Completed [Ayatah] A Certain Slant of Light

[Philomena]

AT this last, Philomena's face, as tired and bedraggled as it was, twisted into a queer expression - a blush, embarrassment or timidity, climbed her cheeks, but beneath this, the tiny quirk of a smile, a smile that was best described as... mischievous? It accentuated the childishness of her, made her runtishness by the strong-boned, well-sinewed woman seem at once more acute and more elfin.

"Well, it is closed to the public, yes. But it is not, I think, closed to me. I have a friend who will open the door for us, for the purposes, you know, of education." And then... was that a wink? Perhaps, but it collapses so quickly into the little smile that it is almost ephemeral.

She turns then, and limping just slightly on the sore ankle, then adjusting her bulky satchel over the double cloak, begins to walk up the hill to where the library stands.

"You are finding it strange here, I imagine, child?" The movement, and the trip, perhaps, return to the professor a bit of her sense of position - not all of it, but enough. Enough. "Very different, I think from where you come from. How do the Myrians keep their books? I am sorry, I know so little of your people."

[Ayatah]

Did she just wink - or was that a twitch?

Ayatah cocked her head to one side, almost puzzled by the sudden jerking motion from the woman’s eye. But the promise of visiting the library during closed hours distracted Ayatah, and she gave an almost girlish grin.

”That sounds brilliant, professor.”

She followed the older woman, who seemed to hobble slightly, towards the library. The two walked in silence for a few moments, but the professor broke the quiet by asking Ayatah a question:

"You are finding it strange here, I imagine, child?"

”I am. It is very… different to my home.” Zeltiva was cold, windy, with high buildings instead of high trees. The one feature of the port city that Ayatah truly appreciated was how she could see the sky. In the jungle of Falynder, the thick overhand of the trees blocked the blue (or dark) sky. But here, Ayatah could see the stars at night, and they made her smile.

Very different, I think from where you come from. How do the Myrians keep their books? I am sorry, I know so little of your people."

Ayatah smiled and shrugged her shoulders, ”not many people know about the Myrians, it seems. We… don’t have books. Most of us, anyway. We are not huge readers. But… I am half-Eypharian, and my mother says that my father was a scholar…” She gave a little smile and another, almost self-conscious shrug, ”I guess I take after him in that sense.”

It had taken her literally years to accept that there were parts to her personality and body that were truly Eypharian. Amongst the Myrians, she had been somewhat of an anomaly in her interest in learning, and her capacity to do so. She glanced up ahead of her. They were coming closer to the library, now. ”That is why I am studying History and Anthropology. I want to learn about my father’s people. I never knew him.”

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

The girl's words, casual as they are send a cloud on Dr. Lefting's brow, and she frowned, "Well.... well. I will not... you have come for a class on Eypharian literature, so I will not force you to give me one on Myrian instead. Your father was Eypharian? And this where your interest in reading comes. I..." she almost continues but stops, says nothing more on the subject.

The library great wooden doors are shut, and barred. Minnie avoids them altogether, and walks around the side of the structure. On the rougher turf, here - for there is no path, really, only occaisional footsteps in the snow, she truly does begin to hobble, leaning one hand on the wall for support.

"When I was very young, my first love in books - still my greatest love - was the work of a navigator from Zeltiva, a woman named Kenabelle Wright. You have heard of her? I... I will confess, you would perhaps think ill of her chapter on Myrians. They come across as quite cruel, and not for any particular reason I can divine."

She leads her to a door, a squat wooden one beneath a stone arch and a naked willow. Here, she taps a series of patterned knocks, and interrupts her story, "Oh, yes! I must ask you... please understand... I must ask you not to touch anything."

[Ayatah]

"When I was very young, my first love in books - still my greatest love - was the work of a navigator from Zeltiva, a woman named Kenabelle Wright. You have heard of her? I... I will confess, you would perhaps think ill of her chapter on Myrians. They come across as quite cruel, and not for any particular reason I can divine.”

Ayatah had expected no different. She had seen the biases in the portrayals of her people in books, why would this one by Kenabelle Wright be any different? ”I have hard of her…” She said slowly, not wanting to come across as completely uneducated, ”but… we do not learn of many particular outsiders in the Jungle.”

The Myrian education system usually focused on the weaknesses of other races and their people, and how they were damned in the eyes of the Goddess-Queen. But Ayatah had shared the professor’s love of books, albeit possibly less intensely. She had shared her affection for literature to her mother, who had merely shrugged and not understand the strange passion of her daughter.

Luckily, her Great-Grandmother had smile knowingly and shared with Ayatah her own personal collection of books. They had been by no means extensive in number, but to Ayatah, it had been like a miniature library. It taken her some years to read them all - most were written in Common and back then, Ayatah had had to learn the language in more detail.

"Oh, yes! I must ask you... please understand... I must ask you not to touch anything."

”Of course, no problem Professor.”

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

Dr. Lefting waited, still for a moment, then knocked once more, a patterned rapping. The door opened almost immediately, now, just a crack at first, to reveal the eye of a librarian, about Minnie's own age, perhaps.

"Minnie?"

"Hello Mara."

The door opened further now, and the woman smiled and laughed mildly, "So, your student was not so hopelessly angry as you thought, hmm, Minnie?" The woman herded the two of them in.

The light is still young in the library, the bare corners of morning crawling through high windows and casting dim shadows across the floor. The door is at the end of a long hallway, with a door just cracked on the right hand side. The woman carries a lamp, and its brightness in the dimness of the building intensifies the shadows of the great empty vault at the end of the hall, the vault of the library's main chamber. The faint, spectral shadows of book-shelves loom in the thick blackness, the irregular rows of books like leather teeth, set still against the wooden jaws. The library is still, a stillness so deep, so profound, it is almost sacred. The light of the lamp dances, but even the motes in the air have to fine-textured a light to be seen dancing in.

Mara speaks again bowing her head to the Myrian girl. Her voice echoes ghost-like in the stone vault, its warmth almost lost in the coldness of granite.

"You, then, you must be the young Myrian woman of whom I've heard so much? I am Dr. Marilyn Dorset. If you were not walking with Minnie, I would remind you not to touch, please. But Minnie... Dr. Lefting... I am quite sure will have warned you already."

[Ayatah]

Ayatah was a little befuddled, if she were to be brutally honest. She had been to the library countless of times, and wondered what exactly her tutor would be revealing to her that she could not have discovered herself.

Still, I should be thankful that someone agreed to tutor me…

And she was thankful, truly so. Ayatah just had no experience in such academia, and thus had no knowledge of what to expect from a tutor.

She had never seen the library so… peaceful before. Instantly, she thought of the temple of Myri back in Taloba, and how quiet it would be there when she visited to pray in the small hours of the morning. There was a ethereal atmosphere; how the library seemed to merge with shadows in the corners, and the books appeared to move when the faint light of the librarian’s lamp approached and passed them. I should come here this early more often… She thought in half wonder.

"You, then, you must be the young Myrian woman of whom I've heard so much? I am Dr. Marilyn Dorset. If you were not walking with Minnie, I would remind you not to touch, please. But Minnie... Dr. Lefting... I am quite sure will have warned you already."

The woman’s voice almost made Ayatah jump - she had been that lost in the smell of books and the marvel of the silence in the library. ”Oh--“ she half-stammered, ”yes… Dr Lefting has told me already.” She half-smiled to the librarian, before her dark eyes were caught once again by the greyness of the room around them.

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

Mara nodded, with a smile, "Any friend of Minnie's is a friend of the books. Any friend of the books is a friend of mine. If you ever need anything, Myrian, don't hesitate to ask."

She handed the lamp to Minnie who smiled and traded kisses on the cheeks, "We'll keep it down, Mara, promise."

Mara nodded, and slipped into the door to the side of the hallway - a guttering taper light leaked through the door, before she shut it behind her. Minnie warded the girl onward.

"Come, child."

She stepped then out and into the gloom of the library itself. The room, in the pitch, was almost organic in around her, the great pillars of the ceiling like trunks, the tiny squares of faint light like the filtering of the sun through thick leaves. The books had a smell almost like dry, crumbling leaves, but with the peculiar tang of parchment, the old-smoke flavor of ink to it. The lamp was like a star floating through the room.

She led her, though, not to any of these shelves, but across the library. The hushed reverence of the place clearly had effect on the tiny woman, who spoke in a voiced whisper, her voice taking on an almost not unpleasant alto to it.

"When I was very young, only the second time I set foot in the library, a man took me up the stairs, to the restricted section. Have you ever been up the stairs, child?"

[Ayatah]

"Any friend of Minnie's is a friend of the books. Any friend of the books is a friend of mine. If you ever need anything, Myrian, don't hesitate to ask."

Ayatah had been called much worse things than ‘Myrian’ - in fact, it was almost a compliment after spending years being called ‘Eypharian’ by her comrades. She nodded and smiled politely to the librarian, and followed Philomena as they headed through the library.

The dank darkness of the room reminded Ayatah of the thick overgrowth of leaves of the jungle. Back at her home, it was near impossible to tell what time of day it when one stood in the midst of the trees. The weather hot and sticky all day, only dipping a little at night. Ah… home She thought, almost sadly.

"When I was very young, only the second time I set foot in the library, a man took me up the stairs, to the restricted section. Have you ever been up the stairs, child?"

The beginning of that story made Ayatah’s eyebrows twitch upwards… It certainly sounded… odd, a grown man taking a child up to the most secret part of the library. But she brushed the suspicion aside, and shook her head, ”I haven’t, no. I… always thought it was restricted for a reason.” Her head twitched in the direction in which they were walking, ”although… That didn’t stop me being curious.” She flashed a grin to her tutor, ”I’ve always been curious about books and learning.”

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||

[Philomena]

Minnie smiled, turning back. Her bandaged hand pushed a stray lock of hair from her face, the other holding the lamp still, very cautiously, high. She blushed a little in her stone-sallow face, and smiled with just, perhaps, the slightest hint of mischief, "Restricted, yes. Well, it is. Of course. But, not to a professor of course. So, for the morning, child, you must be a doctor of literature with me."

She turned then and began walking, across the wide center aisle, now, the star of the lamp flickering out in its broadest circle before contracting as it delved into the shelves opposite.

"The man who took me to the upstairs, I do not know his name. I've never found him since, and oh how I looked as a child! The orphans, they would take us to the library every few years, I think just to remind us, perhaps of our benefactors at the university, you know. Oh, how I loved it then! The scent of books, the poring scholars, and the statues, and the stonework, and the brass and varnished wood! So, I... well, to be frank, I slipped out from the group, and wandered the library all of my own to... yes, here we are. To right here."

She stopped at the end of a bank of shelves. A little stone bench sat before it, and the shelves were capped with three statues, three gods.

"Eyris," she said, pointing with her lamed hand, "Gnora, then. And then the last, Qalaya." She said the last name with the shivering intensity of the religiously transfixed, "And when I came, I was, perhaps, a bit like you - though, then again, not so much. For you have a confidence, and competence to you, that I certainly lacked in those days. Still lack. But it was the same in other ways - in those days, the orphanage girls, our world was a place as foreign to this as your Myrian woods. Perhaps just as fierce, in their way, though I can't say, for sure. I was nothing, in this place, just a little ragamuffin with no purpose but to find a crust for supper. But! That is the wonder of the library! Every soul, I think, I truly believe, will find their life, here somewhere. The mother, the healer, the craftsmen, the wizard or warrior. All the things that wrap around men's hearts, one day, they write down."

The story of it wraps her up - perhaps it is the exhaustion still apparent in her voice, but one way or the other, it leaves her absent, her voice lower, sonorous, hypnotized, almost. Her eyes behind the spectacles have an absent, thoughtful air to them.

The light of the little lamp flickers, gutters - it is inexpensive oil in it, clearly, the light dances on the faces of the three statues bringing them almost to life, the blush of firelight on their cheeks almost like the blush of blood, the wavering acrfoss their breasts almost like the shiver of breath.

[Ayatah]

"Restricted, yes. Well, it is. Of course. But, not to a professor of course. So, for the morning, child, you must be a doctor of literature with me."

Ayatah could not help but smirk at the prospect of having to pretend to be a fellow professor. Anyone who takes a second glance at me will know I’m a fraud, a small and concerned part of her mind told her. She shook the thought away, keen to get exploring and reading the ‘restricted’ selection of books.

She followed Philomena through the library, listening intently to what the older woman was saying. It had always intrigued Ayatah to listen to the lives of other people, especially since she had moved to Zeltiva and met so many varied individuals. Having spent her life in Taloba, the Myrian lifestyle was familiar and precious to Ayatah, but still, she found herself fascinated by the stories that other people shared. Some had visited more places than Ayatah knew existed, whilst others had lived within Zeltiva their entire lives, never stepping foot outside.

”That is the wonder of the library! Every soul, I think, I truly believe, will find their life, here somewhere. The mother, the healer, the craftsmen, the wizard or warrior. All the things that wrap around men's hearts, one day, they write down."

Now that is something I agree with - and Ayatah smiled and nodded to show it.

”In Taloba, we don’t have many books, at least… Not ones about so many varied topics,” she waved a hand to the book shelves around her. ”But you are right. There is something for everyone here. Even those that… do not know exactly what they are looking for.” She stepped softly over to a row of books, and traced the tip of her finger across the spines of them. ”when I was little, I used to read much more than other Myrian children. It… used to make me feel like I was tapping into my Eypharian blood.” She turned back to face Philomena, and her head tilted to one side slightly, ”they are a clever race, aren’t they?”

|| Ayatah's speech || Ayatah's thoughts || Others' speech ||