Welcome to Gaia! ::

It wasn't that there were books. It was that there were so many. The place was awash in old tomes and new printings. It smelled like dust and old leather and ink. Shelves were stacked up to the ceiling and the books were crammed so tightly that upon removing one, others simply relaxed with a wispy, page-rubbing sigh and filled the gap. Beyond each row of shelves lay another, and still more beyond that. There were rooms stacked high to their vaulted ceilings and narrow, winding corridors hiding magic treasures in their irregular shelves.

There did not seem to be a single subject that was not covered. Even the most crackpot theories were entertained; shoved between more practical titles like "A History of the Uses of Wormsbane" and "Druidic Incantations" were titles like the "Journal of Asymmetrical Matrices," several volumes of which were clearly the word of a singular, deranged mind operating under various pseudonyms, and "Halloway's Mystic Remedies," which promised to restore youth, love, and grant riches beyond belief with spices and herbs so common that they were routinely mixed in kitchen pots the world around, none of which had ever experienced any magical effects like those Halloway asserted. At most, the combinations might yield a decently-seasoned meal.

So vast and varied were the library's offerings that it not only invited but demanded visitors to wander about it rather than make any attempt to work through the arcane and clearly misused categorical systems. There were helpful librarians who could procure a specific tome if so needed, but that was not the appeal of this library. The charm was in the act of exploration.

It was not generally a place where children might wander, but then, Holicinesh was certainly no regular hoodlum, and today he was not alone in that distinction. Standing in the midst of a section labeled "Global Enchantments" (which of course contained books on everything except what it was supposed to) was a young girl, slender and brunette, whose guardian had also found her to be a young person of exceptional restraint and maturity and therefore had allowed her to wander off alone amidst the shelves and stairways: Katie Magos.

Katie was surprised by the jostle and showed it. She too had gotten so engrossed in reading the book titles and authors (silently, in her mind) that she had rather much tuned out the noises of the library -- such as the brief flutter that seemed to echo from somewhere in the distance now and then, like the library might have birds or bats, but more likely was the sound of some sort of magical book-summoning.

She would have smiled at most anybody when meeting them for the first time, that was just Katie's nature, but given the boy's relative size and similar youth, she seemed to smile all the more brightly. "Oh, it's okay!" Because this was a library, and a hue one at that, her cheery voice echoed and bounced beyond her ability to control it. Her eyes went quickly wide. Thane had told her to be very quiet so as not to disturb anyone, and she immediately hushed her voice to a whisper. "I'm Katie."

Holicinesh. That was quite a long name, but it was very charming, like something out of a story. Katie herself had a good deal of experience meeting new people, particularly strange and unusual folk, and was quick to try and put Holicinesh at ease. "Just browsing," she said casually, which was the truth. It was Thane who had come to look for a specific text. Katie was merely following him to somewhere new and interesting. It was not the first such trip Thane had taken her on, nor would it be the last, but it was certainly the first time she had been allowed to wander on her own and her first solo encounter with a new face.

Athan and Hawk's assertions were correct. Holicinesh's interests were above and beyond the usual for his age, but Katie did at least have a more than passing interest in the subject of magic given her more-than-average home. It manifested in her honest admiration for the craft her guardian practiced. "I think it's all amazing, don't you? There are so many things that can be done with magic." She was careful to exclude herself from the category of spellcasters with the tone of her voice, indicating that to her at least, magic was a faraway art.

"What kind of runes?" asked Katie. Though she had not begun to study any aspect of magic herself, and did not expect to any time in the hear future, she did at least know that there were different kinds of runes from one world to the next. Katie had seen a few types and thought that the elven ones were the prettiest, but liked the directness of some of the more utilitarian scripts. Thane had even showed her a scroll with some demonic runes. Just seeing the shapes of those vicious letters chilled her to the soul. She sincerely hoped those weren't the runes Holicinesh was studying, he seemed so nice, she would hate to think of him dabbling in dark magics!