder if there was still a book on goat-care sitting, forgotten and untouched after these couple years, in the maps section.
But that wasn't important now. Today she browsed the rooms for their intended purpose. Her attentions were fixated on a single purpose. It was a rare happening, that Marion would have one goal in mind, but while it was curiosity that left her hands to trail across the spines of books and mouth their titles as she passed, it was with a sense of drive that she kept moving. She shifted fluidly from one aisle to another, searching, letting her fingertips trace idle patterns across leather and wood alike. She stooped for a moment, bending to examine a lower shelf. Her brow furrowed in a look a distaste and she straightened to glare at the upper shelves for a moment. Finding nothing in the way of what she sought, she pursed her lips and roamed to the next shelf, her boots tapping a light rhythm that belied her growing frustration.
She had rifled through the Religion section for nearly half a bell, her coat slung over her shoulder and shelves of books left in varying states of disarray in her wake. It was some small way to vent her irritation, leaving volumes tilted at wrong angles or pulled out slightly further than their neighbors. Some even laid on their sides across the tops of rows from where she'd lifted them completely from their resting places to thumb through their indexes. Marion had wanted to find one book -- just one book -- specific to her goddess. She felt she could be afforded that much, when the patron gods of the city seemed to have entire walls worth of tomes dedicated to them. Even Sylir had at least thirty works to his name -- she'd counted them absently as she swiftly shuffled past, having to ignore that portion of the aisle lest she find herself doing something that would get her escorted from the building.
What were you expecting? she chided herself, and rightfully, as she freed another book from its snug home, and, with a flutter of paper, flipped through it in blind exasperation before setting it back down with a too-audible thunk. She'd come to the conclusion some time ago that she wouldn't find any written works on Ssena. She'd scoured the Sunken Conundrum those few years ago to no avail, and had been met similarly in Zeltiva. It was the assumption that this city's library was no different that had kept her from trying before, when she had more pressing matters to attend than sifting through room after room for knowledge that they may or (more likely) may not contain. And yet she'd hoped that a year was long enough to wait; that perhaps, by now, the scholars of the world had pieced together enough information for her to find. She should have known better than to trust hope. The information simply did not exist, and if it did it was so obscure that Marion wasn't sure it hadn't been based strictly on hearsay or rumor.