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]

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."

[starandhope]

Mina considers her for a moment.

"Have you lived long, then?" she asks quietly.

[monstrous_bride]

She nods.

"I was born - if you want to call it that - in 1831. And, where I'm from...it's now the year 2025. So...yes. Quite a bit of life, all things said and done."

[starandhope]

"That is a very long time to be alive," Mina says sympathetically. "How much you must have seen! But - all alone?"

[monstrous_bride]

"Too much, I suppose," she replies. "But it has its moments. And yes, as alone as I could be. Oh, I took lovers here and there when there was an itch that needed scratching, so to speak."

She knows this one will remind Mina of Lucy, and despite a frowning inner Nina, she can't resist going one extra step.

"Men, primarily, but there were some lovely women along the way. Especially in the 1960s. Now there was an odd duck of a decade."

[starandhope]

It's possible to know that one is being led down a certain conversational path - to avoid another, but also still find it nearly impossible to resist that path. Still, Mina is not going to ask how two women would even manage such a thing - her curiosity has not overcome her sense of propriety that much.

However -

"Is that common, in your time? To take lovers so casually?"

Lucy would make ribald jokes, but she was chaste as any proper young lady was expected to be. And even Mina understands what it is to feel certain... urges. But she can't imagine succumbing to them on a whim.

[monstrous_bride]

She shrugs.

"Depends on the person. But if I've learned anything, the times I've lived in have the same people as any other. Nothing changes. Look around you in your time, your place, you'll see what I've seen."

There's a pause.

"Besides, getting too close to me for too long...that tends to get people killed. So I stopped letting that happen. Best way, really."

[starandhope]

"There certainly are some people in my time who do the same," Mina admits. She's not that sheltered, and Victorians do love a good sex scandal.

"There's been no one you trusted, who was willing to take on the dangers of being your friend?"

[monstrous_bride]

"Yes," she replied, matter of factly. "She died. Badly."

[starandhope]

"I'm so sorry," Mina says quietly. "Death can be so senseless, so unmerciful."

[monstrous_bride]

"Don't I know it," she replies. "Seen it enough. Caused it enough. You...remind me of her. A little bit. Certainly not in the face."

Again, too soft, and she straightens up a bit, visibly pulling back in that moment.

"She had gills, you see," she finishes.