unfinishedlibrary | Wayward lamb, let the shepherd guide you

Entry tags:

Wayward lamb, let the shepherd guide you

Who Viktor and you?
What Different ways to deal with Insomnia
When Between Stories
Where Different places around the Library
Content Warnings None anticipated, Will be marked if needed

Laundry Day

Viktor had only the clothes on his back, but they would need to be washed fairly regularly. It had not occurred to him that there would be another way to do it, so he had only the sink in the laundry room in use While the unused machine sat quietly by. It simply hadn't occurred to him that the machine already in that room was meant to wash laundry, so he was hand-washing his clothes in the sink with a washboard. But doing so meant that Viktor would be naked, so he made do by wearing a bed sheet covering him from his shoulders to his ankles. Unfortunately, that still left a fair amount of his feet visible, and while one would be normal flesh, the other was a purple mix of metal and magic. The same thing had happened to his hand as well. Without the glove that he wore in order to hide it, it was the same purple mix of metal and magic with purple streaks disappearing into the flesh of his arm.

He had found the washboard by the sink. He wasn't sure who the washboard belonged to, but it helped that he was able to use regular bar soap to make a proper lather.

Insomnia Club

Viktor didn't sleep well at the best of times. But sleeping was even more of an issue when it came down to communal sleeping. Sleeping in a dormitory was too much like sleeping in the orphanage that he had grown up in.

Although the word "orphanage" made people think of something different than what was happening. It is probably more accurate to call it slave labor because the children were being loaned out in groups to Shimmer production factories so that those who were running the orphanage would be paid instead of the children who were doing the work. For someone like Viktor, a disabled child who needed a cane just to be able to take a faltering step, being expected to do the same level of work that any other child would be expected to do was a struggle.

Now he had taken a blanket from one of the beds in the dorm and gone into the stacks. He looked until he was able to find an overstuffed couch meant for you to be able to sit in and read. All of the books on the library shelves were unfinished, so instead of doing that, he had a pack of cards and started laying out a game of solitaire next to him.

The Science of Magic

It was night, and others should be sleeping, but Viktor was awake and running a few simple tests on the same door that led to the garden, the conference room, the quiet room, and anywhere else that the Library decided.

He would open it and see where that led. Then close it and make a note on a legal pad that he had found in the conference room. Most of the time, it was a random outcome, but he had made note of the fact that the garden would change its weather to match whomever it was that last opened the door. Similarly, the conference room would change the number of chairs needed for whatever the person who opened its door required.

On the legal pad, he had written that the connection of the door to the various rooms seemed to be unstable, and stabilizing that connection would be the first order of business. He had the idea that perhaps it would be better if there was some sort of dial that you could turn to in order to select a specific room? So it would be the connection to that dial which would be more important than stabilizing the magic that connected the door to the library.

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"Deal me in, will you?"

Crowley saunters over to him, peering over his sunglasses at his solitaire game.

"You're about to lose, anyway."

"I don't think I can deal you into a game of solitaire."

Instead of trying to do that, Viktor started to gather up the cards. He also wasn't going to comment on how one managed to lose solitaire.

"Do you know how to play Gin Rummy?"

Oh boy, he's stumbled across one of the humans who takes everything literally. Ah, well. It's still better than wandering the stacks with only his own thoughts for company.

"Yep," he says easily, finding a seat of his own - maybe snapping his fingers to make one appear on which he can slouch properly.

"Funny how there's no real day or night here, but most of the humans all sleep at the same time anyway," he comments lightly.

The casual use of magic is only mildly surprising to Viktor because in the world he came from, magic was common. However, it wasn't something that he saw being used with that kind of ease. Gathering the cards up, he pushed them into a deck and started shuffling, then he handed a single card to Crowley one at a time.

"I think it has more to do with the circadian rhythm that most seem to have, rather than being able to know when it's day or night. I would still like to know when it is day or night myself."

"Always been plenty of humans willing to stay up all night," Crowley says with a faint smirk. "But you do seem very particular about keeping time. Not that I don't mind a nice watch."

Kai does need sleep periodically, and usually tries to take on the normal sleep cycle of most mortals, if he can make it work. But he's also not immune to insomnia, and so periodically he'll take to stalking through the stacks a 'night,' or what everyone seems to have roughly decided counts as night.

He's not terribly surprised to see Victor. He doesn't keep strict tabs on everyone, but it's pretty clear that some people are on a different schedule or otherwise not inclined to sleep much. Seeing what he's up to isn't a huge surprise either. From their previous conversation, he certainly seemed like the experimental sort.

"Figure anything out?" he'll ask, trying to make some noise in his approach so he doesn't startle the man too badly.

Viktor had not seen Kai since the last Story happened, but him making a small amount of noise as he approached is greatly appreciated.

"The only thing that I can confidently say is that the magic that is allowing the door to open onto different locations is unstable. It would be far better to attach magic to a dial next to this door so that its unstable magic can be overridden."

Viktor made another note on his legal pad and then looked up at Kai.

"I don't suppose that you are able to use Portal magic?"

While Viktor has not seen Kai use magic specifically, the entirely black eyes tipped him off that Kai had some form of magic all his own.

"Not that I know of; depends on what you mean by that." He's hardly going to deny that he can use magic; there's a good chance he's going to have to use some in front of people here sooner or later. He's just hoping most of them won't think to ask the specifics of how it works. (Cantrips he could answer. Intentions he won't.)

He regards the door for a moment, considering it. "I don't know if this helps," he says, "but recently I've found that when I've been looking for a particular room, I've been able to get to it. I think it's one of those skills the assistants were talking about." Not that he talked to them about it. The one teaching the skills felt too much like a Hierarch for his comfort, even though he was pretty sure he wasn't. ~~He better not be, if he wants to live.~~

"A portal is a doorway, gate, or other entrance. Preferably, one whose destination is fixed. "

But Viktor had already assumed that it wouldn't be as easy as having one of the other occupants of the Library open the door. He did scribble a note Kai suggested that having a room destination in mind helps to reduce some of the chaotic destinations.

"I also noticed that the weather in the garden changes to match the mood of whoever entered it last. If not for that, I would just live there and not be expected to sleep in the dormitory."

He's understood the word portal, more or less. He'd been looking more for a clarification of what kind of magic that was. It probably doesn't matter; he can't do much of anything about entrances, other than trapping setting or destroy said door. Which is probably not what Viktor is going for.

(And unfortunately for Viktor, Kai's ability to actually find what he wants is related to a Library skill, even if he doesn't know to call it that.)

The comment about the garden gets a little snort. "That would be too easy," he says with a sigh- this body is not as used to roughing it as he is, so he's very much appreciated access to beds, even those in the dorms, but he could still see the appeal. He... doesn't ask why Viktor doesn't want to sleep in the dorms. He can think of a lot of possible reasons. "The plants seem to be growing. Quicker than I'd expect, which just makes me more uncertain about how much time is passing."

As an android K had far fewer hygiene concerns than others in general, but he did like to feel clean, and that included wearing clean clothes. And the nice thing about wearing layers upon layers of clothing (other than it making him feel more comfortable) was the ability to stagger what he washed and when, so he wouldn't have to do the whole modesty bedsheet thing that others had to. His underclothes and pants could simply be hand-washed when he showered, since the bathing facilities afforded more privacy.

Drying was trickier; he didn't care to hang around in the laundry room or out in the garden while half-dressed, so he'd wring out his clothes as best he could, then just wear them damp. It wasn't as though it could ever make him sick, anyway.

A bit of searching had turned up a travel sewing kit. Once K's outermost long sleeve shirt was hand-washed and mostly dry, he found a quiet corner and sat on the floor, darning the various holes caused by knives, scalpels, bullets...

The sound of the running sink made him look up, realising he was no longer alone. Viktor's appearance was startling for reasons that had little to do with his mutations. Sure, the bedsheet covered (almost) everything, but... it was still just a flimsy bedsheet... It occurred to K that he was staring and he promptly looked back down at his shirt.

"Want help with any of that?" he called over to Viktor. There was something he wanted Viktor's help with, himself, but it was rather more complicated than laundry — it was the hack Rin had given him that would, in theory, free him from the restrictions of his programming — and he hadn't yet settled on how to ask, or if he even should. He also couldn't modify himself without clearance from his handler to begin with, but that was a separate hurdle.

The quiet question startled Viktor a little bit, and the bar of soap slipped from his hand to plunk against the bottom of the sink. He hadn't noticed that K was here until he said something.

"Um...no. I'm just making sure I wash all of the clothes I have here."

He picked up the soap and went back to rubbing it against his shirt over the washboard.

"I suppose you don't need to worry about hygiene as much as a human would."

"Sorry," K offered with a hint of a smile. He hadn't meant to startle Viktor. "I don't. Still like to feel clean, though," he said and tilted his head in a shrugging motion. "And this was overdue for mending."

It was too bad he didn't have access to the more advanced and convenient mending technology of his homeworld, but he didn't mind. There was even something meditative to be found in the methodical, repetitive motions required by his task.

"Creative repurposing of your bedsheets."

"Huh, don't trust the washing machine?"

At the end of the week, a newcomer has an actual honest to got hamper full of dirty clothes. Mostly underwear and T-shirts.

Mostly purple, in various shades, like the lavender this girl's hair is down to the roots. She is, in fact, in a punk-ass leather jacket with combat boots, fishnets and a skirt that wouldn't be out of place in a Zaunite dive bar. She wears an amythest-studded headset - if Viktor didn't know any better, and if the gems were an eerie bright blue instead of an eerie bright purple, it would scream hextech.

"If it helps, someone was offering to make extra sets of clothes and I took advantage of it," she says. "Washer and dryer is big enough that I might as well do a week's worth at at time. But where are my manners? Call me Claire Ryland."

She puts down the basket on top of the washing machine and then offers her hand to shake.

Even a blue crystal would lack the glow of hextech, which is part of what makes it so unique visually. But all colors from blue to pink, to green colored hair were normal in the world that he came from, so Viktor didn't think much of purple hair that seemed to be growing that way.

"I don't know what a laundry machine is. Is that what the machine you put your hamper on is called?"

Viktor wiped a hand dry on his bed sheet, then held a hand out to take Claire's for a friendly handshake.

"And my name is Viktor."

That's it, though. Just Viktor. For people who were the poorest and lowest in what little social structure there was in Zaun, surnames weren't always a thing.

"Viktor. It's a pleasure - or would be, if we hadn't met here. Not looking forward to my first Acting gig."

She indicates the machine, scattering soap inside it. "And yeah. Automatic clothes washer. Soap, then clothes, then close it, and the blunt blades inside do the work for you. Between this, dishwashers and the Pill, women in my world have a lot more free time, let me tell you."

She loads it, closes it, starts it up, and it judders to life. She sits down and opens a light novel she found in the Stacks featuring three brothers on the cover looking at a girl; the title is Majhong Heart Flippers. Apparently she thought this would take a while and came prepared.

"So... tell me your story if you like, I can tell you mine."

Nine was usually quite fond of that little quirk of biology that left him with less of a need to sleep as long as many others. But that was because usually he had a whole galaxy's worth of entertainment at his fingertips or at least work to keep his mind off of things. While he did have his datapad here— thank the stars for that since picking up unfinished books to read might actually drive him batty— there was only so many field reports that he couldn't get back to he could manage to read in one sitting before getting restless to get back to work.

And so he was out wandering at an hour when it seemed that most of the humans stuck in this miserable situations had collectively decided was an hour meant for sleep.

Turning a corner he was slightly surprised to see someone else who was not wandering the stacks so much as making a nest there, it seemed.

"Guess I'm not the only one who's ignoring the siren call of sleep," He commented, if only because his mind was desperate for some distraction from his own mess, "... Or perhaps not the only one who's offended by sleeping in the dorm."

That did look like a fairly comfortable couch and Nine wondered if perhaps he'd be able to find one for himself to turn into a nest of his own that he didn't need to share with entirely too many strangers. That did sound very tempting.

"More of the latter, but I've never been good about regular sleep."

Viktor shrugged a little. Since humans weren't the only sentient species in the world that he came from, it made perfect sense to be pulled into the library with other species than humans, so Nine, being completely blue, didn't seem that odd to him.

"If sleep is a siren call for you, why are you awake right now?"

"Selective deafness," Nine responded, with a mild hint of snark in his voice— not so much because he meant to be snarky but because that tone just naturally happened regardless of any attempt to sand off any edges, "Wonderful talent to have— depending on who you ask."

Sleep was necessary and the need to do so did come for him as well, but that didn't mean he had to listen to his body every time it was screaming at him to go to sleep. Most of all though he just didn't want to sleep in a place filled with strangers more than he had to. He knew logically that everyone here had been dealt the same shitty hand as him.

Didn't mean he had to like it.

"So the dorms and the possibility of a couch out here really are the only options we get, huh?"

It was a library so Nine supposed that the dorms were a case of being in luck given that Nine was pretty sure libraries usually did not come equipped with beds. Still. Nothing else in this place made sense either so one would think that inexplicable bedrooms could have been an option too.

"Or floor too, I suppose."

Nara'a has little trouble falling asleep around other people that he's at least reasonably certain aren't going to stab him in the back. The problem comes in dreams - fragmented bits and pieces of lives, of memories he's seen, of terrible futures he knows aren't real but they feel real anyway. Besides, he's a Keeper of the Moon - he's naturally nocturnal anyway.

Besides, one fewer person in the dorms would make other people more comfortable, right? Right.

So he's a little surprised - but only a little - when he runs into Viktor in the stacks. Not literally, thankfully, but he stops short. He's in his reaper outfit, so he's got an intimidating scythe with him, but he has no indication that he's about to use it. ... Can't be too careful though, not here.

"Ah. Hello." He keeps his voice quiet, trying not to startle Viktor. "Can't sleep?"

... That much is obvious, he knows. Still, it's polite.

Whether or not Nara'a intended to use it, the scythe on his back still made Viktor feel just a touch nervous. It would never show in his expression, but it was still intimidating.

"I don't do very well with communal sleeping arrangements. Why are you hunting through the stacks? I don't think you need such a large weapon for exploring the Library."

"Huh - oh." He shrugs a little bit. "It comes with the equipment set. And..." Well. "The paranoia, I suppose. I don't trust this place to not suddenly spew monsters from a book or something."

He sits down, hands away from the scythe on his back. "I don't sleep all that well with other people around, either. ... I have reasons for that, but still..."

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Wayward lamb, let the shepherd guide you

stacks!

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Science of Magic

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Laundry Day

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Laundry day

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insomnia club

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Insomnia Club

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