Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 38

Melancholic Harmony: Chapter 12

*first draft*

“The problem remains, though, even in accepting your dowry, that I don’t speak Join and I can’t use my gills. What is there for us if I have an aversion to the water?” I motioned to the horizon behind Seran.  

He pulled up a shoulder and twisted his head at the question. “I am not so understanding or crass as to demand anything of my partner which they do not wish to give freely. You have time, Ian Cimet, to find if the water or the land will be home.”

“My name is Ian,” I tacked into the conversation.

“You are not Ian Cimet? That was the name I was given?” Seran cocked his head in the opposing direction.

“Some humans have multiple names. Ian is my first, Cimet is my last. I just go by Ian,” I ducked my head to rub at the back of my neck.

“If it will not offend you?” Seran ventured.

“Do you-” I cleared my throat, “do you go by Seran, or do you also have multiple names like humans?” Seran stalled at the question, his fins telling his mood of nervous and relaxed. I scrunched in on myself at the action. “Is that something I’m not supposed to ask?”

“It is not that, necessarily. It is that…” he trailed off, still at a loss for words. I waited, letting him determine what he was willing to talk about. “I am spotless.” His tone warbled, the type of note I would expect before Anna or Viktor would start crying because of bullies at school.

“Are spots common amongst the children of Llyr?” I asked.

“The clans of the large Llyr have them and many of the small Llyr folk. The nesting grounds to which I see, and Keris, the territory’s overseer are of one of the large Llyr clans,” he explained in a round about way.

“You are not from Taigre’s clan?” I summarized. “You are from somewhere else than the gulf, then?”

Seran’s fins eased at the questions. “I am half-human Seran, and you and Taigre are all that I have seen. I have seen prejudice within the human world. I will not deny that. Is that what is happening to you?”

“Prejudice. It is an interesting articulation for Disgust and Hate.” Seran deflected.

“Those are the Join words for it, I take it?” I flicked a pebble into the surf.

“My mother fled with me from the nesting grounds in the three channeled river of Ayutthaya when the Burmese burned the human settlement to the ground. So much of the destruction polluted the nesting grounds, descimating entire stock of our people.” He slid off his perch to return back to the water. In a way, he reminded me of my father pacing the floor in front of the fireplace the night he told us the farm would be foreclosed on. “It is not that we died out. It is that my father died in helping save some of the humans that were forced into our waters by other humans.”

“You were forced out because your father tried to protect who he could?” I demanded, rising in frustration.

“My mother fled with me from the other bet-tah when I was not yet old enough to protect myself. Overseer is passed down within the bet-tah from father to son. With my father dead, and me too young, the seat turned over to the rule of the Council until I came of age. She died of stress shortly after reaching the Gathering Grounds where the Join Council meets. She had hoped that one of the Council would place me with a clan. Keris knew nothing of what happened in Ayutthaya. The Council placed me with him to distance me.”

I frowned at the procession of events. “Then, if you are mature, why have you not returned to overseer your nesting groun?”

“With no mate, I would still be seen as unable to oversee.” He sank back into the water, eyelids cast low at the admission. “It is not that I asked you to be my mate so as to take back my grounds.”

“It’s a bonus, though?” I guessed. “How does this tie into your names and spots though? I’m still lost on the importance?”

“I have lived more years with the deep Llyr than my own clan. They pride themselves on their spots, on their colors to find a mate. I remember very little of my own clan. Mother did not have spots though. She was a slim grey with black flecking. I do not believe my people can vary their colors like Keris’s people,” he tried to explain.

“And kids can be right dicks when they get it in their mind that someone else is different,” I assumed of his life. I had suffered my own share of issues, it was easy to relate.

“Yes, calves can be. So can their parents.” Tension eased from his shoulders and his fins relaxed.

“I am sorry that you’ve had to deal with that. Spots or not, I like your fins,” I smiled. He ducked at that, going below where all his fins had fluffled out, making him into a black and white cloud. Stalled beneath the waves, he covered his face with his hands as he curled his tail around him, using the largest of his fin to cover himself. “Are you coming back? Did I say something wrong?” I called. No response. “Seran?” I tried again.

A snap of sticks from behind startled me. “Hey, boys, look what the storm dragged in!” A man called into the forest. I tripped back from the voice, trying to see between the rotting dock boards. A pair of blue eyes stared down at me through them from the edge of the forest. A shot gun cocked behind him.

My gut tightened at the sound. No time to figure out Join. I needed Seran to leave, to get away from the calm water where he would be seen. If he thought his people were cruel, there was no time for him to discover the depravity of humans. Picturing every instance of danger I could, which, with a gun so close by, that wasn’t difficult, I tried my internal screaming. I could only imagine that was what he had been referring to when he had told me I was screaming when I wasn’t last night. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the one man who was descending down the rock to the beach edge where I was hiding under the dock.

Oh.

Shit.

My spots were glowing in the fading light.

“I thought you said he was some homeless guy you saw in your woods today! He’s glowing like a radium dial!” A different, high pitched voice called back to the man approaching my lair.

“He’s been talking and humming to himself all day in a weird language. Thought he hit his head,” the man called back.

“I-I can explain!” I scuttled for the water’s edge, getting myself away from getting caught in the brush around the dock.

“Oh, there’s no need to explain, lightning bug,” the man reassured. His voice scalded, sending shivers down my skin.

“I’ll just be leaving. Thought the dock was abandoned and figured I’d be safe out of the wind a couple days. Didn’t mean to encroach.” I slipped on a rock as I backed up, finally finding the guy with the gun up in the woods, and three more men.

“Don’t leave, we were just getting to know each other. You know there’s talk of Hag and Wally looking for some additions to their show.” The man jumped the rocks, knowing which were solid and which would shift.

“I know how it felt having trespassers on dad’s farm. Meant no harm. I’ll be getting.” I swallowed, hoping for escape.

“Randal!” One of the men up in the treeline yelled at the one pursuing me.

“I hear ya! We’re gonna be rich, boys.” The man launched himself across the rocks and up over the dock while I tripped, turning to make a run for it in encroaching dusk.

“Get him!” Another of the men followed suit. Clattering footfall echoed behind me as I pulled myself over boulders and skittering along the sharp flakes of sandstone. Prickle shrub jabbed into my skin, tearing at my hands and arms. The shotgun was a pump action. Each click raised the hair on my head. Three clicks. I dove for the deeper water where I knew the boulders were thinnest from when Seran had brought me ashore. A flash of shearing pain and fire blew threw across my shoulder blade and upper arm. Shot. I’d been shot.

Limb useless, I pushed myself into the darkening water, hoping they would lose sight of me. My spots were bright though and easy target. Another loud blast. A hand grabbed onto my good hand beneath the water and tugged me lower, out of range of the buck shot. Seran’s face came into view, concern creasing the edge of his eyes as he pulled me into the cold until we were sitting at least twenty feet from the surface. I clutched at him as he engulfed me in his wrap of fins, keeping my spots hidden to only us.

“I hate to say this after your experience from yesterday, Ian, but you’re going to need to breath,” he told me. I knew it. I knew it, but I really didn’t want to. The burn from the water yesterday was worse than the buckshot today. He put his hands to my chest, quickly tracing my spots to form glowing rings and lines. “A couple more seconds, Ian. Hold on a couple more seconds.” He said that, but my temples were throbbing, my wound was turning our hiding nest murky, and rings were forming in my eyes.

“Now! All of it. Push all the air out entirely. Don’t hold out on me,” he twisted his tail against my back and pushed against my chest in an effort to help me. I held onto his sides, fear taking hold as I did what I was told. That next breath in was hell. Worse than before. My ears rang with it and my stomach twisted. I willed myself to not kick for the surface like I so badly wanted to. “You’re doing good. You got it in. Now out. Your mantel doesn’t just go in your mouth and out through your gills. Like humans breath air, you have to get it out.” He twisted, helping me as I started going light headed. This time, though it burned, I found I was able to more easily draw the water in and out.

“Yes, I curled a charm into your mantel to strengthen it. It won’t last more than a couple of minutes though. We need to get you away from this shoreline, and I can’t cast any more charms. You’re bleeding, Ian!” He noticed in horror, clamping his hands down on my shoulder.

“And it smells of Kraken child,” a low voice echoed through the waters, a massive head emerging from the darkness. Long, wide, it looked like an albino rattlesnake with massive red eyes.

“Leviathan!” Seran hissed.

RT @chapelorahamm: I can’t wait to read what happens next in The Kavordian Library! – #scifi, #fantasy, #webseries #books

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Melancholic Harmony: Chapter 11

*First draft. Uh…this was not where I was seeing this chapter going…alrighty then…”

The solution for the moment, was a long abandoned dock a few miles from the bay. It had belonged to a private property. From the water edge, appearances were that the roof of the mansion had collapsed years ago. The beach receded into a cobbled together mass of sandstone boulder and shrub brush before the boards and old tree trunks jutted out to make a slapdash deck. Hauling myself up over a particularly large boulder under the dock, I sat down to regard Seran and Taigre. “You guys going home?”

“I should see Taigre back to the nesting grounds and inform his father of what has happened. He will be worried.” Seran dipped under the water.

“Like he would notice I was gone. He can’t get out of the cave.” Tigre slapped his fin on the water surface and disappeared.

“Would his dad really not notice he was missing for the last day?” I ventured to Seran. I could be upset that my parents had left Jarl and me at the edge of the sea when the farm collapsed, but I had, when we left Vail, enough in my pocket to see me to the East coast and gotten a job at any pharmacist or print studio. Would the young dynllyr’s father truly not notice his absence. I’m not sure that was possible.

“Karis has been worried. He traded several of his shells of gems to send out searchers across the breadth of the gulf. He himself left out towards the Yucatan to see if he had been swept out there. I will escort him back to the nesting grounds and send a diver to fetch his father back.” Seran explained.

“And I guess I’ll just curl up here?” I ventured, pushing a few rocks from the flat top of the bounder and established a place to lounge.

“I will find you again come sunrise. I will seek conference with Karis to see if he can contact Puca. I must be off.” Seran backed farther into the depths.

“Seran!” I called out.

“Kraken child?” he returned the question.

“Thank you,” I told him as he ducked under a wave and disappeared.

“Get some sleep, Ian Cimet.” Came the reply back, though it was as though yelled from fields away.

Sleep? I had spent most of my day asleep on the creek shore. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. I had laid about the creek shore in shock and terror and watched the water. Irritated at the thought of sleeping under a dock the evening I had left my brother’s apartment I brushed sand from my damp trousers. They would never dry at this rate and my legs were chafing at the texture. I shed them and my underpants. Setting them on top of one of the dock boards, I hoped they would dry in the night.

No such luck. The rocks were cold. The breeze was misty. Every creak of the boards around me and the splash of the water sent my heart racing. What kind of adventure had I been hoping for when I had left Jarl telling him to write mom? A fairy tale? One involving pirates and princesses? Maybe buried treasure?

The stars blinked along the horizon, what I could see of it under the dock. The moon rotated across the sky to light up the water’s undulation. Over the hours huddling for warmth, my eyesite attuned itself to the dark. Not that there was much to see from my vantage other than more rocks and brush.

Xxx

“Ian Cimet?” a low voice pulled me into the early morning dawn. I was drooling and had finally warmed up from the night in the sea spray.

“Seran?” I blinked, rubbing at the crust in my eyes.

“You are still here?” Seran asked with disbelief. Blinked, I forced my focus to see beyond double vision. Seran’s black hair and eyes bobbed in the water. He would have made for a believable clump of algae in the murk of sunrise.

“Not like I have many other options available to me,” I sighed, pushing myself to sit up. Grabbing my trousers, I grimaced. They were still wet from the night before. Same with my undergarments.

“It is difficult separating yourself from the comfortable and familiar.” Seran pushed closer to the dock side.

“Life happens and sometimes you don’t get much of a choice in the matter, huh?” I shrugged. “Probably don’t need clothes in the deep blue sea, do I?” I stared at what would be the last of my mother’s handiwork that I would probably ever see.

“It is not that those of the Join do not decorate themselves with the occasional piece of shell or brightly colored rock, but human textiles would mark you as different,” Seran beached himself on a low rock, much closer than I anticipated.

“You gonna get yourself stuck?” I frowned at his action.

“High tide is rolling in, I won’t be here too long,” he explained, laying his arms and head up along the ledge the rock made.

“You have a back fin!” I gasped in surprise, now that he was out of the water.

“Three to be exact,” he snorted.

“You do that, it is your type of laugh?” I asked after the action. I had seen Taigre blow bubbles when he did that.

“It is. I cannot execute it as well out of the water.” His eyelids descended and my fascination continued with his differences compared to the other dynllyr.

“You have double eyelids too, but yours close in the same direction!” I gasped.

Seran snorted again. “You are comparing me with Taigre. We are the first of the Join for you to meet, yes?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, what else am I supposed to compare you with. Though, Taigre said that his spots were from descending from some colossal whale creature. I don’t remember what he called it. You don’t have spots-spots,” I stuttered with my observations. Hard points where the skin would fit thin against bone were light grey or white while the rest of him was as pitch black as he had appeared in the creek late yesterday afternoon. Tracing the line of his back and further to where I would have expected hips on a human I stalled with confusion. An array of voluminous black fins bobbed with the tide. Following the circuit of him, I found he had latched himself along the line of the rock he had perched on. A couple of arms lengths longer than Taigre? He had to be twice his length entirely.

“What are you compared to my age?” I ventured, swallowing, and tugged down my damp trousers if only to hold them against myself to keep me decent.

Seran regarded me, his eyes thinning at the question to study me. “You are saying things in Join tongue again, Kraken child.” He cautioned.

“Give me an approximation and I will reassess what I will admit to in Join.” I pulled down my undergarments from the dock edge too.

“Karis would be passed middle age in human years. Taigre is not quite calf, not quite responsible for a mate of his own.”

“And you? Are you well into your middle years? You said you haven’t seen Kraken children from the land in two hundred years?” I pressed that number into my skull.

“I was no more than a newborn, not past nursing when I saw them,” Seran shrugged.

“And Taigre said that he would be full grown at one hundred and fifty? Is that length or is that maturity?” I asked.

“Would you say that your size is relative to your maturity?” Seran returned.

“No. There are enough people I know who are full sized and still can’t keep themselves together and they would have children by now,” I posited.

“I am by no means middle aged. I am not so young as to be viewed as a bull-calf though,” he hedged.

“How long did the Kraken’s land children last?” I asked the question that was dripping acid in my stomach.

“I could not say. They were of Great Kraken’s heritage. Mother had said they had been around when she was a calf.” Seran shrugged.

“Long lived then.” This was not as reassuring as I first thought it would be. The concept of a long life was, on the surface, a pleasant thought, until I realized, if my life progressed as the other half-humans, I would live well past my brothers and sister.

“You find this news troubling, but you were troubled at the thought that you would die soon also?” Seran asked after the change in emotions.

“Dichotomy in a trench coat are humans passing off their emotions as one singularity,” I grinned at mom’s old saying.

“About what you were saying in Join before you demanded my age relative to yours?” Seran glanced away from me.

“Are mates important in the Join?” I asked, a shiver running up my back.

“They are,” Seran’s voice pitched lower.

“Then you should ignore the rovings of a Kraken child who can’t even speak your tongue properly, shouldn’t you?” I turned and scuttled behind a bush at the edge of the docking to pull on my clothes, damp as they were.

“And yet you admire?” Seran contrasted.

“And yet I admire,” I admitted from behind the brush.

“What were you, before you were a sea hunter?” Seran asked when I returned to my rock beneath the dock.

“I farmed with my father. I had dreamed of becoming an artist, put away all of my money to go to school for it,” I folded my hands such that I could rest my cheek to study Seran against the lightening sky.

“Art. These are pictures?” Seran put his finger on the concept.

“You’ve probably encountered oils if you dealt with art from ships. I had fallen in love with lithography, though a handy set of charcoals would also make me happy,” I shrugged.

Seran perked up to the comment, his back fins rising in interest. “Siren’s Voice.” The words were a mere whisper.

“I’m not singing, Seran, just being nostalgic and wistful,” I admitted.

“You don’t hear yourself? That is Siren’s Voice if I’ve been privileged to encounter it in my two centuries of life,” he informed me.

“Siren’s Voice. Join Tongue. I was raised on what I could see, what I could hear, what I could play. You are the embodiment of a charcoal sketch. So, I admire. My heart sings, it seems, in letting myself do so.” I slid off the rock and emerged from beneath the dock to the edge of the water. “Is that what Siren’s Voice is? My heart singing?” I pressed.

He swallowed, turning away from me to push himself from his roost to disappear into the deeper waters. Had I scared him off? My stomach growled in protest at having not eaten since the last time I had stood on Captain’s ship eating left over fish Stephan had cooked up on the paraffin stove. A minute, two, I waited at the edge of the water for Seran to return. When I saw no sign of him, I climbed up from the rock and into the Texas forest at the edge of the ocean to see if I could find any wild edibles I could snack on. Black walnut, persimmon, and beautyberry came to hand after a bit of sorting through the briar behind the collapsed mansion.

Sated and returned to the edge of the forest and the outcrop of rock to watch the water and contemplate what I was to do with my life. In the bright light of day, my spots were less noticeable. I had a spattering of white freckles in the sun, but the subtle blue in the shadow was not trustworthy around normal humans.

Noon approached and left before Seran returned to the dock. “Ian Cimet?” He called, anxiety thick in the question.

“Oh, you’re back? I had wondered if I had said something, I’m sorry.” I scrabbled down the rock to the water edge. 

From a satchel of canvas, Seran pulled a large clam tied together with seaweed. “Please.” He offered me the bivalve. 

Raising an eyebrow, I stepped into the water, fighting the initial horror of the sensation flitting across my back. “What is this?” I asked, sucking in my breath and descended further into the water and swam to Seran’s rock.

“This is what the humans did near where I grew up did when – when-” Seran swallowed, all his fins fluffing suddenly, catching me by surprise.

“When what?” I asked, climbing onto the rock to sit out of the water. Taking the offered foot long abalone shell, I unwrapped the seaweed from it. I gulped. Closed the lid. Opened it again. Closed it. “Lord’s green earth, what are you asking for, Seran?” I gasped. A few thousand pearls easily fit within the box.

“What is the word you humans use? Dairy. Denial. Dessert. Dairy. I think it’s dairy. This is a dairy, for you. Would you be my mate?” he asked.

“Dairy?” I stuttered, confused. “Oh. Wait. Dowry. You mean dowry? Wait, a bride price?”

“This is why you wouldn’t admit to saying mate in Join tongue, because you can’t agree unless there’s a dowry, yes?” He asked, anxious. I took the seaweed and quickly wrapped it around the abalone shell afraid to accidentally knock the small fortune into the water. All of his fins slicked back as his glance fell.

“Isn’t this a bit sudden? You don’t even know anything about me,” I pushed the shell back into his hands.

“I’m confused?” he admitted.

“So am I! Take these, I don’t want to drop them, that’s a scary thought!” I yelped.

“This is not what I am supposed to do for your customs?” He slipped the shell back into his satchel. I ran a hand across my face while my heart stuttered and my hands shook at what I had just been handling.

“Most of my customs pretty much taught me I had to go marry some woman and have a bunch of kids and then the market fell out and I’m just some poor country boy from the back side of the mountains,” I protested.

“I thought-”Seran paused, his fingers twisting the eddies around his rock as he tried to qualify. “But, you liked what you saw of me?”

“I like a lot of what I see of you, I’m just explaining the customs I grew up with,” I waived that remark down.

“Then I am an acceptable candidate?” he perked up, his fins spreading again.

“Don’t we need time, like getting to know each other first? Wouldn’t you want to know what you are getting into in a relationship with me? Like what if we don’t like the same food? That would make dinners quite uncomfortable, wouldn’t it?” I asked. “Let alone, is there no problem with dynllyr and kraken, or even half-human and…and…?” I trailed off, my face going warm.

“I saw no issues with you this morning.” He blinked. My face went hotter still and all I could hear was my heart thumping in my ears. “You went silent, Ian Cimet? You’ve been bubbling all this time and now all your colors are flashing.” He pointed out.

“You-you-you…I-” I pushed myself off the rock into the cold water if only to escape my own thoughts.

Seran slid from the rock to approach where I was paddling in horrified embarrassment. “You are saying a lot of words now, Ian Cimet?” Seran ventured.

“I’m surprised you’re not telling me I’m screaming,” I whispered, unable to pull my fixation from the middle distance.

“Did I offend you?” Seran asked.

“No, why would you think that?” I gulped, tearing my gaze from the water to his midnight black eyes.

“Is asking another to be a mate so quickly so strange?” he asked.

“For humans, we tend to court for a couple of years, learn more about each other, find out if we’re compatible before agreeing to marriage,” I answered back in a small voice.

“In the Join, if we are of age and find each other acceptable with our displays, it’s not uncommon for mates to pair off within a few hours of meeting. So strange. Yours is such a short lived species and mine is so long and yet we do things completely opposite of each other.”

“And I’m caught in between,” I leaned against the rock, kicking my feet to keep myself above water. A slide along my feet and calves and Seran pulled me into the cradle of his tail. I grabbed for his arm to steady myself. “Is there a rush to claiming a mate?”

“For the sake of Siren’s Voice, you would be claimed in the Join by one of the sea king, whoever of the giants got to you first,” Seran hedged, keeping me steady as he helped me get back to the land side of the dock outcropping.

“I would not have a choice in the matter?” I ventured. Seran wouldn’t meet my eyes at that question, all of his fins laying flat.

“This is unfair to you, with your culture, is it not? You would be given a choice, a pick of many, and yet all you have met from the Join is a bull calf and a spotless dynllyr.” Seran pushed his hair from his face.

“In my culture, I wouldn’t have much of a choice at all, have not had a choice,” I bit back.

Seran twisted his head in question at the statement.

“You said you found my appearance acceptable. My appearance is a deformity to humans. No one would have me the way I am, and those I find attractive, it’s not safe to admit.” My fingers were going cold at the decisions being made for me.

“I mean, you have no fin, but there are those of the Join who are finless too,” Seran hedged.

“Legs and feet are normal for humans,” I explained.

“I do not understand, Ian Cimet. You are perfect? Well proportioned. As a child of Puca, your coloration and spots are consistently patterned. You might not speak Join well now, but you are learning. Your Siren’s Voice makes you unique, true. You would be the pride of any of the sea giants to have at their side?” Seran looked me up and down in confusion. “Any human should be proud to call you mate.”

I paused at the compliments. They were genuine and yet felt hollow for the many years I had lived different from what the other men around me looked like. I knew nothing of Seran. I knew nothing of the Join. What the culture was. I knew nothing but that the world was not what I thought it to be and I was no longer human enough to pass as acceptable. “If you would be proud of a half-human as a mate, then I accept your dowry, Seran.”

RT @chapelorahamm: I can’t wait to read what happens next in The Kavordian Library! – #scifi, #fantasy, #webseries #books

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Life of a Librarian: Chapter 14

*First Draft*

Roger followed us from the lunch room back to Simil’s apartment.  “Be out here with your bags in 20 minutes.  We have to be to the hanger in an hour.  I have a few last things I have to go talk to the Chair about.  I did not have enough equipment prepared on my side because of the additional person,” he expressed.

“We’ll wait,” Simil nodded before unlocking the door.  He waited for me to enter, ever watchful of Roger’s hesitation that I would willing go into Simil’s private quarters.  When I was safely inside, Simil closed the door and waved the lock into place.  He leaned against the door, closing his eyes briefly.

I made for the bedroom and opened up the wardrobe.  I found the small carryon bag I had noticed in there before.  I pulled it out and laid it open on the bed.

“What are you doing?” Simil asked, leaning against the doorway.

“Getting our bag packed.  I don’t have a carryon, so I have to somehow get both our stuff to fit in here,” I explained as I pulled out a couple days of undergarments for both of us and started counting socks.  

“You do this when your husband leaves?” he asked.  

I stopped short.  I looked up at him, not really sure of his expression.  “It’s almost like a going away ritual for me.  I pack everything up and double check to make sure he has everything.  It’s like the last housewife type thing I can do for him,” I answered as I continued.

“Will it take you long?” he asked as he went into the wardrobe and pulled out a couple of smaller bags that could only carry who knows what in them.  They were shoved into a duffle bag he pulled out from under the bed.

“Shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes,” I answered.

“Let me know when you’re finished,” he requested.  He had been more articulate recently.  He had dropped his odd pattern of talking in short sentences.  I nodded.

Not more than three minutes later I had a bag packed for the both of us for three days.  I figured if it took any longer, there was enough sitting in an account to buy a couple more days worth, or we could find a laundromat somewhere.

“We still have fifteen minutes.  I’ll see you outside,” Simil finished zipping the duffle bag.  He had loaded it with probably eight or nine little black bags.  “Oh, I’m ready, I’ll join you,” I offered amiably.

“Gracey?” Carl was back and perplexed.  He looked down at the bags.  

“Carl?” I suddenly understood what Simil meant.  He was giving me time with Carl.

“Are you going somewhere?” Carl asked, panicked.

“The Chair is sending us after Chyril,” I told him.

“Ah, so Simil’s been summoned.  I guess this’ll be a crash course in what they’ll be expecting of you,” he mused, rubbing at his neck.  I eased my way over to him.  “You know…we have a couple minutes…” I trailed off, glancing at the closed curtains.

“That wouldn’t be enough time for me, Gracey,” Carl folded his arms around me.

“For how long we’ve been apart, I’d think it’d be rather quick,” I teased.

“I want to take my time, when we can finally have some time,” he kissed my neck.  

“Why does everyone seem to look at me funny when I touch you?” I asked.

“Like I told you before, I’m the Guild’s dog, it’s assassin, the boogie man.  It’s like touching a rabid dog, or something disgusting…maybe?  People are either terrified for you or terrified of you for willingly approaching the boogie man and not maintaining some kind of bubble, I guess,” he slumped on me, letting me take his weight.

“Why did you become a Simil, Carl?  You could have just kept at the pay rate you were at, if it was anything like I was offered before Drover showed me what a Dewey could make, you would never have had to take this kind of burden,” I closed my eyes, enjoying feeling his warmth wrapped around me.

“It really wasn’t for the money,” he sighed, dragging me to the bed.  He sat down, sitting me on his lap.  I loved it when he did that, though I always felt bad because I always felt like I was squishing him.  I let him hold onto me.

“I really…I really didn’t think that I’d make it to Simil.  There were several other good candidates.  One of them was a good friend, a mentor to me almost.  He was two grades ahead of me in school and would help me when I had difficulty with my Reads.  He had really wanted to become the next Simil.  He knew the social stigma.  He was always a bit of a loner and thought it would fit his personality.  He just kept waffling.  So, I thought I’d help him out and go do the training with him.  I thought he was going to make it.  He almost did.  The last test, the way you pass or fail is by consuming a character.  That’s when you truly become the Simil.  Sometimes you can come out of it without consuming a character and you’re fine, sometimes…  He was trying to consume Captain Ahab from Moby Dick,” he drew in an unsteady breath.

“Ahab fought back?” I surmised.

“He lost his mind completely.  He’s been put in a hospice for Guild members.  Readers tend to have a higher rate of mental illness then regular people.  The power can warp our brains.  It just…it gets to you after a time.  Some faster than others.  He’s been a vegetable since.  I’ve gone back to see him a couple of times since then, always as Carl.

I…I succeeded where he and the other ones didn’t.  The other ones just didn’t have the ability to draw in their chosen characters.  It wasn’t that I got into it to become Simil, but I can’t blame him either.  It’s everyone’s choice at each level of training and testing if you want to leave.  At some point, I got competitive.  I kept pushing my levels.  I kept fighting to be better.  It was petty, and I didn’t really consider what I was doing to myself…or us, to you and Dante.

I’m so sorry, Gracey.  I am.  I should never have gotten involved in the Simil tests.  That wasn’t fair to you, or Dante.  I should have known better.  I did know better.  It’s encouraged in the Guild that those aiming to become Simil not become romantically involved.  It can be very difficult on their partner, and I did that to us,” he sobbed into my shoulder.

I didn’t know how to respond to that.  I sat there and let him cry himself dry.  “I love you,  Carl.  I always will,” I kissed the top of his head.  

He leaned into me.  “I love you too, Gracey.  I’ve needed to say that for so long,” he drew in a deep breath.

“Better?” I asked.

“Mhmm,” he nodded.

“We probably need to get going.  Roger will be here shortly to get us,” I told him.

“Roger?  Roger Chao?” Carl perked up, but not in a friendly way.

“He’s your handler,” I defended.

“He’s an ass.  I didn’t know he was my handler…well, Simil’s handler.  God, I can’t believe you have to deal with him for the next couple of days.  I’m sorry,” he said.

“Bad ass, or just an ass?” I tried to define.

“Just an ass.  He’s not malicious or anything.  He’s just…snotty,” Carl tried to put his finger on why he didn’t like Roger.

“He was surprised to learn that you were Simil.  He seemed rather distressed that you had disappeared and turned into the Mad Hatter,” I informed him.

“He’d follow around those competing for the title of Simil.  Me more than others because of the whole shared split ancestry thing.  He thought he found a kindred spirit in another half Asian.  

Mom was raised as deep Southern as my adoptive grandmother could get.  Let alone mom is from Kyoto, not Hong Kong.  I couldn’t tell you the difference between Beijing and Kathmandu.  Roger’s focus was almost some kind of sick fetish, I swear.  Good kid, but really misguided.  Well, at least now I know what became of him,” Carl leaned back on the bed. I rolled off of him and curled up next to him.

“You know the difference between Beijing and Kathmandu.  You’ve traveled the world,” I defended his intelligence.

He chuckled.  “Land me somewhere, point me in a direction and tell me to be somewhere at a specific time and I’ll do it.  I don’t really care where I end up, just that I can read the language and do the job.  You’re the art and history lover.”

“You deal in antiques,” I persisted.

“I deal in libraries and manuscripts, museum archives of written words.  Some things I have only told you in half truths.  This is one of them.”

“Oh,” I let the silence fall on us for few heartbeats.  “Does Naomi or Stephen know about all this?” I asked after my in-laws.

“Dad does.  He had the ambassador job and mom just followed him around everywhere, so ‘enrolling’ me in ‘boarding school’ proved to be an easy cover.  He is a Red Reader and noticed my talent back when I turned five.”

“Ah.  That’s why he’s been overly helpful with house repairs the last four months, covering for you.  So, he’ll understand if he doesn’t see Dante as often?”

“I’ll let him know what’s going on with you and Dante.  I haven’t really thought about it.  Just have to send him an email real quick.” He sat up and grabbed for his phone on the nightstand.  “I’ll have him check in on our house.  You’ve got everything on autobilling, so we won’t miss the mortgage payment.  I’ll have him turn the water off at the house.  He can check in on Dante and let him know what’s going on while we are dealing with Chyril.  We should stop by the institute when we get back.”

“I would like to see where Dante is being educated.  Is it the same one you were raised in?” I pressed out of curiosity.

“Kindergarten through Senior year.  I could have continued my university studies there too, but I wanted a change of pace.  There’s two institutes here in the U.S., one on the east coast, and one near us, the one I graduated from.  There’s also an institute for each country, though I think Brazil, Canada, and Russia have two like us.  China does have three to deal with their population and land mass.  

Roger’s originally from the Hong Kong branch.  His mom was the daughter of an English CEO who had a production company in Chengdu and his dad is the CEO of a rival company.”   

“Should I be worried of Roger’s intentions?” I asked.

“Nah, not really at least.  He won’t do anything to you directly.  Especially if he knows we’re married. He at least has enough moral fortitude to not do something indecent to a woman.  He’s just liable to say something that’ll make you want to chuck fireballs at him.  Seeing what you’re capable of, I’d say you’ll need to work really hard to not do that,” Carl told me.  I could tell he was smirking when he said that.  I didn’t even have to look at him.

“Tough luck, I almost stuck him in an ice block earlier.  Instead, I just tried to tell him off,” I laughed.

“I bet you did.  What did you do, tell him you were Alice?  I wish I could have seen that reaction,” he beamed.

“It wasn’t as great a reaction as I think you’re thinking.  He was just being really weird about the fact that I was touching you, so I told him that we were married, and that I was Alice to the Mad Hatter.  Kinda a one two punch.  He looked like he was going to be sick,” 

“It is kind of amazing that we got partnered up so well, Gracey,” Carl mused.

“You might have been pushing the Simil tests for more reasons than to just support a friend,” I joined in with his musings.

“You are Alice,” he said in a hushed tone.  He was just grasping that thought.

“Why did you choose Alice in Wonderland?” I asked.

“Because it reminded me of…” he looked at me, startled.

“Reminded you of what?” I asked as I sat up to straighten my hair.  We were running out of time.  Roger was going to be there any minute.

“It reminded me of you,” he whispered, more to himself than me.  “We found each other in college.  You never dated before then, right?” he asked.  I shook my head.  “Why?” he asked.

“No one seemed to satisfy my interests.  True, I might be attracted to a variety of people, but not at enough of a level to actually do anything about it,” I stood up and adjusted my clothes.

“Were you waiting for someone capable of becoming a Simil?” he asked, more philosophical than accusatory.

“I don’t…I don’t think so.  I’m not really sure.  I mean, I didn’t know I was a Dewey until just yesterday…so I don’t think it was that necessarily.  Maybe some part of me knew, but that’d have to be some seriously deep subconscious shit there,” I pulled the carryon off the bed.  Carl got up and grabbed the duffle bag.

“It’s not like the Mad Hatter is a love interest of Alice in the story.  The man is just a deranged individual, in the book, who gives Alice advice that may or may not have been helpful in the long run.  She was just a kid in the book.  I mean, if I was Juliette and you became Romeo, I would say yeah.” We pulled our bags to the door.

“Something lined up just a bit too perfectly for all this,” Carl looked at me curiously.  He opened the door to his apartment and let me out to drop the bag against the wall in the hallway as he turned off the lights and locked up.

“How would you have felt, if you weren’t a Simil, to find out I was a Dewey?” I asked.

“I probably would have been terrified.  You…you’ve been so good about all this, Gracey.  I can’t even manage to grasp how you’ve tolerated me and all this,” he set his duffle on the carryon.

“I wasn’t raised with a Simil, or some social pressure to find them creepy, so there’s no prejudice there,” I explained.

“It is a prejudice.  It’s allowed, if not outright enforced.  It makes it so that everyone has something to focus on so that they can keep from picking on each other for shallow things like race or gender identity,” he leaned up against the wall next to me.

“You seem a bit better,” I scooted next to him.

“I’m getting better about the whole thing,” he admitted shyly.  He turned to a shuffle of feet come from down the hall.  He ducked his head down to me.  His eyes, ever mesmerizing in their heterochromia captured my gaze as he leaned in.  “I’ll always love you, Gracey.  I’ll see you when we get back.  Take care of Hatter for me, he seems as pent up as I am,” he whispered against my lips.  I closed my eyes, savoring the taste of him.  His nostalgic warmth flooded my lungs.  I could feel the difference in his carriage when Hatter took over.  The kiss deepened into an unrelenting demand.  A spark lit behind my lungs.  He pressed into me, his body demanding I become one with him.  

My fingers tingled in anticipation as I ran my fingers along his sides, the fabric changing texture.  I lifted my gaze and caught Hatter’s hungry glance.  A beaver fur top hat with a bill of sale in the celery silk band sat precariously on his head.  A crushed hunter green velvet frock coat, celery waistcoat and matched trousers, cut to his lean figure, replaced his black shirt and jeans. A champagne ruffled shirt was offset with onyx buttons.

A cough interrupted us.  I blinked.  Hatter’s eyes flashed to the direction of the noise and his costume disappeared back to his regular jeans and shirt. “Damn the man,” he muttered to me.  

“Seventh layer of hell?” I offered.  

“I was thinking the Queen of Hearts,” he smiled to me.  We both looked at Roger.  “Oh, that’s just cruel,” I returned the smile.  

“Could go with the Duchess’s piglet,” he teased.  

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I picked up one of the bags.  He picked up the other one.  Roger was staring at us like we had grown two heads.

It took a moment for him to find his broken voice.  “Shall we go?” he motioned us back up the hallway he had just come down.  

“Where to?” I asked as we began walking.  

“Roswell,” he supplied, being more at ease having us to his back.  

“Oh, aliens?” I pressed.  This could be amusing.  

“Not Area 51, if that’s what you’re hoping.  There’s a small church out near a pecan and pinion orchard that’s been producing some interesting results,” he handed a file over to Simil.

  Simil flipped the cover open to see a mass congregation under a yellow and orange striped canvas tent.  The people were facing a stage at one end of the tent.  On it was what had to be the most cliche fire and brimstone preacher there ever was.  He was glowing.  Small orbs floated in the pictures – what I would have usually attributed to dust motes.  What caught both of our eyes though was a woman sitting on a step at the end of the stage.  She was furtively captivated in her book, her lips just barely whispering.  

Simil and I glanced at each other.  “Chyrel?” I asked him.

“No, it’s Barbara.  She worked with Chyrel before ending up in a car crash.  Roger, wasn’t she dead?” Simil flipped through the files, finding the death certificate and autopsy photos of the woman sitting on the riser steps.  There wasn’t much left for the autopsy photo.  

“We were only able to identify her by her dental records.  It’s unprecedented.  Currently the Chair is between Barbara being a zombie, a ghost, or now in possession of a very good pair of dentures,” Roger kept up a quick pace.

“Ghost, zombie?” I turned to Simil.  “Wait, so who’s this Alexander Campbell looking guy?” I asked him.  

“Not Alexander Campbell, though good guess.  We’re thinking it’s Benjamin Randall. We haven’t been able to get a good pin as to if he is a real person or if Barbara is producing him,” Roger admitted.

“So, if Barbara is a zombie and Randall is a Read, then, does that mean Barbara is a Read too if she’s a zombie?” I fumbled around that sentence.

“Cheryl had the ability to produce rather morbid Reads more readily than others.  We never saw her produce a zombie that was based on a real person, but that’s not to say it can’t be done.  She does have a Ph.D in Carribean art history.  She very well may have found some useful texts from Haiti in her studies,” Roger unlocked a door that lead out to a massive parking garage.

  I was stunned.  Freedom from this rats nest had been that flippin’ close!  A sleek, black sudan with heavily tinted windows was waiting for us at the door.  Roger opened up the back seat door for us.  I was gaining the impression that he was a glorified butler, though I think he would have been offended if I had said such to him.

“Tell me we’re not sharing the same hotel room,” I muttered to Simil as I nodded to Roger.

“We usually share the same room.  Cut’s costs,” Roger answered with a huff.

RT @chapelorahamm: I can’t wait to read what happens next in The Kavordian Library! – #scifi, #fantasy, #webseries #books

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Life of a Librarian: Chapter 13

*First Draft*

“Why are we here?” one of the Chair asked.  We were standing in the testing chamber.

“We are here because I know this is a location safe to me, and to you.  I figured we could talk here about what I need from you and what you need from me,” I was bluntly honest with them.

“What do you mean safe?” one of the Chair moved toward the stairs.

“It seems that my actions always startle you.  I figured if any actions had to be taken, that the area, being designated as a testing chamber, with plenty of recording equipment, would make you feel better about what was happening,” I supplied.  I stood at the podium over looking the field.

“What do you need to know?” one of the Chair asked.

“What am I supposed to be doing here for you?  I know that Simil acts as your guard dog and assassin from time to time,” I turned to look at them.  They all turned to look at Simil.  He had taken over for Carl when he had left the apartment.

“Your position in the Guild would be equivalent,” the female Chair replied.

“I had heard something about the woman you are looking for who took your manuscript of the great gods.  Is there a plan for retrieving the manuscript?” I asked them.  They shuffled, waiting for someone to answer me.  “Do I have the ability to go up against her if she does Read the manuscript?” I confronted them.

“It hasn’t been Read since Biblical times,” one of the male Chair cautioned.

“Have we lost the power to Read the old manuscripts?  Do we have to worry about someone having it?” I asked.

“You can have multiple people Read a manuscript together.  That can work for large scale summons, like fortified castles, or armies that will last through a siege.  Something longer than what you regularly summon here on the floor,” one of the men explained.

“Seriously?  You guys are always a surprise,” I turned on them.  I tapped into the terminal.

“It helps if the Readers have a close bond, that they can share the same wave length when Reading,” one of the other Chair cautioned.

“Can you do it?” I asked them.

“Why do you think we are the Chair?” the female asked.

“Because you like being dicks to people?” I muttered under my breath.  Simil choked.  “So, you are the ultimate stop all for world destruction when it comes to things like Godzilla?” I surmised.

“So to speak, yes,” they said.

“So, really, why do you need a Simil then if you are so powerful?” I asked.

“Because we are not Simil.  We cannot Read unconditionally.  Even we as the Chair must Read aloud scripts together and we are not capable of so many Readings,” one of the men came over to look at my terminal.  I was flipping through manuscripts, searching for a god of Europe or North America that I recognized the story of.

“So, you guys are like a one shot RPG or missile, and we’re more like a pair of revolvers,” I tried to grasp at our differences.

“You could call it that,” the female agreed.

“Are you going to try commanding a god?” the man next to me asked.

“I was preparing if one of you dared me to,” I smiled at him maliciously.

“Try it then,” he waved me to the floor.

I began reading the legend of Coyote who stole fire from Sun.  The floor changed to the sands of the Mojave.  Pueblo rose up out of the dunes.  But no Coyote, and no fire.

“See, even if you can command many things, and push lava around, and all the things you did the other day, this is something you can’t readily summon,” he explained.  

“What about the unicorns and centaurs.  Those are just as mythical?” I asked.

“It has everything to do with tapping into power.  Gods subsist on power, that is their magic, their mythology, to do impossible things.  Creatures are just impossible things, not trying to maintain a free will.  When you summon a god, you are summoning something intelligent with power that you then have to supply it,” he explained.

“So, if I read manuscripts on gods, I don’t have to worry about accidentally breaking something?” I asked with a bit of relief.

“Was that why we came here?” Simil whispered.  I nodded.  “You wanted to know if you went looking for the lost manuscript if you would destroy something by Reading it?”

“I can randomly summon things just by glancing at texts, how was I supposed to verify that I had the right manuscript if I couldn’t read it without the possibility of Reading out a god by accident?” I asked him back, a little louder then I meant.

“Why did you summon us here, then if that’s all you wanted to check?” the female asked me.  I glanced back at her.  “Because I didn’t want you trying to electro-shock therapy me again today if I succeeded because you weren’t around for the whole fucking story,” I shot back at her.

“Well, you now know you can’t.  If that’s all for the day, we have business to conduct.  We don’t have any projects for Simil for the morning, so we’ll leave you here,” the tallest of the Chair beckoned his robed brethren down the stairs.  They wandered out, the door banging shut behind them.  I stood at the podium, staring at the story, trying to determine what it was that I wasn’t feeling that I seemed to have had a grasp on just a couple days before.

Simil slid up next to me to look at the text.  “Why does this captivate you?” he asked, his odd eyes pinning me.  I could feel them slide along my skin.  “Because I can feel the power in the words,” I mumbled, my fingers tracing the lines of the text.

“Let me try,” he offered.  This would be the first time I got to see him Read anything other than his broadsword that tended to come in handy so many times.  I moved aside and watched him.  I had always loved watching Carl read to our son.  It had been a long time since I had seen him read anything out loud.  He began, and it wasn’t the field below me that drew my interest, but the intensity of his gaze on the manuscript.  A flicker of light illuminated his pupils.  “Did you know your eyes glow when you Read?” I asked, mesmerized.

“Your’s do to,” he chuckled.  He had also only pulled out the desert village.

“Really?” I squeaked.

“Reader’s Illuminations are beautiful to watch,” he smiled at me warmly.  I blushed, a smile tugging at my lips as I ducked my head.

“I-I think I want to try the Read again,” I moved up next to the terminal.  He backed away.  “We have the whole day.  If you think you can do it,” he waved me to the terminal as he went and reclined in a chair.  He pulled out his broadsword and began honing.  I had a feeling it was his habit to hone when waiting for people to test.

I don’t remember how many times I tried to summon Coyote.  I was becoming weary of the text though.  I had to have been on at least my twentieth iteration.  I could feel myself swaying.  I was dazed.

I felt warm breath on my neck and the cold slide of silk.  I looked up startled.  Simil kissed my neck, his hair cascading around me.  I leaned into the feeling, my body suddenly clenching.  His arms wrapped around me, pulling my back against his chest.  “You’re not focusing anymore,” he murmured.

“You’re distracting,” I countered.

“I’d say it’s more you who is distracting, Alice,” Simil nipped at my ear, pointing down to the floor.  I looked to see what he was talking about.  Expecting a desert village, I was stunned instead to find a maze of rose gardens, each dead end occupied by a four poster bed.

“If you don’t focus properly on what you’re Reading, you might start saying something else entirely,” he pressed cancel on the terminal.  The fans whirled down as the electronics in the room blinked off.

“I don’t remember what I was saying,” I was in a bit shocked.  How had all that happened?

“Oh, you said quite a few things that would make a grown romance novelist blush,” his hand moved under the hem of my shirt.

“There are cameras, you know,” I murmured, stepping away from him.

“Where would you have us go?” He proceeded to shut down the last of the equipment on that floor.

“I know of a room with a great view,” I smiled at him mischievously.

“I might know of this place that you speak of,” he smirked back.  He had dropped his odd pattern of speech, but it was most definitely the Mad Hatter and not Carl that was speaking to me.

“Would you like to join me?” I offered as we descended the stairs back to the main floor.

“You honor me,” he bowed, opening the door.

In the hallway, we were stopped up short.  A man in a grey suit and black tie was leaning against the wall.  “Took you long enough, Simil.  Chair sent this for you,” the man walked over and handed Simil a sheet of paper.

“Thank you, Roger,” he replied automatically as he flipped the sheet open.

“What’s our order today?” the man in the grey suit asked.

“Looks like the white rabbit has come out of her hole,” Simil mused.

“Simil?” I asked him, knowing that our afternoon was now interrupted.

“Let’s eat, then we’ll go set up a tea party,” Simil smiled maliciously.

“Who are you?” the man in the grey suit turned to me.

“Alice,” I answered defensively.

“Simil,” he turned away from me, “are you escorting her somewhere?” he asked.

“The Chair has left her in my charge,” he explained.

“Are we bringing her with us?” Roger asked.

“A tea party is more fun with more people,” he smirked.

“Is she any good?” the man asked.  My heart was beating hard in my chest.  Simil turned to look at me, his pink eye piercing.  I quarked an eyebrow at.  A smile snaked across his face.  I returned the smile.

“You’ll see soon enough,” Simil began walking down the hall.

The man in the grey suit stared after Simil, perplexed.  He glanced over his shoulder at me dismissively.  A dark shock of hair was swept back with a heavy dose of pomade.  Dark brown eyes in a thin face watched me with little more than the regard one gives a cockroach.

We both started walking down the hall, following Simil.  “Roger, was it?” I asked pleasantly.

“Yes,” he replied, curtley.

“You work with Simil?” I smiled.

“What, have you been stuck in a closet all your life?  Of course I work with him.  I’m his handler.  Everyone knows that,” he snapped.

My fingers tingled.  I took in a deep breath.  “I was just brought in,” I explained with a calm voice.  “I’ve been around him for a couple days now and this is the first time meeting you.”

“Newbie?  Oh freaking great!  The Chair’s so busy that they have the Simil babysitting?” Roger was practically spitting.  I couldn’t deal with that at the moment.  I quickened my pace to catch up with Simil, leaving Roger behind.  I could hear the squeak of his shined leather shoes against the linoleum.

Simil extended his elbow for me to slip my hand in.  I heard a hiss from behind us.  Simil slowed down to glance behind him.  “Problem, Roger?” he asked pleasantly.

“Ms. Alice?” Roger asked.

“Yes?” I asked, not turning to look at him.

“Ms. Alice?” he asked again.

“What?” I was getting agitated.

“What are you doing?” he pressed.

“Heading to lunch? What are you doing?” I blistered.

“Why are you touching him?” he practically choked.  I turned sharply at that.  He almost collided with me.  He stood much taller than me, but I still pinned him with my eyes.  “Let’s get a couple things straight here, k’ Rog?  My name is Grace-Alice Oppenheimer.  That man you call Simil is Carl Oppenheimer, my husband.  I am also Alice to the Mad Hatter. The Dewey to the Simil.  So I will damn well touch him and more if I please, got it?” I hissed.  He made to protest, then what I had said clicked.  His face sallowed.  He stepped back a pace.  “You’re…you’re…”he stammered.  I sighed, exasperated.  “Is this going to happen every time I meet someone?” I turned to Simil.  

“Meeting, such sweet parting, they must happen again and again,” Simil mused.  

“Now, I am hungry and ready for lunch.  Are we going to eat or not?” I asked them.  

“Simil?” Roger asked.

“Roger?” Simil replied.

“Are you really Carl?” he asked.

“When he’s out and about,” Simil answered.

“But…but what happened to you?” Roger gulped.

“I became a Simil,” he opened the door to the lunch room.  I walked in and went to the counter.  I nabbed a tray and utensils from the end cap and picked up a couple of dishes.  Roger and Simil had stopped talking, aware of the intense gaze of the audience that was the lunch crowd.  They both retrieved trays of food and we made for the furthest corner table away from prying eyes.

Seated, Roger turned his attention back to Simil, “I had wondered why Carl suddenly disappeared last year.  You were in training, weren’t you?” Roger mused as he chewed on a slice of beef.  “But you don’t look like Carl,” he pointed out.  He turned to me.  “Are you sure this is your husband?” he demanded.

“Cut it with the ‘this’ and ‘it’.  Use ‘he’ if you don’t want your tongue cut out. How long did you know my husband, Roger?” I chomped down on a piece of steak and chewed my frustration out.

“About three years.  I was transferred here from the Hong Kong branch,” he shoveled alfredo noodles into his mouth.  Not the most elegant eater.  I took a bite of my salad before continuing.

“Have you looked, truly looked at Simil?” I asked.

He turned his attention to Simil, staring at him, “What do you mea-…”  His jaw dropped.  “Carl?” he asked.

“He’s not here right now, but I can take a message,” Simil smiled.

“What the?” Roger sputtered.

“You can see it though, can’t you?” I asked, finishing off my sandwich.

“He’s Carl, but not,” he whispered to me.

“A person takes on the Simil, and doing so can change them,” I wasn’t even amused anymore.

“But…but…how could we have been working together these last couple of months and me not know?” Roger sounded incredulous.  “Did you know?” He blustered at me.

“About the time I met the Chair and he put a sword to my throat,” I flicked my fork indifferently.

“He…you…wait, what?” he was confused even more.

“Who are you to him,” I demanded, fixing him under a disdainful eye as I smeared butter on a roll.

“I’m…I’m his handler.  We work together on cases the Chair sets up.  I get him to and from locations, find lodging, set up equipment and meetings if need be,” he answered meakley.

“So, you aren’t always together?” I bit into the roll.  Good lord, I had to get the recipe from the lunch lady.

“When we are at the guild, we go our separate ways.  When the Chair has to send Simil out for duty, then I come get him,” he replied.

“He hasn’t been on duty then for a couple of days, and that’s why I haven’t met you yet,” I mused more to myself then to him.

“I take it you were tested?” he asked.

“On so many levels,” bitterly I got up and took my empty tray to the bussing station.  When I returned, Simil was watching me, worry smeared across his face.  I slid my hand across his shoulder as I circled behind him to my chair on the other side.  I laid my hands in my lap and waited.  His worry seemed to fade just a little.

“It’s still disconcerting to see someone so openly touch Simil,” Roger muttered.  

There would have been a lot more than just touching going on if you hadn’t shown up, I thought to myself.

“Our white rabbit has set up house,” Simil decided to change directions.

“We have a flight, hotel, and cars arranged,” Roger produced papers.

“For two or for three?” Simil asked.

“Just tw-” Roger stuttered as he saw the extra papers in the packet.  “…three.”  He looked up, keenly aware that he would have been more prepared for the situation he was in if he had just looked at the papers he was handed.

RT @chapelorahamm: I can’t wait to read what happens next in The Kavordian Library! – #scifi, #fantasy, #webseries #books

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Life of a Librarian: Chapter 12

*First Draft*

Morning felt like it came too early.  Though the artificial sun indicated it was six, I still felt like the night had gone by too quickly.  My neck ached from not moving.  I had been exhausted.  After my lashing out from the day before, I was guaranteed to be exhausted.  The shower did little to ease the cramped muscles.  I could do with black coffee or a really strong cup of tea.  Caffeine, that was all I was wishing for.

I pulled myself out of the shower and faced down the bags of clothing.  I needed to have the rest washed at some point, but at the moment, I was just going to take it at face value that I had real clothing.  A long, dusty rose crepe skirt and a soft, grey knit shirt helped me feel a little less obvious than the red dress from yesterday.  A pair of black ballet flats followed suit to finish off what I considered a very French themed outfit.  Minor make-up helped with the racoon eyes.

I joined Carl for a quick breakfast of cardboard flavored cereal and milk.  “Are you sure about the CT scan?” he asked me as we cleaned up.  

“You said it yourself, it would be a good idea to have a starting point to work off of,” I pointed out, dropping utensils into the dishwasher.  

“It’s just weird.  It took me years to prepare to become a Simil.  You’re doing this almost over night with no real preparation,” he closed the dishwasher.

“It’s not like I’m consuming a character today, Carl.  Don’t I have to find out who I want to become first, or something like that?” I asked, shrugging into a simple cream cardigan.

“Yeah, that would be something we can do later.  Usually the Chair chooses a series of books and allows the Simil candidates to choose which one they want.  It keeps characters from being brought out more than once,” he explained, opening the door for me.

“Why did you take the Mad Hatter?” I walked out into the hallway and turned to see his answer.  The hair on my arms raised menacingly.  Carl’s posture shifted as the door clicked shut.  Carl was right, he remembered walking out of his apartment and then his alter ego would just take over.

“Shall we find some tea today?” Simil asked.

“That sounds charming, Simil.  We have something else to do today though,” I took his arm by the crook of the elbow.

“Oh?  Shall we visit with the Chair?  I don’t remember leaving them yesterday.  Ms. Drover was cranky,” he mused as we began walking.

“Ms. Drover is rather cranky,” I agreed.  “But no, I don’t think we need to visit with the Chair today, Simil.  Can you take me to the CT specialist?  Carl told me that I need to have my brain scanned so that they know where their starting point is for having me become a Dewey,” I asked gently.

“I hate that machine,” he grumbled.

“You don’t have to get in it,” I persuaded.

“All right.  Do you want to recite Aristotle with me on our way?” he asked gleefully.

“Why don’t you tell me, and I can join you the next time?” I offered.  It had been years since I had read Aristotle.  We proceeded at a nice pace down the hall to the lines of Metaphysics.

“Here we are,” he motioned.  It had felt like a good half hour walk down the halls before we finally found ourselves in another grey hall with another metal door.  Simil knocked gently before opening it to reveal what looked like a regular doctor’s reception room.  The receptionist looked up at us, startled.  “H-how can I help you?” she stuttered, wary.

“It seems it would be advantageous as a prospective Dewey to have a CT scan done of my brain,” I answered.  Her eyes swung to focus on me and color drained from her face.  “Y-yes, I can schedule you in.  I need to make a q-quick call,” she stammered.  Simil motioned me in and we sat down in the rather uncomfortable chairs to wait.  I tried to eavesdrop of the receptionist without being blatantly obvious about it.  I couldn’t tell what she said though.

“We can get you in now,” she smiled reassuringly.  Her color had turned a mottled green.  “Thank you,” I said appreciatively.

“A nurse should be with you shortly,” she nodded her head.  We sat in silence for a couple of minutes before a tall man in pink scrubs opened up a door to let us into the back.

“Good morning,” he greeted us pleasantly.  The first nice reaction I had seen to other of us outside of Laury.  “Good morning,” I said cheerily.  Simil followed me a step behind.

“We’ll need to run you through some vitals, can I get your weight?” he motioned to a scale just inside the door.  I stepped on the scale, let him get a heart read and blood pressure read.  He took my temperature.  Once finished he ushered us into a regular looking doctor’s room.

A good twenty minute wait later and a scruffy looking man in a starched lab coat walked in with a clip board.  “Good morning, Mrs. Oppenheimer, Simil.  It’s nice to meet you,” he shook my hand.  I mumbled a polite reply.  “I am Dr. Edgar Munce.  I’ll be administering your CT scan today.  I have spoken with the Chair and they approved the procedure.  Can you run me through a family medical history?” he asked.  We proceeded through a litany of questions, determining if I was at risk for going into the machine.  “Simil, do you need to be here for this?” the doctor eyed the man.  I laid my hand on top of Simil’s to stop it from fidgeting.  “I asked him to be here for this, seeing as he’s been through it and could reassure me of the proceedings,” I smiled sweetly.  I could feel him steady under my touch.  The Dr. glanced at him once more.  “Your medical history is supposed to remain private,” the Dr. explained to me.  “It will be alright,” I reassured.  The Dr. sighed before beginning to ask about my personal medical history.

Eventually the questions ended.  He took out a hospital gown from the cabinet and handed it to me, along with a clear plastic bag.  “Put all of your belongings in here and put this on.  There needs to not be any metal in the machine, so take off what you can.  Do you have any implants or dental fixtures?” he asked.  I shook my head.  “Alright, I’ll let you get changed, and a nurse will be in to escort you to the next room,” he motioned to the other door in the room.  I nodded again.  He opened the door to exit the room.  “Simil?” he pinned the man with a glance that could have melted a hole through metal.  Simil exited after the doctor.  I was left in the cold room, alone and asking myself why I was doing this so willingly.

Changed and my belongings shoved in a plastic bag, I waited on the examination chair.  The male nurse popped in from the other door the Dr. had pointed out and ushered me into the next room.  Inside was the CT machine.  I laid down and waited for the process to be over with.

In the Dr.’s waiting room once more, I had changed back into my outfit.  Simil sat quietly in the corner.  He seemed deep in thought.  “This is taking longer then I thought,” I said after a time.  “Time is and time is not, it’s all just a thought,” Simil responded.

“Are you okay?” I asked.  He looked up at me, puzzled.

“No one’s ever asked me that,” he answered truthfully.

“You’ve been quiet, sitting there fidgeting.  Do you not like doctor offices?” I asked.

“It’s lonely,” he said.

“It is,” I smiled gently.

“Why are you nice to me?” he finally asked.

“How so?” I had taken to asking him questions when he asked me questions.

“Back at the receptionist, and even with the Dr. you took over,” he speculated.

“Can I not be nice to who I want to be nice to?” I asked.

“Does it benefit you to be nice to me?” he asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” I answered.

“Thank you,” he said.  I looked at him, surprised.  “Being different like this hurts after a while,” he tried to smile at me, but his lips quivered.  A knock at the door disturbed our conversation.  The doctor came in, not looking very thrilled with the file in his hand.  Following him were seven individuals in robes and masks and Ms. Drover.  The room was filled to bursting.  Simil stood to be greeted by the Chair.  Ms. Drover looked at me in horror.  One of the individuals in robes extended a hand to me.  “Mrs. Oppenheimer, it’s nice to see you again.  It looks like you are in good health.  What brought you to the doctor today?” he asked kindly.  

“What brings you to my appointment?” I countered, suddenly wary.

“Simil, bind her,” Ms. Drover commanded.  He looked horror stricken.

“What’s going on?” I asked, not moving from my place.  Simil approached me, and gently whispered a pair of hand cuffs into existence.  “Simil?” I looked at him beseechingly.  He looked back at the Chair, pleading.  They waived him on.  I held out my hands to him as he slipped the metal loops around my wrists.  “You seem to be behaving nicely today,” one of the other Chair stated.

“Can I ask why I’m being hand cuffed?” I asked.

“We will discuss this in a different…safer…place,” Another Chair stated.  A gag was produced from one of the Chair’s robes.  “You put that on me and you will regret it immediately,” I informed them.  The Chair handed it to Simil.  His coloration paled as he studied it.  “I can go with you willingly and with less disturbances if you just treat me with an inkling of respect,” I bit out between clamped teeth.

“We respect the power you weild and that’s why we must treat you in such a manner,” the female Chair responded.

“I signed your damn papers!  At least I know I’m keeping my end of the bargain!” I shouted at them. I stood up from the chair and took the gag out of Simil’s trembling fingers.  “Where the hell are we going!  I stomped toward the door.  One of the Chair moved to block my way.  “Well, if I’m cooperating to go whereever the fuck you are wanting me to go, you can damn well get out of my way!” I shouted at him.  

The man reached for me.  A light whisper in the chaos.  A singing slash of metal and the crunch of metal cracking tile had me falling back against Simil’s chest.  One arm wrapped around my waist, and his chin wrested against my head.  A longsword stood between the Chair and me, Simil’s gloved hand wrapped around the hilt.  “Simil?” the man growled.

“See, I told you he was acting weird,” Ms. Drover pointed at us.  I turned a seething eye on her.

“I’m seeing that, Ms. Drover,” the female Chair responded.

“You’ve bound her as much as I’m going to let you,” Simil hissed.  The male Chair stepped back.  The Dr. was shaking, a cold sweat pouring off him.  “Just get them out of my clinic!” he yelped.

I could feel the power of a Read running through my arms.  The handcuffs cracked under a sudden burst of extreme cold.  “And that’s as much as I’m going to let you bind me,” I chucked the handcuffs out the door.

Three of the Chair leaped at me, pulling at Simil and myself.  A torrential downpour of water sudden soaked everyone.  Snow blew into the room, dropping the temperature to negative thirty in seconds.  “Back off!” I yelled, trying to get them to let go of me.  “Damn it, just tell me what is going on!  If you want my cooperation, I work better with people if they just fucking talk to me!” I bit out as I dropped the temperature in the room again.  “And just to mention it, if it wasn’t already obvious, I can Read without saying anything or moving my hands, so binding me won’t benefit you anyway!” I headbutted one of the Chair.  The mask cracked and fell off.  A middle aged man in a goatee stared back at me, stunned.  He scrambled to grab his mask.

The Chair was having difficulty in the extreme cold.  They were beginning to shake uncontrollably.  “Hypothermia, do you want to feel it?  I have quite a few lines from Jack London memorized,” I seethed.  Finally the last of the Chair let go of me.

“She really is a Dewey,” the last of the Chair murmured in the onslaught of frigid cold.

“That was the whole point of me coming here, bastard!  I was trying to get a starting point.  I was doing what I signed up for!  That doesn’t mean you should harrass me like this every freaking time I do something,” I shouted at them, exasperated.

“No,” Ms. Drover took the file from the Dr. and flicked it at me.  The papers fell around me.  Simil bent to pick them up and hand them to me.  I looked at them, stunned.  “Simil,” I asked, the cold stopping as suddenly as it started.  He looked at me, concerned.  “I need Carl,” I whispered, my hand shaking.  He leaned into me, gently kissing me.  

“What’s wrong, Gracey?” Carl asked.  He looked up, stunned to see the whole Chair in a doctor’s waiting room.  I handed him one of the scans.  “Why do you have my scan here?” he asked. 

“That’s not yours, Carl,” I said, knowing with that one sentence what I feared was true.

“That’s her’s,” the Dr. answered.  “Who are you?  What happened to Simil?” he asked.

“I’m her husband, Dr. Munce,” he wrapped himself around me, trying to protect me in some way from the Chair.

“Are you sure about that, Simil?” the Chair asked.

“Who are you?” Ms. Drover asked me.

“I’m Grace Alice Oppenheimer,” I stated, but I wasn’t as sure of myself as I was ten minutes ago.

“Do you really not remember who you are, Dewey?” the man with the broken mask asked.

“There has to be something wrong,” I answered.

“Who did you consume?” another Chair asked.

“I don’t know.  I don’t know what’s going on,” I shook.  The scan had the same blossom of color as Carl’s did when he had consumed his character.

“When did this happen?  Simil, did you have her take on a character yesterday without the proper procedures?” accused the female chair.

“No…he didn’t.  I don’t remember ever consuming a character.  There has to be something wrong with this scan,” I said.

“With what you can do, I’d have to argue not.  You are not Grace Alice Oppenheimer,” the Chair that had tried to block the door said.  I swallowed, confused.

“Who am I then?” I whispered, feeling tears drawing near the surface.  I looked up at them, scared.  “I don’t feel safe here,” I gasped.  I searched Carl’s face, begging him silently to fix this.

“It’s going to be okay, Gracey.  We’ll figure this out,” he tried to reassure me.

“Where were you taking me?” I asked.

“To Unabridged,” the female Chair answered.  Carl cursed.  

“If you were taking me there, you probably had a very good reason.  Take me there,” I asked Carl.  

“Gracey,” he beseeched.  

“Carl…?” I was trying not to breakdown in front of the Chair, but my mental fortitude was just a hairs width from being completely shot.  He nodded and pushed us out the door.  The Chair followed behind as we rushed through the halls at a fast clip.  Twists and turns were dizzying.

We ended up at a door that looked old and rusted.  It gave me the creeps.  Carl turned me to him.  “Are you sure of this, Gracey?  What’s on the other side of that door is not a pleasant experience,” he explained.  

“What is Unabridged?” I asked, grasping at his arm as I turned to the Chair.

“We allow the Simil free reign, we see just what the character in full encompasses,” Ms. Drover answered.

“They strip you bare, put you on a cold metal bed and strap you down.  Then they stick you with needles and pins and electrodes until you feel like your brain is melting and you want to die.  Then you black out.  When you wake up, you’re in a cold cell, rocking back and forth, feeling like you were just opened up and your skin was flayed and stretched out to be sewn up again with seering hot needles,” Carl bit out, glaring at the Chair.

“It forces the repressed character to take over, in an environment that is safe to us, so that we can verify who the character is and see what powers they wield,” one of the male Chairs tried to qualify.

“It’s torture,” Carl hissed.

“Did you know this was going to happen to me when I signed up to be a Dewey?” I turned to Carl.

“I had hoped to forewarn you about it before you signed the papers,” he bowed his head.  I fought my terror.  I reached for the door, my hands trembling.  I swallowed, nervous.  I finally laid my hand on the door knob and twisted it open.

Inside the room, around a small privacy wall was a white tiled chamber.  A metal table sat in the middle, operating theater lights hung from the ceiling.  A drain in the center of the floor didn’t bode well for my opinion of the place.  Machines were plugged in around the table.  A small man, sitting in a chair in the corner, looked up at us, startled, his eyes locking on me.  “Why is she not bound?” he practically screeched.  

I glared at him.  “Shut up.  This is humiliating and scary enough to not have some weasel yelling at me too,” I snapped.  He rose out of his chair, rushing me.  He stopped short at the tip of a leveled broadsword.  The man checked himself, suddenly confronted with the cotton candy clown of death.

“Do I at least get a hospital gown or something?” I asked, staring at the table.  

“No.  Cold is meant to hurt,” Simil answered.

“And this is why they pay us the big bucks,” I grumbled as I pulled my shirt over my head.

“What are you doing? Simil!” the man continued to yell.  “Chair!” he turned to the robed figures.  They had all turned away from me.

“Simil, he does anything uncouth…” I shivered in the frigid temperature as I slid my undergarments off.

“He won’t be the only one to die in this room,” he turned his disorienting gaze on the Chair.  They turned to his threat as I climbed up on the cold table.  I sucked in my breath.  The sting of the metal on my skin was just the beginning.  Simil directed the man at sword point.  “Don’t abandon me,” I pleaded with Simil as the man clamped the padded restraints on my wrists and ankles and began to place electro-pads on my skin.  I gritted my teeth as a series of IVs were placed in my arms.  It wasn’t bad until he proceeded to set another pair on the top of my hands.  He then went to my feet.  I really wanted to die when he set another pair in my souls.  Crying, screaming, and cursing were about all I could do at that point.  When the needles were set, and I couldn’t fight my shaking anymore, Simil floated into my teary eyed vision.  “I know you don’t want this, but it will keep you from biting your tongue off,” he held out a mouth guard with a strap.  

“Only you,” I gulped, tears streamed down my face and I opened my mouth.  He brushed my cheek gently as he settled the mouth guard around my teeth and velcroed the closure behind my head.

Then the man started the machines.  Various liquids dripped through the IVs.  I felt like my skin was melting off.  The IV dripped for three hundred beats before heat surged through my veins and stars popped behind my eyes.  Four hundred and eight beats and my ears began to ring as my arms felt fuzzy.  Two hundred and seventy-two beats and my vision began to tunnel and all I could hear was the ocean.  Eight hundred and three beats: a searing pain, like a million little jagged knives flaying my skin ran across me and I buckled and contorted, trying to get away from the feeling.  Load after load, beat after beat, of variable pain triggered my nerve endings.  It felt like time had slowed down to the drip of an IV line.  I could only take it with every wave.  The power built under my skin like it had the day before, but there was no outlet.  I could only face the cage that was my body.  The power surged as I tried to release it, to go with it.  Then it all stopped, suddenly.

I was staring at the ceiling, blinking through the pain.  The bleached smell of the room had been replaced with the smell of…roses and…tea.  I turned my head to see the entire room taken over with a garden.  The Chair stood stunned in the room, distracted with butterflies and birds of a strange sort.  A table in the corner held a menagerie of pots and teacups.

Simil’s face swam into view.  “Alice?” he whispered.  I blinked at him.  He reached over and gently removed the mouth guard.  “Simil?” I asked.

“Who are you?” The Chair asked in unison.

“Ms. Alice?  It’s really you,” Simil’s face beamed.

“Dear, Hatter, it’s always been me,” I answered him gently.  I was still trying to wrap my head around the pain I had just dealt with.

“Simil, who is she?” The Chair asked once more.

“She is Alice,” he answered them happily.

“No, we know she is called Grace Alice Oppenheimer.  Who is she?” Ms. Drover pressed.

“You are as loony as the Walrus, Ms. Drover,” Simil replied.  “She is Ms. Alice that I met all those years ago,” he smiled down at me.

“You mean she is Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?” One of the male Chair asked, stunned.

“It’d be nice if I could have my clothes back on while we talk about this,” I mumbled.

“Why is she still talking like herself?” one of the other Chair asked while the weazel unhooked me.  I hissed when the needles were removed from my feet.  “Why does that have to hurt so bloody much,” I retorted.

“Because we have to force your repressed character out.  The first time a character is consumed, the brain tries to close off ties to the character.  It’s to keep the mind intact as much as possible.  If you can break the wall before it is built, the character is able to more easily cross over,” a different Chair explained.

“I thought I was supposed to black out.  God that would have been better than being awake for that experience.  At least a morphine drip or something would have been polite,” I groused.  They unclipped my hands and feet.  I sat up and rubbed at the bruises.  “I’m not gonna be able to walk for a couple of days, you heathens,” I shot at them, looking at my feet.  Simil handed me my clothes.

I pulled them on while the Chair walked around the garden, mesmerized with the detail.  Simil brought me a cup of tea.  He sat down on the table next to me.  “Thank you,” I whispered to him.  He smiled encouragingly.

“How long have you been like this, Alice?” Ms. Drover finally turned and asked me.

“You know, I don’t have any memories of my parents from before I was six?” I chuckled morosely.  I had to think about it.  I remembered first grade.  I remembered the teachers always amused with my sense of imagination.  I never really thought too much about it though.  My parents had always acted a little concerned about my actions, but I thought that was normal.

“Is it possible?” One of the Chair asked another.

“Did she consume a character at such a young age?” The other responded.

“But why did she phase so late?” the female Chair asked.

“Are there others like her?” another one asked, trembling.

“Now what?” I asked, standing up.  They all turned to me.  

“I take you home,” Simil made it a statement.

“Simil, we must discuss your behavior!” one of the Chair stepped forward.

“Even the best of trained dogs bite, Robinson,” Simil cautioned.  The man withdrew a step.

“Going back to the apartment sounds nice,” I took the crook of his elbow.  My feet stung, supporting my weight.  I wasn’t going to stay in that room one more second.  I hoped to never see the place again.

“You need to inform your husband of this,” Simil cautioned.

“Yes,” I agreed.  One of the Chair strangled a squeaking protest.  I leveled a gaze at them.  “I’ll meet with you tomorrow in the testing grounds to discuss this further,” I told them as we walked out of the room.

Simil walked me back to his apartment in silence.  He unlocked the door and held it open for me to enter first.  Inside the room, he closed the door behind us with a click.  He caught my hand, pulling me up against the wall next to the door.  He pinned me, one hand pulling my waist against his roughly.  He kissed me harshly.  Resting his forehead against mine he drew in ragged breaths.  “You are terrifying in your earnesty, Alice,” Simil informed me.  I stared up at him in a daze.  My lips felt swollen and my core trembled.  I gently caressed his cheek.  He kissed me again, more gently as his hands held me more tightly to him.  His lean strength pressed against me.  “Why did you do that?” he asked, finally relenting.  I braced myself against the wall, my knees shaking and threatening to cave.

“I’ve done a lot, Hatter,” I stated as I tried to catch my breath.

“Why did you allow them to Unabridge you?” he specified.

“Because it meant I controlled the situation,” I answered him, resting my hand on his shoulder.  “It meant they couldn’t take away my free will.”

“You need to speak with your husband, Alice,” Simil kissed my hand.  His demeaner shifted, and I knew Carl was back.  He looked up at me, surprised to be back in the apartment.  He pulled me to him, burying his face in my hair.  “I was so scared for you,” he sobbed.  “When I saw the scans…I couldn’t believe it.  I didn’t know that you had consumed a character already,” he pulled me to sit at the counter stools.

“Carl,” I held his attention.  “They Unabridged me,” I told him.

“God, that had to be horrible.  You’re here though, did Simil watch out for you?” he asked, hopeful.  I nodded my head, chewing on my lip.  “What’s wrong?  Did you find out what character you consumed?” he asked.

“That’s the thing,” I reached for him, but pulled my hand back to my lap, unable to touch him.

“What is it, Gracey?” he asked.

“The character never came out,” I told him.

“So, you aren’t a Dewey yet, the scans were wrong?” he asked with relief.  I shook my head, and horror crossed his face.

“I think it happened so long ago.  I’m…I’m Alice, I’m the Alice to your Mad Hatter,” I tried explaining.

“I’m not following, Grace,” he said, confused.

“You told me yesterday of your fear…of one day not waking up…” I rubbed at my shoulder, unable to look him in the eye.  He sat, stunned, unable to move.  “I am what you fear,” I explained.

“You mean…you aren’t Grace?” he looked crest fallen.  “For…for how long?  I mean, you just phased, it’s not like this was happening recently?” he asked.  “Were you Grace when you had Dante…when we married…when we met?” he persisted.  

I shook my head.  “Grace Alice Merdik consumed me when she was very young, when she was just learning how to read.  I don’t think she ever realized what she did.  I can remember growing up, from about the age of six.  That’s my best guess at when I became me,” I tried to explain.  That was the best I could understand about what was going on.  That had to be the explanation for why I couldn’t remember my parents before the age of six.  Why I had always suspected I was adopted.

“But you don’t remember your story,” he chirped.

“I remember the book because I’ve read to Dante a billion times.  I’ve had dreams about Wonderland, but I always thought it was because of reading,” I set my hands on the counter, leaning against it.

“You are a little girl though, not much beyond the age of what, eleven?” he asked.  

“Have you ever watched the movie Hook?” I asked him.  He nodded.  “Do you remember how Peter grew up and forgot everything about Neverland?” I pressed.

“You grew up,” he mused.  “But why have you never Read anything out before?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  I mean, the first time it ever happened, that I can say definitively was back in the warehouse when I was sorting books.  I mean, yeah, I felt like I had characters from books come to life in crowded buildings, things like that, but I wasn’t aware of actually doing anything on my own,” I guessed.  “Maybe I broke the amount of energy it took to consume a character at that age and I didn’t gain it back all at once, but it had to accumulate over time?” I mused.

“What about Mad Hatter?” he asked me.  I looked at him, perplexed.  “How did he take finding out that you were Alice?  Was he there for you during…” he fidgeted.   I blushed, my eyes glancing away from him.  “Your character is supposed to be a child,” he protested.  

“I’m the main character to his story line, and he just met me all grown up,” I mumbled.

“So…you and he…”he tried to wrap his mouth around the words.

“Kissed…”I supplied, not able to look at him.  He stood up suddenly and walked away from me.  I looked up at him, trying to fight down my feelings of being hurt.  It had to hurt him too, to find out his wife was nothing more than a character from a book and his character was in love with her just as much as he was.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Gracey,” he moved across the room to the window.  I sat there in silence, not sure how I was supposed to respond.  This was so frustrating.  “You…you’re already a Dewey.  There’s not much left for me to teach you,” he brushed at a few fly aways from his pony tail.

“Are you telling me to leave?” I asked him, standing up.  He looked up at me, startled, like I had just slashed him with a knife.

“No, I-I just…” he paused, not sure what he was trying to say.  It wasn’t going to do either of us any good for me to blow up right now.  I wanted to grab my things and run, but the only person I would be running to right now was standing in this room.

“What do you want me to do, Carl?  I don’t know what I can say right now to you to make you okay with what is happening.  That’s the operative word here, I guess.  Making you do anything takes away your decision here.  See, the thing is, even if I left here, I don’t know where I would go.  I’m a Dewey in a Library Guild.  Like Simil, I can only guess that we are not well tolerated in most places.  The only place I would be running to is back here, because I only know you and the Mad Hatter.  I am isolated, here.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.  If I kiss you, Simil might come out, and if I kiss Simil, you might come out.  What do you want me to do?” I pressed him, feeling like the remainder of my strength for the day was cracking.  He walked to me.  I allowed him to wrap his arms around me and sagged into him.

“I’m sorry, Gracey.  I’m not being fair to you either.

“We haven’t even seen each other, not like a married couple, in almost five months now,” I grumbled into his jacket.  He stiffened at my admission.

“Five months?” he asked.

“It’s almost April,” I informed him.

“Jeez…I’m so sorry, Gracey,” he leaned his head against mine.

“We’ll figure it out, Carl.  That’s something we’ve always been good at doing.  For now, I’m exhausted, and my feet are killing me,” I withdrew from his embrace.  I pulled my cardigan off and my shoes.  “Gracey!” he exclaimed, seeing the bruising on the bottom of my feet.  “Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled about it either,” I pulled my shirt over my head for the third time that day and tossed it on the counter stool.  I walked into the bathroom, peeling my skirt off.  I turned the plug in the tub and began running hot water for a bath.

“Damn it! They need to find a better way then Unabridging someone to verify character possession,” Carl exclaimed behind me.  I turned in the mirror to see what he saw.  I had bruising across my shoulders from slamming into the metal table convulsively.  I had red puckering under my skin from whatever they had injected me with.  My wrists and ankles were bruised a sickening green blue.  “I can emphatically agree.  I was awake for the whole thing,” I eased into the hot water.  It stung my feet painfully, but as I sank into the bath, the rest of my muscles began to unwind.

“Seriously?” he asked, sitting on the toilet seat next to the bath tub.

“Yeah…if you are already the character, going into blackout’s not going to happen,” I closed my eyes, savoring the warmth.

“God…that must have been miserable,” he murmured.

“The restraints were there so that my convulsions didn’t send me off the table, cause that’s all my body tried to do was get away from whatever drug they put in those IV lines,” I expanded.  “And yeah, brain melting was definitely an apt description for the first couple minutes of that procedure,” I made little waves with the water, enjoying the texture.  “At least I didn’t bite my tongue off,” I muttered.

“What?” Carl didn’t quite hear me.

“Simil gagged me to keep from biting my tongue off,” I informed him.

“He what!” Carl came off the toilet, suddenly furious.

“Mouthguard with a strap to keep me from spitting it out so that I wouldn’t bite my tongue,” I explained.

“What if you had puked?  Some people puke when they’re in too much pain,” Carl wasn’t sure what to do with the tiny room.  There wasn’t enough room to pace.

“Didn’t think about that at that point, I just wanted my teeth to stop chattering and grinding,” I muttered.  

Carl slumped back to his seat, burying his head in his hands.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t the one there for you, Gracey,” he apologized.  

I laid my hand on his leg.  “I’m alive and we have answers to our questions, Carl.  It’ll work itself out in the end.  I scheduled with the Chair to have them at the testing arena tomorrow.  Hopefully I can get them to figure out exactly what I’m supposed to be doing here, outside of being harassed,” I tried to reassure him.

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Life of a Librarian: Chapter 11

I dropped my bags on the floor as soon as the door clicked behind us.  A sigh escaped me as I relaxed into the gentle light of the setting sun in the courtyard.  This had to be one of the more beautiful times of day to see the apartment.

Carl dropped a stack of mail on the counter.  He proceeded to reach into his cupboard and pull out a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.  A knife from the utensil drawer and a plate from the cabinet followed suit.  “Want one?” he asked, looking up, suddenly realizing that he had fallen into a pattern.

“I thought you hated peanut butter?” I asked.

“I like your cooking more than peanut butter sandwiches.  This is just something I find really easy when I can’t take going to the lunch room for dinner,” he replied.

“Mind if I?” I pointed to the curtains that hung to the side of his floor to ceiling windows.  He looked at me quizzically and shrugged, “make yourself at home,” he waved me on.  I walked over and found the pull rod in the folds of drapery.  They were heavy hotel quality with a darkening capability.  I tugged them closed, finally shutting us off from the Guild.  I closed my eyes and relaxed in the dim light of the underlit cabinets and nothing else.  It was so nice to finally feel like I wasn’t under prying eyes.

Carl cleared his throat.  I opened my eyes to look over at him.  He had laid his knife down and was braced against the countertop, trying not to stare at me too openly.  “Gracey, what are you doing?” he finally asked.  I looked at him, confused.  “Closing the curtains?” I asked.  I thought that was fairly obvious.

He was fighting a smirk and losing.  “I mean,” he gestured to me.  I looked down.  “Eep!” I squawked.  My dress and everything else had disappeared.  “What the bloody hell?” I whispered.  I looked around myself, expecting to see the red material pooled up somewhere.  “Carl?” I looked up at him, panicked.  He came around from behind the counter, putting his hands up in a placating manner as he tried his best not to laugh.  “What happened?  Is this going to happen when I’m in public?” I could feel my heart beating too fast and my throat closing up.  

“It’s okay, Gracey,” he gently rested his hands on my shoulders.  “Breath in with me,” he took a slow deep breath.  “Breath out,” he encouraged.  I breathed with him for a minute as I tried to calm down.

“Now,” he murmured to himself as he turned to the bags of clothing we had just picked up on our way back to his apartment.  He extended a couple garments to me that I quickly pulled on.  Underwear and bra in a simple nude, a pair of black yoga pants and a soft grey cashmere turtleneck tunic that reached almost to my knees.  Finally dressed and calming down, Carl set a cup of hot chocolate in my hands as he eased me onto the couch.

I waited.  I felt like that was something I was mastering recently, waiting.  “I guess,” Carl settled next to me, “that might be the first thing I can teach you.”  I blinked up at him, not trusting my voice yet.

“I had asked you earlier today if you had summoned the dress, right?” he asked me.  I nodded.  “Most summons, most Readings only last for so long.  An unRead helps in dismissing something quickly and keeps backlash like unBound from happening, that way you can leave an area or a battle without waiting for a Read to pass.  unReadings are vital to keeping the Guild safe.  Say you summon a…a…hmmm…a vampire or something like that, you wouldn’t want it sticking around for very long, right?” he lead me on.  I nodded again, taking a sip of the hot chocolate.  It wasn’t really something I drank much of anymore, but I could sympathize with Carl not keeping tea in the apartment.

“How were you releasing, or passing, or unReading your other Reads, your other summons?  Like the mammoth and the unicorns from earlier?” he asked, pushing me to think.  How was I doing that.  I sat and thought about it.  He watched me, his entire focus centered on me.

“I…it’s…um,” I wasn’t sure how to explain it.

“It’s okay if its hard to really say.  Try to formulate it though, it’ll help you later…or at the very least, me,” he smiled encouragingly.

“When I Read something, it’s like, I can see pictures in my head of what I’m wanting.  I have to be really exacting in all the details.  Then, I just sort of…reach for it, but with my mind.  I have to will a lot of power into it, like I ground myself to the floor.  I feel like I pull power out of the ground.  It’s a thing you do when you center for meditation, so I know I’m not actually pulling energy out of the ground or anything like that,” I apologized.  He nodded gently.  “When I want to unRead, without having to say anything I…it’s almost like I have a thread or a leash attached to the thing I Read and I just let go of it.  Does that make sense?” I asked him, not sure if that was really accurate.

“It’s an interesting way to phrase it.  Essentially when most Guild members are taught how to unRead, they are taught to form poems that help them focus on letting go of the object, returning it back to its original source.  It takes a long time and a lot of practice for most members to be capable of unReading.  They have to learn how to let go.  You seem to have found the most fundamental aspect of what unReading is.  It is a tether.  Your Reading takes your energy to project something, and your unReading is releasing your connection to it all at once.  If you wait for a Read to pass on its own, it will wear you out, eventually you don’t have the energy for it after a bit.  Sometimes, if its a big Read that took a lot of effort to project, it can backlash and you can end up with unBound reactions.  You aren’t suffering any negative effects that I can see as being unBound, just startled.  You were holding a Read for the whole day and doing more on top of that without losing your hold on that one.  You must not have really realized that you were still holding it, and when you finally relaxed completely, you let that one go,” he explained.

“Well, if it means I have to relax completely for something like the dress to go away, I won’t have to worry about losing it when I’m out of here,” I mused to myself.

“Why’s that?” Carl asked.

“Because it’s stressful outside of these walls,” I answered.

“Fair enough,” he laid his head in my lap.  We sat there in the quiet of the room for a time.  My fingers tunneled in his hair absently.  It was soft, and silky.  He had closed his eyes.

“Carl?” I asked after a time.

“Hm?” he was dozing.

“I’m sorry about earlier.  I shouldn’t have taken such a low blow on you.  It wasn’t fair,” I apologized.  

He sighed out, trying to figure out how to respond.  “You know…you’re right.  Honestly, I’ve hated being the Simil so much.  It fucking sucks,” I felt hot spots on my pants.

“I’m beginning to see that,” I whispered.

“What about Simil though…you don’t seem to have a problem with him,” he rolled to look up at me.  His face was blotchy and his eyes were red and watery.  The missmatched black and pink iris stared back at me.

“With you,” I answered.

“But -” he protested.

“See, all I see is you, Carl, or Simil.  All I see is what’s in front of me.  You have changed in so many ways, but you are still you.  You are still the man I married all those years ago.  The man I fell in love with, talking about the validity of Tolstoy’s explanations of man’s nature.  Simil is only part of you, not you entirely,” I explained.

He shook his head.  “No, Gracey.  That’s the thing.  I consumed a character.  This is a split personality almost.  I have absolutely no control over him.  He’s a second person,” he tried to explain.

“That’s the thing Carl, what am I supposed to make of this?” I leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling.  I couldn’t look at those disjointed, piercing eyes.  “You are one body.  What am I supposed to do, only come near you when you are Carl?  How am I supposed to know when I can’t approach you?  What happens if you shift when I hug you…or we…we have sex?” I looked back down on him, my cheeks flashing a deep scarlet.  He looked up at me, stunned, then he glanced away, his eyelashes lowering as he tried to wrestle with himself.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about this, Gracey…” he moaned.  Tears rolled across his cheek and splashed onto my pants.

“Is this…” I wanted to ask, I wanted to know so badly, but I didn’t want to hurt him more.  “Is this why you couldn’t come back to see me, why you were gone for so long?” I dived in.  “Not because of your physical transformation, but because you didn’t trust yourself not to give Simil the reigns?”

“I’m not the most sharing type of person,” he admitted.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“You’re not helping my ego here, woman,” he groused.

“Meh, I’m just agreeing with the obvious,” I answered with a small grin.  

He stuck his tongue out at me.  “This is supposed to be a serious conversation,” he replied.  

“And I’m taking it all in stride, seeing as everything down here seems to be so straight laced and serious all the time,” I finished the rest of my hot chocolate, which had already cooled off.

“It really doesn’t bother you, Simil or me being the way I am now?” he asked, his eyes begging for acceptance.  

I leaned forward and kissed him.  “I’ve loved you since that group project on Tolstoy in the Widener.  I may not see you very often in the course of a year.  We’ve been drifting apart for some time, but that still doesn’t account for the fact that every time I finally get to see you again, I can finally feel free.  I feel like I can let down my hair and just be me.  I know that I don’t have to shoulder adulthood anymore for just a little bit and I can depend on someone else to hold my hand and help me plough through the current we call life.  Yeah, I can make it on my own.  I’ve kept the house operating, gone to school, watched Dante.  Yeah, I’ve remembered to pay the bills on time and all the adult things.  You’re my best friend, Carl,” I tried to explain.

“And if someone else was thrown into the mix?” he asked.

“I think, for my point of view, that accepting you as both Carl, and Simil the Mad Hatter is the best thing for me.  As long as I can treat you as one and the same, you don’t have to worry,” I answered.

“What if Simil takes over?” he asked.

“Is that liable to happen?” I responded, suddenly a bit worried.

“From time to time a Simil can take over and never change back, the character overwrites the host,” he couldn’t quite face me.

“Is there a way to undo a character like this?  When you retire, like the previous Simil, do you what, regurgitate the character or something?” I asked, concerned.

“No, it’s permanent, you can’t get rid of it once its inside of you, you only learn how to cope with the times you can remember,” he sat up.  He took my empty cup to the sink.

“That’s…that’s horrible,” I finally told him.

“Yeah…it’s hard knowing that one day my body could be walking around with a different me using it to do things, and I would not exist anymore.  It’s like knowing that you could wake up dead any day.  Not the most reassuring of feelings, I can tell you that much,” he rinsed out the cup.  He took the rest of the bags into the bedroom and returned to the living room.

“What does it take to consume a character, Carl?” I asked, fidgeting.  He paced around the room for a minute, straightening his books and picture frames on his shelves.  He sighed and returned to sit next to me on the couch.

“That projection of energy that you use in your Reading?” he started.  I nodded.  “It’s like that, but you direct inside yourself.  You’re trying to form the object inside of your core, or your psyche really.  That energy sears nerve endings, reforming it to allow the new memories and personality of the character to have a habitable space,” he explained.

“You can actually see these changes on a CT scan?” I asked.

“Yep.  Before those CT scans, it was more difficult to verify if a Simil had actually been created, or if someone was only acting like one to bank a Simil’s pay,” he laughed derisively.  He stood up and walked over to his bookshelves and pulled out a thin manilla envelope from one of the shelves.  He came back and sat down next to me.  Inside were images of his brain before and after the transformation.  Flowering colors showed where the Reading ability lay in the brain and how it flared when a Read was taking place, or an unRead.  A distinctive new shape of color after the transformation verified the authenticity of the Simil process.

“Will I have this done?” I asked, curious now.

“Probably.  We could go tomorrow if you want.  You seem to have abilities that most don’t.  It might be better actually to have it done to make sure where your starting point is,” he mused.

“Alright,” I was curious to see just what was going on in my head.

“Tell Simil, if you see him, that you need to go to the CT specialist.  I don’t know when he’ll pop back in and I don’t want you getting forgotten because of that,” he returned the envelope to the shelf.

“Okay,” I agreed.

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