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Post by Stage on Apr 22, 2018 3:19:11 GMT
In the old district of Mival, just to the left of the heart of the city, was a beautiful building of red hues. Unlike many of its neighbors, which were small and often visible aged, it stood tall and proud, its maroon form gleaming in the sun. Unlike some of its neighbors, whose extensions and decorations were clearly meant to distract from their antiquity, it remained well cared for throughout, its oldest portion, the west wing, openly advertised as historical. And unlike all of its neighbors, and indeed all other buildings in Mival, it was not a commercial endeavor or government building, it was a monument to shared knowledge.
It was the Rosewood Library, Mival's only public collection of information and resources.
Within the library- which was just as richly colored as its interior, giving it a warm, relaxing feel- a single woman sat behind a counter, paging through a thick notebook.
She was short and stoutly built, with wide cheekbones and broad shoulders that made her look powerful despite her small stature, at or below five feet. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders in dry clumps similar to dreadlocks. Her eyes, happily glued to the pages before her, were a brilliant, metallic brown. Veins of iridescence radiated from her catlike pupils. When a creak echoed through the silent building, indicating that someone had entered the library, she looked up and cracked a smile, showing long, sharp canines that resembled thin fangs.
"Alex! It is good to see you again."
"Hello, Nauyaca," the slender young man walking towards the front desk greeting, mirroring her smile.
"Back for the notebook?" the woman asked in a teasing tone.
"Y- Yeah, you got me. I brought company this time though."
"Oh? Did you finally convince your Sam and Vee to come?"
"U... Uh... no. I'm afraid not..."
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 22, 2018 3:26:18 GMT
From behind Alex first walked in Demmy, who flashed a toothy grin, and Molly, who gave a gentle smile and a quiet "hi".
"We're with the monster lover." Demmy teased. "His companions for the day, you can say. We heard there were some interesting reads in here."
"My name's Molly, and this is my friend Demmy." Molly said, after she finished looking around. "And this is a lovely library you have here. Not like the ones from back home."
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Post by Stage on Apr 22, 2018 5:50:30 GMT
"Thank you," Nauyaca practically purred. "I'm afraid it is not my library though. It is the people's. I've only run it for a few years."
"She's a Pientan," Alex explained. "The humanoid squamates I told you about."
The librarian showed her fangs again. "Says the sapient monkey."
"Yep," Alex smiled. "She came here from their island and took control of the place not long before I arrived."
"Matta," the Pientan nodded. "The place most like home, but... not the place for me. I'm afraid we have never been very focused on the advancement of knowledge as a species. What little we amassed at home did not make it here with us. The bora were too concerned with rebuilding their cities and the lebra with their silly little religions, so there was no movement to try and recover it."
Alex turned to Demmy and Molly. "There are two types of Pientans here. Yaca is a boran. Lebrans are taller and fairer and they're homodont instead of heterodont. U- Uh... meaning their teeth are all the same r- rather than different."
The boran in question smiled fondly. "This one loves knowledge. Sadly, my people do not. I took issue with that. That is why I live here now and why I am in charge of the Rosewood."
"Well, it's part of the reason why," Alex chuckled. "She can be very... forceful when she wants something."
"I promise I only used the occasional threat," Nauyaca winked. "Just as I did with Alex when we first met and I convinced him to share his knowledge. This library was built by the notes of many, many naturalists like the two of us. It was started by a few who grew tired of their individual ignorance and began to store all they knew separately together. Their original works are still kept in the west wing."
Alex nodded. "We've coauthored our own section here, on humans and Pientans and how we differ or don't. We're both mostly ecologists, so it's heavy on that, but we did our best to cover a bit of everything. Diet, culture, life history-"
"Anatomy," Nauyaca suggested with a sultry tone.
"Y- Yaca," Alex stammered. He looked back once more. "O- Only verbally, I promise..."
The boran laughed. "I apologize, but I am always entertained by your... you call it, 'blushing,' yes? Our scales cannot change color so quickly. It is fascinating to me. And not an outrageous claim. You collect female companions, Alex."
"T... That's... w- well, true actually... but also entirely coincidental!"
"I'm sure," she hummed with mirthful eyes. "Speaking of the latest additions to your collection... I know Alex is here for the Ross-Kaufmann notebook, but what you two? Can I help you find anything?"
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 22, 2018 21:58:36 GMT
Demmy, who had been trying her hardest not to chuckle during the entire back and forth while Molly had just watched on with a curious, yet blissful stare, was the first to respond. "We're new arrivals to this land, and we're interested to see if there's anything in this library that might give a clue or an idea on what kind of phenomena is bringing people here. Just, anything that might give us a clue."
If nothing like that, then maybe some histoical logs on what sorts of creatures might have been seen here in Lemuria." Molly added.
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Post by Stage on Apr 23, 2018 0:14:31 GMT
The librarian's fanged smile grew strained. "Well, we have a rather extensive collection of notes on local fauna as well as those from-"
"Yaca."
"Fine," Nauyaca growled after shooting Alex a dirty look. "We do have material on the supposed origins of Lemuria, but none of it is affirmable. It is all myth and religion. I'm not overly familiar with the section, but I'm sure Alex can help you."
"O- Oh, of course. I'd be happy to."
The boran returned to her book. "I'll leave you to it then."
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 23, 2018 1:09:56 GMT
"Good to know there's that kind of material here" Demmy responded. "We got some digging around to do, Molly."
"Well, we have quite a bit of time to search around, until our shift starts up. We can take our time."
"Actually... I don't think Alex can." Demmy cut her off. " Heather sent him an address to some blind dragon in the south, and said to be there around noon, so we have to be finished here before then, unless Alex here is okay going off after a giant monster alone..."
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Post by Stage on Apr 23, 2018 1:34:00 GMT
"Oh, right!" Alex said with a start. "Thanks for reminding me, Dem. Uh... you two don't have to rush for my sake though. When noon get closer, I'll just..."
He stopped. Although he had explored the majority of the local area alone by this point, even gone to watch monsters, to seek out a completely unknown giant by himself was a huge risk. Sam would-
"I'll just go alone," Alex decided. His bright eyes, which had been cast down in thought, rose to meet his companions. "I'll stop somewhere to get some binoculars. And a whistle. Pless should be the same area and she responds to them. I'll be fine."
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 23, 2018 1:38:35 GMT
"Trusting in your own giant monster pal?" Demmy smirked. "That's quite convenient. Hey Molly, wasn't there a show you watched that had a team with a giant monster pal?"
"A few, both from before the turn of the century." Molly began to think. "Both were based on the same license, but I liked the latter one more. But yeah, I guess it does sorta sound like that. If you trust Pless that much, then I'm sure you'll be fine."
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Post by Stage on Apr 23, 2018 1:47:24 GMT
Alex smiled gratefully. It was good to be supported in his desire to explore for once. Vee meant well, but she could be overbearing. And Sam...
"W- Well, I'll help out as best I can until then. Uh... we probably should try to get the bulk of the work done soon though. Nauyaca doesn't like legends much, i- if you couldn't tell, so she won't be the greatest help."
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 23, 2018 4:38:04 GMT
Molly let a smile spread on her face, and closed her eyes. She didn't realize just how sweet a smile she had, because to Demmy, it was almost sickeningly sweet. " Yes. Let's try and see what we can find."
"I'll go try upstairs if there's anything of interest there." Demmy said to them, before she turned to walk off. "You two can try the western wing, since that's where those original note takers are, apparently. If I find what I'm looking for, I'll come down and show you."
"O-oh." Molly's eyes opened as Demmy walked off. "Um, alright!."
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Post by Stage on Apr 23, 2018 6:11:08 GMT
"Ready to start?" Alex asked Molly after wishing Demmy good luck. He began to lead her to the west wing. "And, u- uh... can you read any other languages? Most of the notes have been translated, but a few are still in whatever they were written in."
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 23, 2018 6:24:04 GMT
Molly shook her head. "I know English, and that's it. I never had much of a reason to learn other languages."
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Post by Stage on Apr 23, 2018 6:27:10 GMT
"Don't worry about it," Alex smiled. "The ones I know are all incidental. I'll leave the bulk of the English ones to you and pick through what else I know. Hopefully I wrap up soon and join you."
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 23, 2018 7:01:01 GMT
Molly nodded. "Alright. I'll try, and maybe I can find something useful." She said. "At least, I hope so. For all of our sakes, to get back home..."
Up on the upper level, Demmy had already begun scouring through books. It was clear that Alex at least liked being around Molly, and if Demmy had to haphazard a guess, perhaps even more than being around her. Not that Demmy blamed Alex, because of that first meeting and her overall attitude. She wasn't exactly a people person by nature, and the only reason she socialized at all was because of Molly.
Still, she did like being alone some of the time, so why not give Alex and Molly some time to themselves while she looked for something really substantial?
As she scoured through the books lining the various shelves on the upper floor, her eyes scanned what was written on the covers as she pulled them out and just as quickly slotted them back in. A special little gift she had thanks to her... unique heritage was how easy it was for her to learn languages, and in her past few months working at the cafe, her free time had been spent gathering as much information as she could from so many different languages. It wasn't perfect by any means, and there were still large gaps in her knowledge pool, but she had a firm understanding of the written components of latin, greek, russian, chinese, and spanish. At the cafe, it was mostly used to know what certain customers were really saying that would otherwise slip past Molly's ear, and in one case, it blew Heather's latest attempt at sabotage in her face. It wasn't a smart idea to insult her with the foulest russian imaginable when she could return it just as perfectly, and say such things that made the bun haired brat red in the face and hide in the bathroom stall for hours.
Demmy snickered to herself. That had been a beautiful moment, and she desperately wanted to do that again, maybe to Sam or Vee, or even Wisma if it didn't carry any negative consequences...
"Can you please be quiet? I'm trying to read here." A voice came from behind Demmy. She craned her head, and saw a woman around her age seated on a couch, with a thin colored book in her hands. She was wearing a large red jacket that seemed to be in the style of a european military uniform, with a white buttoned shirt beneath it, and golden shoulder plates. "Quiet in the library, please?"
Demmy just stared at the woman's strange attire, and her weirdly long blonde ponytails for a hot minute, before she finally responded. "O-oh, sorry. Just thinking to myself. Excuse me." She quickly went back to looking through the books on the shelf, while the other woman sighed, and went back to reading her illustrated comic.
"Annoying... now where was I... oh, Mako died..." She muttered to herself...
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Post by Stage on Apr 23, 2018 21:51:18 GMT
Even as he busied himself plucking promising-looking books off the shelf he was examining, Alex asked Molly, "So do you have enough time between running a cafe and reigning in Dem to visit libraries often?"
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 23, 2018 23:35:49 GMT
Molly looked up, with a rather large book in hand. " Sadly, I never had the time to frequent the library. Keeping Demmy and Heather in check didn't take up too much time, but everything else did."
She turned back and kept shuffling through books. "Working, bills, apartment upkeep... I could only go to the library or watch a play once a month. Movies... movies sorta stopped being a thing when my world turned upside down. I was excited to see this live action adaption of Transformers come out when I was a kid, but then the apocalypse happened, and movies died and were turned into propaganda pieces on how things used to be and what dangers lay beyond the walls..."
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Post by Stage on Apr 23, 2018 23:51:19 GMT
"O- Oh. Well, that's a shame." Molly could not see his face, but a frown was evident in Alex's voice. "Not quite the same, but they stopped making monster movies after actual giant monsters appeared. They used to be my favorite too."
He nearly noted that it was one of the few things Sam and he shared, but the word died on his lips.
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 24, 2018 0:22:35 GMT
"It's painful when that happens... Something happens in the world, and causes a form of entertainment you enjoyed and loved to become taboo and unacceptable."
Molly placed a few more books on a table next to her. "Like, for me it was horror stories like werewolves, vampires, frankenstein's creatures as well as the large monsters. All of that, and good literature of the like, went away and was replaced with such stories being molded into propaganda. Every book I looked at was the same, every monster the same heinous evil entity to be killed with specific mandated instructions on how to handle a situation if corned by a creature like it, and how to kill it. Nothing was made for fun or for enjoyment anymore, just for necessity of survival and exploiting off of it."
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Post by Stage on Apr 24, 2018 1:21:25 GMT
"People... they don't like change." Alex sighed suddenly. "No, I... I guess it's not fair to just say that. Those changes... m- monsters, I mean... they're not good most of the time. People suffer and d... die. So I guess it's hard to blame them."
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Post by Executus Gira on Apr 24, 2018 1:54:58 GMT
"It's more complex than just a right or wrong thing with this." Molly stopped pulling out books. "People fear what is unknown to them, what can hurt them, what they do not understand. They fear and hate whatever it is they see that's out to kill them, like sharks and snakes and insects. I admit, I don't like bugs either, but... it's something I'm trying to get over."
"At an astranomically slow rate." Demmy's voice echoed from the top floor.
This was followed by a loud SMACK and a quieter, if tenser, "I asked you to please be quiet."
Molly just sighed, and cleared her throat. "Ignoring Demmy, it's hard to get people to understand that which they fear and hate, but it's necessary for there to be good change for the better. I... I cannot say with certainty that there are good monsters from my world, or at least those that aren't just mindless evil, but you know there are those from yours, and here in this world, that aren't, so your work, while some may see it as fruitless, is all the more important and respectable."
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