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31_days2009-08-27 05:58 pm
cofmanynames.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2009-08-27 05:58 pm
[August 27] [Original] Let the Worlds be Yours, I am Done with Mine
Title: Let the Worlds Be Yours, I Am Done With Mine
Day / Theme: August 27 -- give me your black sky
Rating: PG
Series: Original (ending LEC era three)
Characters: Librarian!Ciri, Libris
Summary: Libris comes home for a little while, to leave a book and get a new one. Ciri is not amused, but she doesn't catch her anyway.
Notes: Part two of the part one that will be happening on August 31 because I am just so organized that way. This is another example of the spate of LEC stuff I like so much it embarrasses me. Continuing with the Cassidy titles, although I only just decided on this one. The tense changes are because I remembered at the last minute the Library doesn't like present-tense.
It’s a leap and a lunge into the book, through it, and at the same time the book is in her hand; and then she guides it out through itself and the change takes.
Libris leaves kai’len in this somewhat extraordinary way; there is no one to notice, as so she wills it.
- - -
Similarly, there was a problem on the other side: there is only one way to arrive in the Library, and the book would have to be present for it to arrive. On some days, the days she doesn’t believe in, Libris would be caught, snared in her interest for this, studying the unfolding shape the paradox makes in the nowhere spaces forever or close enough—she brushed past it impatiently and fell out into the Library without a sound.
She paused, wondering if that happened before; it is something she would have remembered, a twist and forever-fold like that. But everything before was a gauzy blur, pale and painful and utterly wrong; her mind shied away.
There is a certain feeling often called ‘someone walking over my grave’ by those who do not have graves. Libris had a grave, probably; she didn’t understand what someone would be doing traipsing over it, but suddenly she understood that saying. She felt that, or something close enough; there was also a cold pain gathering around her, as she tried to relax and tense to strike out at the same time.
Libris was home.
She bowed her head and snapped the budding duality with a wince. The Library’s own confusion was waning, and Libris could feel the tendril of alarm so mild it was barely a query as it decided she may be the Librarian but she was not its Librarian; ridiculous as it was, it still hurt.
Looking up, half-ashamed of her reverence, she scowled. Libris had known she would have to leave this place—moving backwards was never viable—but now she’d have to hurry.
- - -
The current Librarian was, of course—so these things go—asleep when the intruder was noticed. The idea of anyone in her Library jolted her awake easily; she awoke panicked, but not enough to not take advantage of the dream-surety that still clung to her in places, jerking one hand down in a long sharp motion and a razor-wire notion, calling a trap on someone of whose whereabouts she had only the vaguest of ideas.
Then she ran.
- - -
Libris had just taken a book by the spine, carefully, and tipped it open, wondering whose charcoal-black fingerprints were burnt into it, when the lines drew in. It started as a ball of gold-white thread, which became wire; the wires thickened in turn into bars.
She groaned. “I really did not need this,” she told anything listening, and braced herself.
- - -
The girl who still thought of herself as Ciri skidded around the corner almost before she’d started running, but still not soon enough; she was dealing with another Librarian, after all, something that shouldn’t exist, someone who could play her games far better than she. Ciri considered the explosion of sharp, twisted metal on the side of the cage she’d made. With a frown, she wrapped one hand around a particularly jagged edge and made gestures to be rid of it, and for the Book to come and tell her what she should have already known.
When the Book leaped into her hand she yelped; it gave her a sort of shock, an instant or two of blind burning pain, before folding away. She found that her fingers seemed to fit into an impression left by a longer, spidery hand.
And, with that, the idea of a note presented itself in her mind, and she had to keep from laughing despite the seriousness of the situation. She got the reference, of course. Of course.
- - -
The first thing Libris does is look up, and the second thing she does is smile. She hadn’t realized she missed having a world with a real sky, not oil-spill black gleaming through a bubble.
Let my ill-wrought successor deal with it, she thinks with a snarl that flits across her face and off again. She can’t quite remember what she was angry about, really, and the stars are just so pretty.
Day / Theme: August 27 -- give me your black sky
Rating: PG
Series: Original (ending LEC era three)
Characters: Librarian!Ciri, Libris
Summary: Libris comes home for a little while, to leave a book and get a new one. Ciri is not amused, but she doesn't catch her anyway.
Notes: Part two of the part one that will be happening on August 31 because I am just so organized that way. This is another example of the spate of LEC stuff I like so much it embarrasses me. Continuing with the Cassidy titles, although I only just decided on this one. The tense changes are because I remembered at the last minute the Library doesn't like present-tense.
It’s a leap and a lunge into the book, through it, and at the same time the book is in her hand; and then she guides it out through itself and the change takes.
Libris leaves kai’len in this somewhat extraordinary way; there is no one to notice, as so she wills it.
- - -
Similarly, there was a problem on the other side: there is only one way to arrive in the Library, and the book would have to be present for it to arrive. On some days, the days she doesn’t believe in, Libris would be caught, snared in her interest for this, studying the unfolding shape the paradox makes in the nowhere spaces forever or close enough—she brushed past it impatiently and fell out into the Library without a sound.
She paused, wondering if that happened before; it is something she would have remembered, a twist and forever-fold like that. But everything before was a gauzy blur, pale and painful and utterly wrong; her mind shied away.
There is a certain feeling often called ‘someone walking over my grave’ by those who do not have graves. Libris had a grave, probably; she didn’t understand what someone would be doing traipsing over it, but suddenly she understood that saying. She felt that, or something close enough; there was also a cold pain gathering around her, as she tried to relax and tense to strike out at the same time.
Libris was home.
She bowed her head and snapped the budding duality with a wince. The Library’s own confusion was waning, and Libris could feel the tendril of alarm so mild it was barely a query as it decided she may be the Librarian but she was not its Librarian; ridiculous as it was, it still hurt.
Looking up, half-ashamed of her reverence, she scowled. Libris had known she would have to leave this place—moving backwards was never viable—but now she’d have to hurry.
- - -
The current Librarian was, of course—so these things go—asleep when the intruder was noticed. The idea of anyone in her Library jolted her awake easily; she awoke panicked, but not enough to not take advantage of the dream-surety that still clung to her in places, jerking one hand down in a long sharp motion and a razor-wire notion, calling a trap on someone of whose whereabouts she had only the vaguest of ideas.
Then she ran.
- - -
Libris had just taken a book by the spine, carefully, and tipped it open, wondering whose charcoal-black fingerprints were burnt into it, when the lines drew in. It started as a ball of gold-white thread, which became wire; the wires thickened in turn into bars.
She groaned. “I really did not need this,” she told anything listening, and braced herself.
- - -
The girl who still thought of herself as Ciri skidded around the corner almost before she’d started running, but still not soon enough; she was dealing with another Librarian, after all, something that shouldn’t exist, someone who could play her games far better than she. Ciri considered the explosion of sharp, twisted metal on the side of the cage she’d made. With a frown, she wrapped one hand around a particularly jagged edge and made gestures to be rid of it, and for the Book to come and tell her what she should have already known.
When the Book leaped into her hand she yelped; it gave her a sort of shock, an instant or two of blind burning pain, before folding away. She found that her fingers seemed to fit into an impression left by a longer, spidery hand.
And, with that, the idea of a note presented itself in her mind, and she had to keep from laughing despite the seriousness of the situation. She got the reference, of course. Of course.
- - -
The first thing Libris does is look up, and the second thing she does is smile. She hadn’t realized she missed having a world with a real sky, not oil-spill black gleaming through a bubble.
Let my ill-wrought successor deal with it, she thinks with a snarl that flits across her face and off again. She can’t quite remember what she was angry about, really, and the stars are just so pretty.