Book Troll [Finished]

[The Jenn]

Thyme hadn't visited the Capital in a few months, not since joining the ranks of the Club nobility and setting herself to work in the palace. She'd taken advantage of the Court library, raping it diligently for its knowledge, but hadn't managed to cement a single new spell in her repertoire. It frustrated her to no end. On top of that, the paperwork and errands and social calls required as one of His Majesty's Kings kept her hopping and her mind distracted from serious, uninterrupted thought until late at night, during which time she needed to play with her Waffles so that he didn't get lonely or grow up emotionally stunted or whatever else might happen to an Ace left too long by themselves. She simply wouldn't hear of it.

The first vacation she bothered to take, she went to visit her aunt in the Highlands for a few days and then booked a hotel room in the Capital for half a week. She could troll through one of their libraries for a few days and compare notes with some of the books and manuscripts she'd read at the palace. Then maybe she could focus her research more effectively. As it was, she tended to study in a haphazard and disjointed manner, just because she was never quite sure what she wanted out of a spell.

She reclined in one of the library chairs, far enough away from the main walkway that people wouldn't bump into her and cause a cloud of sleepy dust to poof off of her fur, flipping through a large book. "I'm boooored," the voice in her head complained for the seventh time that hour. She dutifully ignored him.

[Bee]

Deplorable. Absolutely deplorable. She shut the book, tempted to slam it closed--oh, forbidden book cruelty! The thought of wanton book brutality sent a little thrill of horror through her. No, she could never slam it. But she could shut it with indignant and righteous anger.

She had known that nothing the Capital could offer would be anything like what she could find in Esterberry, but her current project (Lakes cultural study, required for the major but not her specific area of expertise) required over sixty documented sources on the obscure and rather grotesque practice of turning Selkie Ace bones into corset material. She had scoured Esterberry libraries and turned up 59. She was hoping to somehow stumble across a volume so rare and so wonderful (even idiots could be savants, after all) that no one would dare ridicule her for using a non-Esterberry library. She knew she had rivals just looking for an opportunity to humiliate her.

She was not having a good deal of luck, however...as could be predicted. She twitched her nose to push her glasses up a little further and sighed.

At least this library appeared to have a selection of old Villa plays that was not entirely a travesty (though its version of Nanine had long since proved to be a forgery). She picked out one of her favorite tragedies and slouched in a chair--everything was so miserably big, designed for canines, beh!--next to some redheaded canine with tail-feelers, and brooded.

[The Jenn]

"Hey," the voice whispered in Thyme's head, his high-pitched male inflection turning decidedly playful, "look at that sexy little number sitting off to your left. I mean, wow. I thought you had a nice butt, but look at that tail! Pretty touchable, huh?" He'd caught sight of the Esterberry out of her peripheral vision and couldn't help but pay attention.

The canine rolled her eyes but glanced over obligingly, taking in the neatly kept curls and the plush tail. What kind of vermin was that...? She would swear the woman wasn't a squirrel - she'd been raised with quite a few of those - but she didn't look like a mouse either, and she certainly wasn't a rat. Oh, now she was curious, though not for the same reasons as her weapon. The Capital was pretty good at turning up oddities, wasn't it? Just look at her.

Since her weapon had been interrupting her concentration for the past hour, doing something to distract his attention might be a good idea. The woman didn't look to be especially low-ranked, not at all, and her aunt had impressed a sense of grudging respect in her with regards to Esterberries. "You don't look to be in an especially good mood," she said quietly, face turned down to her book but red eyes glancing to the side. Would she even bother to respond, or was there a snippy comment coming her way for interrupting someone's studies.

[Bee]

Phaedra was so absorbed in the wonderful scene of Leonora smothering her husband to death (his justice, in her opinion, for being dumb enough to let that general dupe him into sacrificing their daughter) that at first she did not register the interruption; she was in Book Space, where very little of the outside world could touch her.

When the excitement of the moment was over and Leonora's husband had ceased his violent thrashing and muted cries for mercy, she thought maybe that someone had said something at some point.

Something about a good mood. Yes. The redheaded canine. Phaedra glanced at her. She didn't look like an ordinary Highlander. But her contemporary anthro class was saying that mutations were on the rise for curious, complex reasons. Genes going haywire? Corvies getting too audacious these days? The academies would get to the bottom of it soon.

"Not especially," she said, acerbically. "I'm finding that violent death is doing wonders for my temper, however."

[The Jenn]

Well, that was one of the more pointed and polite 'leave me the fuck alone's that Thyme had been treated to in quite some time. Was she contemplating someone's violent death, such as the woman who had interrupted her reading, or simply soaking in the aggressive ambiance of a good book? Either was quite possible.

"I've felt like that a time or two. My apologies for disturbing you." Her eyes slid back down to her book, but now she was curious what the woman was reading. The title wasn't readily visible. It could have been anything from a murder mystery to an investigation of high-profile homicides throughout the past few decades. She didn't have a clue.

Ah well. None of her business, unfortunately.

"She still has one quality tush," the voice whispered in an obnoxiously playful tone. "I saw it better when she sat down. You could do worse than hitting something like that, you know, and then maybe I could enjoy it too. Or you could just take her book and go pelting through the halls. Or set off the sprinkler system right above this reading area."

"You're a serious pain in the ass. You know that right?"

[Bee]

Phaedra snuck a surreptitious glance at the woman sitting next to her. She had a rather large book in her hands, didn’t she? Perhaps she frequented this library. It wasn’t a totally illogical conclusion. Perhaps she knew of some locked-off back rooms that people were not routinely allowed access to (the librarians had seen no reason to let her see them, if they existed, which was insulting).

But that was silly. There was no reason to suppose that. But she was a King, she reasoned. Maybe she was even titled. Who was going to deny a King anything?

She only needed one good source. On the other hand, she felt that asking a Highlander for help would be a tiny but firm slap to her pride. Problems, problems. There had to be a roundabout way of getting assistance. She turned a page with a huff but could no longer concentrate on the fallout from Leonora’s ill-timed murder.

“You…are forgiven,” she said, suddenly, trying not to sound awkward. “What are you reading?”

[The Jenn]

Thyme didn't notice the curious little look from the woman, too engrossed in an internal argument with her weapon over how fun it might be to goose the Esterberry, or see if she had a sister who wasn't as much of a bookworm, or maybe stick a piece of gum to the tip of her tail and see how long it took to come off. Obnoxious little twirp.

When the other Card spoke aloud, her shoulders jerked a little as she started. Red eyes turned back to her, one hand marking her page as she shifted to better face the other woman without squishing her blue fronds too badly. "Oh, er... thank you?" Was that supposed to be some sort of benevolent apology? How bizarre. She hadn't interacted with very many Esterberries in the past, but she'd heard from a few people that they were utter snobs. Rather like Highlanders, but with a different focus. It had amused her at the time that anyone would bother to compare another region to the Highlands in terms of pride. Maybe there was more truth to the gossip than she'd thought.

"I'm researching-" "-pick up lines!" "Shut it!" "-non-damaging interrogation techniques used in the past. And how about you? A satisfying dose of violence?"[/color]

[Bee]

Non-damaging interrogation techniques? This woman was the torturer of the future. For a moment her interest was piqued. Did she have a dungeon? Or had the Courts updated their facilities and given her a classy little room in some remote corner of the palace? She daren’t ask.

“Entirely satisfying. Venet had a good mind for tragedy. Terrible pity he had to get mixed up in that messy business of sleeping with a prominent merchant’s wife. He had three partially-written plays at the time he was stabbed to death, you know. Two of them were exceptionally promising. Shame he didn’t show a bit of courtesy for future generations and get himself killed in a duel until after he had completed them. Miserable waste of talent.”

But she had gone off on a tangent. That was not her goal. She collected her thoughts. “But one can find Venet in any library. What I really want doesn’t appear to be on shelf.”

[The Jenn]

Thyme bit the inside of her lip to keep from smirking. "My aunt's a pretty big fan of Venet's tragedies. She always has a vicious expression on her face after she finishes one. He was quite good at portraying the philanderer. I hadn't been aware that it was from personal experience, though."

Oh yes, Aunt Josephine had made sure to introduce her to a few of the literary greats. She had also, much to her amusement, found a few trashy romance novels in with the woman's classic literature. Her aunt's tastes ran towards the... strange, sometimes. She'd smelled things on the woman's furniture thanks to her feelers that she hoped she didn't have to smell again anytime soon. Why horses, of all things, she would never understand.

And apparently she had joined the woman on that tangent. More than happy to drop the thought of her aging aunt's sexcapades, she took the hint and asked. "What is it that you want, then, if this library doesn't have it?"

[Bee]

The canine's little speech had almost sucked her back into a literary tangent--she so adored letting people know things, when she could get through to them; enlightening the masses was was so exciting, so satisfying, it must have been what lesser creatures felt when they got high; she wondered if the canine would be keen to hear her theories on some of Slarr's earlier poems helping to propagate Lowlander prejudice (poor things!)--but the last bit swerved her neatly back to reality.

"The library has quite a bit of extraneous information on the topic," she said, "scattered here and there, but what I'm desperately hunting for is something a trifle rarer. You see, I am seeking a highly reputable source on Selkie Lakes corset-crafting, and am making a personal challenge of finding something in a place like this."

A total lie, but what could one do? "Sadly, nothing on the common shelves has anything even remotely serviceable."