Careful of the stacks - LIBRARY LOG

[libraryassistants]

Who: EVERYONE!
What: A bunch of Editors walk into a library...
When: October 31st - November 13
Where: The Unfinished Library
Content warnings: Please add them as needed in the comment titles!

Welcome to the Library, Editors.

As the new residents drop into the Library, they are bound to have questions. Unfortunately it seems no one (except perhaps someone on the phone) appears to have any answers. But there is a nice little cart with a carafe of too weak coffee, a pot of too strong tea, assorted creams and sugar packets, and what appear to be leftover boxed shortbread cookies. There’s a sign inviting people to help themselves but reminding them not to take any food or drinks into the stacks, or touch any of the books with their grubby cookie hands. But aside from this little display and the nametags they’re all given, which do reappear whenever removed for the first week (where do they keep coming from?), the Editors are more or less left alone.

The Library is eternal, or at least it seems that way, unbothered by its new inhabitants. It certainly does not seem like this is anything unusual within its operation. Are there other sections of the Library with Editors, tucked into a different part of the stacks? Have there been Editors here before, and the ones here are simply a replacement? It’s impossible to say, just that the Library seems quite prepared for them. The refrigerators are stocked with appropriate (if generic) foodstuffs, any tantrums in front of the circulation desk are completely ignored, and attempts to set the Library on fire fizzle out before anything can even catch.

However, after a few days, some of the scenery in the Library seems to be changing. Little singing bowls and white noise makers pop up on various shelves and counters, yoga mats appear tucked under the bunk beds (plenty for everyone, somehow), and some of the rooms have started playing relaxing, meditative music over unseen speakers. More confusingly, there are also small UFOs hanging by string from the lower ceilings of the contained rooms, which on closer reflection are revealed to simply be two paper plates glued together and painted silver. In the beginning they’re quite sparse, but by the end of the second week they are everywhere and impossible to ignore.

At the start of the second week, there is a possible hint as to why, for at least part of it. On the table by the circulation desk there is a sign: “This Week’s Recommended Reading: Invasion of the Body Snatchers!” Next to it, there is a sign up sheet: a waitlist to check-out the ‘reading.’ (There is no explanation or apology for it actually being a movie.)

[ooc note: The Library prompts from the TDM can be considered canon to the game. Remember any of the locations listed in the setting are fair game. Have fun!]

Comments

[monstrous_bride]

Very rare, when you get right down to it. Metaphorically at least. At least Victor had used stainless steel.

"I was built to be one. To be the wife of a monstrosity, inside and out. But let's just say that I rejected my role violently. But it remains the only name I've ever been given."

Her stomach growls at the most inappropriate time. She's been avoiding the food on offer.

[starandhope]

"But that's awful," Mina says, shocked. "No one should be forced to marry against their will!"

She pushes the plate of sandwiches across the table to the Bride, her face full of sympathy and concern.

[monstrous_bride]

She takes one, feigning disinterest in it. But it's bitten into soon enough.

"The bigger affront was being forced into existence in the first place, but you're right. It went very badly, of course. My creator died at his first creation's hand - my 'intended.' And then I left him to burn to death in a fire."

She finishes off the sandwich half in a few bites.

"Unfortunately, we're both very hard to kill."

[starandhope]

"You regret being alive?"

Mina, if anything, is even more concerned at the thought.

[monstrous_bride]

She has to think about it for a moment.

"No, I suppose not," she replies. "There's good things to it. Some fine meals, good wine - saw some of the best comedians and actors of all time, met some amazing people. Some spectacular sex, now and again - can't say anything was wrong with that."

But she pauses.

"But put it this way. When you humans are born, you get to forget it. I was born via science, an adult woman. You had the warmth of parents, home, a family - science is much, much colder."

She picks up another sandwich, as much to distract herself as to assuage her hunger.

[starandhope]

Mina definitely chokes faintly on her tea when the Bride mentions sex so frankly, but she doesn't comment on it, or interrupt. It's not her business, really, and she certainly doesn't want to dwell on the topic.

"I'm sorry," she says after a moment. "I had no idea. I barely knew my parents - they died when I was quite young. Cholera. But I was very lucky. I wasn't sent to an orphanage. I was raised by a dear man who might as well have been a father. I've always known how fortunate I was but - well, it does seem very cold."

[monstrous_bride]

The inner Bride is pleased at that reaction, much as the inner Nina might frown.

"Why would you? Nothing to be sorry for. I'm a monster, I was born as monsters are wont to be. Appropriate to the stories, because life imitates art."

[starandhope]

Mina tilts her head at the other woman, considering her.

"I don't think anyone is born a monster. And you don't seem particularly monstrous to me."

[monstrous_bride]

Something in that bothers her, and she gestures at her face.

"Stitched together from corpses and reanimated using unholy science," she says, "you're eating cucumber sandwiches with a zombie."

Though that gives her pause. She looks down at the plate. When was the last time she'd had a cucumber sandwich? Was it when Victoria was on the throne? That time in Southampton, maybe...

"Anyway," she adds, taking another, looking at it for a moment longer than one ought to look at a sandwich. "You've only seen me eating a sandwich so far. Wait until something's head needs to be ripped off. That's something I'm good for."

[starandhope]

"I can't say I've ever heard of a zombie," Mina points out, calmly. If the Bride thinks to upset her, she's not going to succeed. "Unfortunately, I do have some experience of monsters."

She takes a sip of her tea before continuing, keeping her eyes slightly downcast - not out of fear of her companion, but to keep her tears out of sight. "My friend Lucy was murdered by one. Dr. Van Helsing told me what they had to do, to prevent her from becoming one as well. And do you know, as horrible as it was, I thanked him for it?"

[monstrous_bride]

She can almost hear Nina in that moment: "See? You underestimate people. Some of them are more than you think." It's been difficult, after so long, to have to re-learn that lesson.

"I'm undead," she replies, taking a bite of the sandwich. "Reanimated parts - none of me was alive until I was assembled. Though the ones you read about are much more mindless than I am - maybe that's because they're animated by fucking magic."

As for the rest...what can she say?

"I've had to do what he did more than I'd like to count. None of it is ever easy, is it."

[starandhope]

"The only un-dead I've heard of is the one which Van Helsing has told me about. The vampire that killed my dear Lucy," Mina says faintly.

"The Professor says he's brilliant. And, I suppose, it is magic that sustains him. Unholy power."

She glances up at the Bride again, dabbing carefully at her eyes with her handkerchief. "So it sounds to me as if you're far more like Van Helsing than you are Dracula."

[monstrous_bride]

"Ugh, magic. I hate magic. Last time I ran into that a witch turned my arms into goddamned noodles and threw me off a castle."

It's said that way to possibly distract her, and it doesn't occur to her that she's doing it to alleviate the pain of another.

"I kill people and things like Dracula," she adds. "And if he shows up here, you just tell me and I'll put my fist through his chest."

[starandhope]

"That is very kind of you to offer," Mina says with a faint smile. "Though, I'm afraid I wouldn't know if he did arrive. I've never seen him. I only know what Jonathan has told me. I suppose if any very old man with pale skin arrives, he may be suspect. Oh, and hair on his palms."

She shivers a little at the thought. Nope, definitely nothing like her Prince Vlad. Nothing at all like.

[monstrous_bride]

"Hair on his palms, well, remind me not to shake hands," she replies.

Then, after a long moment. "Have you picked a bed yet?" she asks, casually.

Good sense to her, seems very unlikely to try knifing her in the night. Might as well see, right?

[starandhope]

"I haven't," Mina says, frowning slightly in consternation. "Whoever brought us here seems to think that everyone, men and women, are to share sleeping quarters?"

She's clearly horrified by the thought.

[monstrous_bride]

She remembers that era - some of what it believed in seems so distant and unimportant now. But in other ways, she misses a time that had five mail deliveries in a day, with three editions of the paper to keep you informed. An entire hidden language of flowers. A time that remembered the power of words.

She can't bring herself to mock that, all things said and done.

"Bunk with me, then," she says, non-chalantly, as if the choice of roommate is nothing to her. "Though I'm damn well going to see about finding more extended bunk beds."

The ones she has seen are a bit...short for her standards. And Mina might want to take the top bunk. Just in case. The Bride is heavier than she looks.

[starandhope]

This woman is very strange. But, she is at least a woman, and she already assured Mina that she will protect her should any monsters make themselves known.

Not that Mina thinks such a thing will happen. Still, it’s reassuring

“Very well,” she agrees. “I’m willing to make trial of such an arrangement. The sleeping quarters really are inadequate at every level. I haven’t seen such spartan arrangements since I was a very young child.”

Her mouth twists a little in distaste.

[monstrous_bride]

"Better than my prison cell," she replies, dropping it almost playfully into the conversation. Naturally after Mina has said yes. And if the narrative gods of the universe were on her side, these things would happen while Mina was sipping tea, wouldn't they?

[starandhope]

She doesn't, exactly, spit out her tea. Though she does choke a little on it.

"Destroying monsters, I suppose, might lead one into trouble of that sort," she murmurs. No, she's not asking. It would be rude to ask.

[monstrous_bride]

"Mmm," she just replies, noncommittally, biting another sandwich. She's certainly not telling.

"So long as we're not reduced to making toilet wine as in so many prisons, I'll consider things mildly acceptable. And if I don't have to kick the damned edge off the bunk just to sleep properly."

[starandhope]

Mina's lips press together for a moment, and she studies the Bride.

"You enjoy shocking people," she murmurs. It almost reminds her of Lucy, in a way. The way that Lucy enjoyed saying the most outrageous things, just to get a rise out of her.

There is an interesting mirror of loss between these two, I just realized.

[monstrous_bride]

"Don't try to read me, Fi-" she snaps, then stops, catching herself. If Mina is very, very attentive, she might even see the flash of what can only be described as loss in her eyes.

"Don't make assumptions about me," she says, finally, her voice carefully neutral. "All it is? You're just fun to shock, and it passes the time."

She keeps forgetting herself around Mina. It's the name thing, she convinces herself - Mina, Nina. It just makes her miss Fish, is all. And she should have known better than to allow herself to get close to someone again, anyway. To have a friend.

To care about someone. Someone she'd gotten killed.

[starandhope]

It's not difficult to recognize that reaction - clearly, she struck a nerve. Mina has no wish to cause pain, however, and so she merely ducks her head slightly in acknowledgement. She won't take it personally.

"I apologize," she says, all earnestness. "You just reminded me so much of Lucy a moment ago. She used to say the most outrageous things, knowing I would scold her for them. I was about to scold you, just now."

But of course, she is not Lucy. Lucy is gone.

[monstrous_bride]

"She also made up of multiple people?" she replies, but there's no venom in it, it's more just something to say. Had she wanted to, she could have said much worse. But Mina reminds her too much of someone, too.

It pisses her off. It also makes her miss her friend. She doesn't want to care about people anymore. Not that time gives her much choice in the matter.

"Time's a bitch like that," she said, more seriously. "The longer we go, the more faces remind us of other faces."