Homework, who ever thought that something as mundane and repeatable as homework would have turned into something akin to a bastion of sanity? Still, here he was, claiming ‘prime real-estate’ in the library with his tablet and its keyboard-case as he typed out the start for one of his longer papers. Compare and contrast these novels by primarily dead white men for your English 101 class and pray for survival so that you could get into the ‘advanced’ classes that at least offered ‘specialty’ focuses like African American authors and women authors or…just that class on Shakespeare that everyone raved about because the teacher and her wife would act out their favorite pieces of whatever play they were doing at the time.

As tedious as he found ‘hills like white elephants’, the fact the teacher he had to do this reading for, had thrown the ‘Little brown handbook’ out the window was at least something that was both shocking and on some levels amusing.

He sighed and turned towards the shelves, reaching distractedly towards the shelves and grabbed a book, mind casually playing over what he’d likely need to site next, how to establish his points and hopefully do so in such a way that he wouldn’t loose points by saying something the teacher didn’t agree with.

He glanced down at the book in his hand, blinking in surprise at just how well he’d grabbed for it being an utterly random selection off the shelf. It would do well for what he was trying to accomplish so long as he could keep his phrasing.

He could use a little luck right now, he smiled and set the book down, flipping it open distractedly as he typed out some more of his thoughts, he knew the page, or close to it…that he wanted so he…
Glancing back at the book his eyes skimmed the words, finding…the quote he’d wanted. He blinked at it… made a small sound in his throat that was something like a ‘hmmph’.

There was a prickle of suspicion up the back of his neck, but… no, that would be…that would be stupid.

He typed out his thought, though he knew now it was going to take some serious revision. He was distracted now, his thoughts angling horridly towards ‘Other’ Ashdown, the flip side of things and all that it entailed.

What Jeremiah had said bout, what was it…changes? Powers? People in town who could –see- if you had been there or not. Something about the face he recalled.

Seven days, he’d been there for… seven days. The thought now…. itched, a nasty scratchy thought that tickled inside his head, impossible to reach without acknowledging what he most wanted to avoid right now.

It was nothing, it was NOTHING, he told himself, adding emphasis to it as he repeated it. He closed the book, enough of the thought and quote transcribed with a page number notation that he wasn’t worried about finding it again, but he just needed to…

He buried his face in his hands, closing his eyes and let out a small groan.
He wanted to avoid it, all of it, god help him. But at the same time…

At the same time he wanted to make sure that His guardian’s heart wasn’t on the menu for Eldrich-things that wore human faces and called themselves ‘Sunny’. He wanted… he wanted to know more about that –library- because it was horrifying and fascinating all at once. He wanted answers… because of course he did.

He just wanted things to make some kind of sense, and they weren’t. Right now it felt like nothing at all made sense. Nothing followed in a logical progression because…


Well because MAGIC.

He couldn’t even cling to the idea of… “magic is like science’ from some of his favorite books because that would require something that made sense that would let him tie one to the other.

A copy of his familiar town that seemed inhabited by … surreal creatures and, slen-deer, and ice fires, and torrential gushes of water and fragmented libraries that were like minds and memories.

He swore. He hit save on his paper and then packed up his tablet. He was getting nothing more done tonight…he was just… He needed time.

And somehow, he didn’t feel like he had it at all.