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Anthony Darrow was having a very easy day. Not in his work load, exactly, since he was doing nearly the exact same thing as the day before, but rather because he was actually enjoying it today. There was a big difference, he knew from years of experience now, between checking a book out to a pleasant person or checking one out to a terror in book-reader's clothing. One made the day bearable while the other just drained him mentally and physically. He was just getting ready to open the doors and could already feel that the air was lighter, and it would be better than the day before. Or maybe he was just being optimistic.

Yesterday had been exhausting.

For whatever reason, maybe something in the water, it seemed like everyone walking into the library didn't want to be there, and personally blamed Anthony for the book they couldn't find, or the fine they had incurred on a late return. While Tony was fairly used to such things, he couldn't recall a time in recent history when so many angry people had managed to collect in one space at one time. Twice he had been ordered to give his name, some thinly veiled threat of them calling the 'higher ups' to complain about him, though he had been professional and polite. It wasn't his fault is was policy to not allow someone to check out a book unless they had a library card, and they hadn't brought their ID to sign up with. It also wasn't his fault that the vending machine was eating coins and spitting out incorrect change.

That thing probably had sentience, as it was always being fairly spiteful. Anthony only got along with it rarely. When it, Tony thought, felt like playing nice.

By the end of his shift, Tony had been fairly worn out, a bit irritated, and already dreading having to come back and go through it all the next day. Except the next day, today, had started much better. Carol, his insufferable co-worker, had called in sick and he was left in peace as he went about his morning tasks. Once everything was backlogged and checked in, newspapers put away and the computers running for the start of the day, Tony went to open the doors.

Hopefully the trend would continue, and things remained on upbeat. While he would deal with every kind of guest to the library with patience and a smile, he would prefer if they were more natural and less feigned efforts today so he didn't go home and pass out the minute he sat down in front of the TV.

Returning to his cubicle behind the Circulation desk, he sighed and eased back into his comfortably worn in seat, cup of coffee in hand. Mornings tended to be slow, particularly on weekends, so he wasn't expecting a rush.

Not that he ever was. It was a library, not a department store.

Delphine Amary was irritated.

What kind of teacher would assign a seven page paper and insist on having multiple book sources? Delphine could have even been content with one book source, but three? The internet was so much easier to access. A person could spend hours in the library trying to find the right books, and then sifting through them for the information they needed. Delphine, at this point in her life, did not have time for this sort of bull s**t. She had a life, and the only reason she was investing herself in this paper was because her grades had been slipping. The paper was worth a huge chunk of points in her English class. Getting a good grade on it would be enough to secure her a decent grade overall.

Her parents would stop riding her a** over school, and her brother would stop giving her those looks that clearly said she should stop watching television and go do her homework. Oh, yes, Damon, she knew very well what those glares meant. Delphine knew her grades were slipping - she really had much more going on in her life than anyone could even guess at. Taking so much on her plate meant that she would have to skimp out on some things.

One of them was school. It was at a lower priority in her life right now, and not as demanding as some things. Her grades weren't horrendous, but they weren't impressive either. Compared to what she had been getting before, it was a definite decrease.

Delphine walked into the library with a scowl upon her face, and small bags under her eyes. It was too damned early. Delphine was a night-owl, and mornings were an abomination to her, especially on the weekends. Yet, she needed to get this done, and the library would be quiet enough that she could get enough work done that she could spend the rest of her day with ease and relaxation.

The teenager, dress in black and blue clothes, made her way right to Anthony's desk. She didn't want to have to linger here. Delphine wanted in and out, and she would get even more pissy if it didn't go her way. "I need to find some books on... Descarte and his doubting process. Doing a research paper, need some background s**t too, to fluff it up. Has to be seven pages long. Are you kidding me?"

Kallista shuffled through her back pack for her homework and pulled out her binder with her classes and their course outlines. She opened her binder and paged through, before thinking about what assignments were due, she had a English Assignment, she pulled out some paper and her pencil and started to work on it. Starting with what she was writing about as an introduction and then working her way down to the conclusions.

She tapped her pencil lightly on her chin before looking around the practically empty library. She wondered why students wouldn't be at a library so early in the morning, then again it was a weekend and she didn't have friends to ask her to hang out with her. She frowned at the concept of not having that many friends.

"Anthony," he replied, trying not to smirk at her and her anger. Student-homework rage was not new to him, as a spectator. Though he had never felt much of it, despondent in school until he had ultimately dropped out, he had certainly seen a lot of it over the years of working in this place. Hers seemed like a particularly strong case.

"I cheat," he said, shrugging his shoulders. His voice was warm, not teasing, though he was making jokes, "I know where I put everything. So finding them isn't difficult for me. If you need help, don't hesitate to come for it. I'll show you where those books are if you can't find them."

He knew the library was imposing, and the fact that it was sorted by the Library of Congress method instead of the much more familiar, particularly for school kids, Dewey Decimal system did not help. There were three solid floors of book shelf after book shelf, all sorted without any apparent order when one glances at the titles or the authors. Generally, things were categorized by topic. Most of the time that meant authors works were all nearby, but it could also mean one thing on the first floor and something else on the third.

At this point, though, Tony found it all perfectly natural.

"Good luck," he dared to say, picking up his coffee mug again and sipping at the much cooler liquid. He glanced beyond Delphine, spotting the other girl sitting at a desk, apparently hard at work. The frown on her face, anyway, made him think that she was. Very focused. He pulled up a chair to the front computer, just in case any other students came in suffering under this same paper, or some other evil perpetrated by their teachers.

Ray pushed open one of the doors to the library and peeked his head through tentatively like he was in a horror movie and looking for the murderer. Seeing no murderer, he sidled in and moseyed over to the circulation desk with the telltale casualness of someone who had some very bad news to give a librarian and wanted to get on their good side first. He had a library book under one arm: Darconville's Cat, it looked like.

The Meadowview schoolteacher wasn't an uncommon sight at the library -- schoolteacher salaries were nothing to write home about, after all, and reading was an expensive hobby if you indulged it entirely at Barnes & Noble. He'd never spoken to Anthony, though, except for an occasional smile and a "How do you do" when he was checking out his books. Today that would change.

"Hi," he said without preamble. "Can I -- oh, no rush, I can wait. Seriously. Just maxin' and relaxin' over here."

Ray looked at Tony, then at the book under his arm, then at Tony again. The smile became a grin. "Hi," he said again. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I checked out this book last Sunday," he patted its spine gingerly, "and I'm afraid there's been a terrible accident. I am so sorry, I'm kind of embarrassed to bring it in." He slid out his library card while he talked and set it on the counter: Raymond Gordon, it read. So that was the guy's name. If it was any consolation, it didn't look like he remembered Tony's either. "I check out from here a lot -- I always pay my, uh, late fees on time -- I'm really sorry --"

He set Darconville's Cat on the counter and opened it up. It had been a nice hardcover. None of the pages were... damaged, exactly. Rather, they now looked incredibly old. Browned. Brittle. Almost as though someone had dropped the book in a bucket of water, panicked and then put it in the microwave or the oven in hopes that would dry it out.

Very much like that, actually.

The customer grinned hopefully. He was about ten years younger than Tony, and had glasses.

Tony, sipping at his coffee, nodded at Delphine as she started off to brave the improbably difficult layout of the library, imagining he would be seeing her again shortly. He then regarded the familiar man as he began his story. People explained things to him all the time, though some stories had more bearing on the situation at hand than others. Some went through their whole day to explain why the book was late, without explaining what was going on during the other twenty days of the check out period that prevented them from bringing it back then. When Ray started to apologize, though, Tony realized this was something he needed to pay close attention to.

Looking at the card, he reached for it with one hand, the other occupied by his coffee mug, and scanned it through the card reader to pull up Raymond Gordon's information. No late fines at the moment, one book checked out, Darco-

He nearly choked and sputtered on his coffee when he saw the book, coughing and pulling the mug away from his face. Putting it down on the counter like he thought it would explode, he then coughed into his arm before he swallowed hard and spoke with some difficulty, his voice an octave or two higher than it should have been.

"What h-happened to it?" He eeped out, running his hand over the pages. He could see water damage, but the strange color and curling were new. No one had ever microwaved one of his books before. He looked at Ray in shock, which deepened when he saw the man smiling.

"I-I'll have to fine you the replacement costs. We can't use this book, it's too d-damaged."

Kallista nodded her head in approvement when she glanced at the finished rough draft of her paper, before putting her school books in her bag then putting the rough draft of her paper in a folder so it didn't get ruined and put the folder in her bag and pulled her book she was currently reading closer to her.

She glanced back at the circulation before studying the liberian and the patron, based on the expression of the liberian he was trying not to look upset. She pondered and would trust the library with her belongings she made her way over and glances at the patron with the damaged book. "ohh..wow.." she said.