so good night unto you all - LIBRARY RETURN

[libraryassistants]

Who: The Editors, one and all
What: The fight is over, the pieces remain... and the Editors head back 'home'
When: Dawn of the Final Day Sunrise after the attack
Where: Leaving Montica, back to the Library
Content warnings: Please make sure to put CW in headers!

By the time morning comes around again, the fires are beginning to die down, thanks to the many efforts of the citizenry to keep them under control. The rebel vampires too have been largely dealt with. These two seemingly insurmountable obstacles were only possible thanks to a combination of factors: the Umbra not being as blind to their human servants as their opposition would have thought, defectors from the Orlocks who were able to counter-act some of their magic, the following Amalia gathered and deployed from Laurelthirst, some suspicious (though welcome) help from suspiciously new arrivals, and of course, House Guildulf throwing their own into the fray to ally with the vampires for this confrontation.

A unity the likes of which Montica has never truly seen.

As the sun rises, there are few left who are able to fight at all; the rebels are beaten, and even the forces built up by both the vampires and werewolves are exhausted or diminished, leaving no one able to take advantage. Citizens of both sides flee indoors, and the remaining rebels are forced to vanish into the woods once more, weakened and unable to strike again any time soon. But there are still repairs to be done, physically and otherwise. Will this unity last beyond tonight? Will young love and youthful hope prevail? Those are the questions that settle over a weary Montica, as light pours into the city once more.

And then, the world begins to fade, static taking over the senses, as the Editors return to the Library.

Welcome back, Editors

It looks much the same as they left it, though the makings of a masquerade are no longer arranged as finely, a few scorch marks here and there, and for some reason there’s some amazing optical illusions on the floor panelling that makes them look like actual manhole covers. Alas, no sewers lay beneath. It may still take Actors a bit of time to shake off the old-new memories, and for some reason the fluorescent lighting seems harsher on the skin than it has any right too. Good thing that the stacks cast long shadows.

The customary tea cart is set up in the Lobby again, and it seems some improvements have been made. The coffee still isn’t strong, but’s far more drinkable than it has been, and there’s an added decaf option now! The tea has still been overstepped, and the stale cookies have been replaced by scones that are hard as rocks, but clearly someone’s getting the message that there are improvements needed. Clearly the tea cart was the place to start.

If someone for some reason doesn’t want stale scones, there’s also a child sized food truck in the lobby, with a sign out front boasting a variety of tamales, including: black beans and cheese, birria, chicken, fire scorpion, man suffering to death via battle wound, and beef. Upon approach, what look like fuzzy puppets pop up to… take your order? They don’t say much, or rather, they make a single noise over and over that seems to be them communicating, but the tamales are good. Just… don’t try to look in the truck. They’ll screech, vanish, and then no tamales for you.

Meanwhile, the bulletin board has a cheerful sign decorated with colorful blocks, declaring: “Join us in the Children’s Area for Lego Club!” Upon locating the room in question, Editors will discover boxes among boxes of legos of various shapes and sizes. There are some ‘how to’ guides for various builds (including a ‘research space ship’ and a ‘vampire’s castle’), but also plenty of encouragement for people to make their own creations! Unlike normal creations, these will actually stick around for a while after they’re finished, and there’s a nice little table where people can display and share what they’ve made.

The Assistants, it seems, are nowhere to be seen: the ‘back in 5’ sign is still in place at the help desk. Still, even without their ‘helpful’ guidance, some facets of the Library may come more easily to some in the aftermath of Montica’s troubles.

[Due to the resolution of the Story, any skills tagged Archivist in the skill tree cost one less skill point (minimum of 1) until the next Story. This can stack with a normal Archivist bonus!]

Comments

[steelfeathered]

The cotinga had given Jadis his wagon and everything in it, and so she'd had a great sense of opportunity. Maybe they could take it - after some refitting, it's quite gaudy for her tastes - and go a little further than the port town. She could treat people, and Roberte could be her rock as he found out who he was without that weight of responsibility he'd carried since becoming his family's heir, and together...

Hisako will never know. She's not sure if she wants to believe the generous thing, that they go on existing somewhere and soon Jadis notices that the great shadow lurking behind Roberte is gone, or that all of that is smoke dissipated in the wind.

[...]

Every Stormwing has to figure out what being a Stormwing means for themself. Hisako spent a long time trying to have that mean almost human, cousin to mortals, and she'd pulled it off pretty well, she'd thought. But it's not the same, without a flock to laugh and call her a 'mortal-lover'. Maybe instead she's a wild thing that lives in wild places, and things that are painful to humans are nothing but a transient curiosity.

That's all well and good but when she goes to ground and ...he finds her she can't manage it. Don't look at me, she wants to cry out, conscious of her body as bare and silver-scarred where it's not covered in blades. Don't see me like this! Hisako hates herself for that. This is what she is! If she shocks and repulses humans, good, that's what she was made to do! She shuts her extra, transparent eyelids and bates, a bit of extremely avian body language; she raises bent wings and tenses as if to take off, but does not.

She can taste the grief, is the thing. There's a medley there that she can't quite sort out neatly, but there is grief there. Hisako meets his gaze. The extra eyelid makes them seem duller, but underneath it her eyes are the same shape and color as Jadis's eyes, dark enough that normally, in all but bright sun and from very close, they'd seem black. Of course, to a Primarch's sight it's easier to tell they are very dark brown, with pupils that have gone and dilated and contracted rapidly several times already, another piece of avian body language that is a sharp contrast to the entirely human look of anguish that she quickly suppresses.

Hisako opens her mouth and closes it again. It's... she'll make it worse if she says I can't stop you. The kind thing, the good thing to say sticks in her throat. Jadis was not cynical, she barely knew sarcasm, she always spoke with an earnest sincerity. If she says the kind thing she won't sound like herself, even if she heaps it with a sardonic tone.

After a moment she manages, "I'm... Let me find something to stand on, a bench, I guess. I don't... I'm always worried someone will step on me. You can sit next to it."

[guilliman]

"Of course," he says. Quiet. Careful. More than willing to wait as long as necessary for her to get settled.

Of course she's worried about him stepping on her.

He feels awkward in his own body again, in a way that he hasn't since he was in single digits, when his geneforged form just wouldn't stop growing. Even the programmed understanding that it was supposed to happen like that didn't make him feel like less of a freak for being taller than his adoptive father, for not being able to fit into some buildings anymore.

And now... a lifetime lived as a man barely above the baseline average. Able to enter any building. To blend into a crowd. An illusion. Torn away. And he's reminded anew, what aberrations he and his brothers truly are.

He waits until she is settled, and then he approaches, settling himself down on the ground beside her bench. His body lights up with fuchsia agony, like a lightning-storm across the deeper emotional misery and self-disdain, the exhaustion and the grief-grief-grief that he offers up.

"Are you well? I know you were injured. I assume you sought a medicus. But your eyes, right now, are ... if it is not of concern, that is all I would presume to be told."

[steelfeathered]

Hisako can taste as something spikes and realizes she'd said the wrong thing. She winces, but she can't go and take it back. By any normal metric she's big and bulky but she's short. The prospect of being stepped on or kicked by someone who doesn't notice she's there is always on her mind when she's around people over seven feet tall. She's just not very quick or agile, she'd have trouble getting out of the way. Wordlessly she approaches a backless bench that she can hop up onto.

He is trying very hard not to scare her, she realizes, and... oh, that squeezes like a fist. She'd - Jadis had - always associated Roberte with safety. That Healer trick of fusing the shattered bones? By all rights he should have taken a swing at her or at least shoved her away, purely out of instinct. Despite experience with ornery patients she hadn't thought of that for a moment. He would not have hurt her hits her, right under the keel, so she looks away as her eyes water with the impact.

That it's painful when he sits down, and not just the sprinkle-of-salt pain from their one and only previous meeting but strong and savory-sharp, she seizes on that because she is going to outright start to cry if she thinks any more about the feeling of safety. There's something to tasting this unhappiness that in so many ways reflects hers, but the physical pain's new.

"I'm well enough. Do you mean my eyelids? They're just like that to protect my eyes. I'm mostly bird. We reach for things with our faces," she says faintly, not aware of her pupils pinning beyond that it causes some fluctuations in her secondary field of focus, which she is ignoring. "I should ask you. You're in pain. I wouldn't have said sit on the ground if I knew it would hurt that much."

[guilliman]

"Your pupils are rapidly dilating and constricting. I would be concerned that it is a seizure of some kind, but you seem to be otherwise well." He shakes his head. "If it is of no concern, do not mind me. If it is, just tell me how I can assist."

And yet, just as he's worried about her, she's worried about him. Oh.

"The pain is nothing new. I was poisoned, long ago." He taps a thumb at the edge of that great ugly scar on his throat. "The effects linger. I am used to it."

His other hand, still, remains curled around something.

"-- when we returned," he starts, "and you left, you dropped your flute. And it was damaged. Forgive my presumption, if it is not wanted. But..."

He opens his hand to reveal the little clay instrument, the cracks and chips patched together with a clay-and-epoxy mixture that doesn't quite match the original finish, but is close.

[steelfeathered]

"You have good eyes," she says, trying for wry, and shuts her outer eyelids hard for a moment. "It's just something about being a bird. Mine aren't as reactive as some others. You know, just because you're used to it doesn't mean it's fine." Being assertive raises her spirits a hair.

He shows her what he was hanging on to, then. Hisako gasps and shuffles closer on the bench, opening her inner eyelids to see more clearly; her pupils do the thing again, but just the once, not pulsing. In that massive hand it is little, closer to a whistle than the cumbersome, thumping pendant it is to her. Her wings shift as she remembers her anatomy in time to stop herself from reaching for it.

She hears herself say "I thought someone had thrown it away" in quite a small voice. This is a pain totally unrelated to the Story. More familiar to her, but she'd been trying very hard not to think about it after she'd cut it off herself and been transported elsewhere. "That was my anma's... my mother's. It's all I have left of her. The rest rotted. Withered. It's been too long."

If she goes on she is going to cry and he probably is not that interested, but the desire to continue is so strong, she sways from one foot to the other, holding her feathers close to her body. "You fixed it? I'm... thank you."

[guilliman]

"Hm," is all he dignifies that with. He's not going to press at used to versus fine, and he's going to hope that she won't press either. Let neither of them be made into hypocrites.

He offers the flute up in a flat-palmed hand, held steady, at a level that he hopes will be easy for her.

"It would have been unkind to not at least attempt to repair it."

And, the details being revealed to him...

"My mam." His voice is soft. Wavery at the edges. "She was still there when I fell. She had to see me brought low, before her own end. And then I woke, eleven-thousand years on, to an empire that had forgotten her. There is a bust, I found in a storage room. Nobody knew its significance until I returned. It is an awful thing."

[steelfeathered]

Hisako looks at it for a second. Unkind not to attempt to repair it, she can see how small some of those fragments are. She wants to touch it, and she could use the art of the grasp, but the least she can do is make some minor show of trust, right? So Hisako ignores the twinge of anxiety and leans forwards, presses her cheek against the flute against his palm, and turns her head to rub it up against her cheekbone, turns again to brush it with her lips, trying to discern the texture and how epoxy differs from glaze. It seems very warm. She's not deliberately touching him in the process but also doesn't go to much effort not to, grazing him with her ear and chin, some of her hair trailing across.

Only then does she deploy the art of the grasp, picking it up in semi-tangible invisible fingers and cradling it against the side of her neck as she pulls back again. She's afraid to play it and find out if that's different too.

Tortall and Yaman have changed a lot in three hundred seventy years. Immortals who were around during and before the Eternal Dominion of the Thanic Empire that had once encompassed both lands have talked about the changing of the world but it hasn't been as great a span as he mentions. She can't imagine.

"That's mortality for you," she says lowly, and, "I'm sorry."

Hisako hesitates, searching his face, before deciding to go on. "I was anma's first who lived past the age of five, but not the last. Some of her men were fair decent but they had to work too. So, of course, I was almost another parent when no one else could take care of them. Lucky Suki was old enough to take over from me when we found out I had the Gift... human magic, you know. It could've been our way out. And, so many little charms and spells are musical, but I could never whistle. Anma gave me this. I never asked if it was something she held on to from Yaman, or she traded for it. I wish I had."