Welcome to Gaia! ::

Libraries were wonderful places. They had so many different kinds of books and they let you take home as many as you wanted, so long as you brought them back again.

Today, Jubilee planned to check out a field guide to plants in this area. She had wanted to learn the proper names of every plant in the forest, so she could describe them better than, "this one" or "that one". While she couldn't read every book, she liked them regardless, especially the ones with lots of pictures like this one.

It was the perfect day for it too. It was warm and sunny. While it was cloudy, they were fluffy, white clouds, not the kinds that bring rain.

Once she entered the library, she went straight to the non-fiction section, picked out the book she wanted, and then waited patiently in line to check it out from a librarian.

"Hey there, Lucy!" Jubilee offered her a hug. Afterward, she said, "It works out, since we're together now."

It had been a while since she had seen either Lucinda or Dea, so she wouldn't've minded going to the mystery section with them. "Were you going to go there right now? Or are you looking for something different to read first?"

Just then, her turn came up in line. She checked out the field guide, looked at and kept in mind the return date, and politely thanked the librarian.

"You know, I'm not surprised. That's definitely something he'd do. It should go twice as fast with the two of them working. I'm looking forward to it when it's done. This might sound kind of weird..." Jubilee clasped her hands together, looked both ways as if she was worried someone might overhear, and when she saw the coast was clear, she said, in a lower, secret sharing voice, "...but I kind of want to use the ramps too." She was thinking of running up and down on them or seeing if a Slinky could really slink down it like in the commercials while Dea wasn't using them.

"Oh, yes." That much could definitely be agreed upon. "I wonder what the rest of her family is like. Probably nice like her.

"Phew!" Jubilee sighed in relief. She was glad to have someone like a sister who understood her and didn't laugh or anything like that at her idea.

Then, she opened up to a random page of her book. It was about the white oak, Quercus alba. She thought it was a pretty sounding name and the photos of the tree looked familiar to her.

"That's good to hear." Jubilee said. "A scientist! That's so cool. I wonder if he runs experiments on stuff or anything like that." She was excited to learn this. She immediately thought of a mad scientist, though she knew he wasn't one of those. She had to scratch that off to watching one direct-to-TV movie too many.

"He's definitely going to be sad about that." Parent-child relationships were something that always perplexed her. She thought so long as she was okay, then it didn't really matter what sort of crazy things happened to her. She never understood why her parents freaked out when she told stories about running away from a hungry Persian or fighting a Raticate over Pecha berries. She did know that she was glad they did, even if she didn't understand why. It just seemed like it'd be sad to come see your parents and have them not care at all or to have no one to come to at all. "That's normal, so yeah." she said followed with a sympathetic sigh.

Laughter was contagious. Jubilee giggled and then said, "I'll look forward to meeting him then. It'd be fun to answer someone else's questions for a change." Thinking back, she really only remembered Damien asking her many questions. Otherwise, she was the one who wanted answers.

After walking some more, she stopped, looked over at Lucy, and asked, "Would you like to come with me after this? I want to learn the real names of plants around here. Take field notes. Stuff like that."

"That's great to hear!" Jubilee said, with a laugh.

Then, she headed to the mystery section with her. It looked much like the rest of the library, with bookshelves, chairs to sit and read in, and a display with new books that had just arrived. She picked one book off of the display, because she liked the cover. It was titled Helios and showed one herd of Rapidash and Ponyta and another of Blitzle and Zebstrika racing across a river. She flipped to a random page and read what was written there, "He flew off the edge of the building." What she didn't know was that while this book was definitely a mystery, it was also firmly part of the crime fiction genre. Okay, that was kind of weird. I didn't even see any buildings on the cover. And how can any of them even fly if they don't have wings? Is that part of the mystery? Or does the cover not have anything to do with the story? She didn't think she'd be checking this one out, so she put it back.

After that, she began to look around the room for Dea.

When Jubilee saw Dea, she ran up to greet her. She was glad Dea was happy to see her. "I'll make sure to do that next time." Then, she gave her a hug. "But I'm really glad I got to run into you and Lucy here."