#how in god's name is this church infrastructured? it moves its like fallen london's streets; good luck figuring Anything out inside /lhj

[landfilloftrash]

Scattered Explorings

***

The scratching from under the bed might have drawn attention, had anyone been close enough to hear, but for now, Eno was safe from any lessons or chastising or meal times— she was free to draw on her little fragments of parchment with a scavenged quill and ‘colored’ inks. 

At least– she thinks they’re colored inks. They have names of colors on them in that really fancy lettering so she assumed they were colored, they were all shaded ever so slightly differently, so, otherwise, this ‘church’ had an interesting sorting system. For inks no less.

But nonetheless, no one had asked her for them back yet, so she freely assumed that they were hers for the moment.

The owlin peered at the parchment and the– not quite completely color coordinated– doodle of all the halls and hiding places she’d found. Her memory wasn’t 100% on the whole building yet, so she needed to add more until she’d found the best ones. It was ‘subject to change’ as her mama says, but currently, her favorite was the one she was hiding in right now.

It was nice and dark under the bed, easy to see in, sort of in a corner, not so easy to be spotted, and technically not breaking any rules! Especially because it was too bright in the church, and leaving without telling anyone was a great way to have a goliath come looking for you, apparently. Or�� well, ‘bright’ wasn’t the right phrasing, and neither was ‘loud’, but they were close enough to what the child meant that it worked for her.

Ever since the big Saint man– Rollo— brought her here, it was… hard to get used to. He was very kind to her the first few days, making sure she got settled. A bed to stay in with a group of other kids, helping her through the halls; an easy memorization game, and then he was gone. Well. Not ‘gone’, but she saw him rarely in the day to day route that the teachers and what-not took her and the other children on. Off to do ‘important patronly saint work’ as she’d been told by a few others, with absolutely no idea as to the meaning of those words.

That was especially a thing; no one besides the big man seemed to actually tell her things–! Well. Ok, again. She admitted; That was a lie. The adults told her things, and were generally even very nice about it–! But they usually only told her after she got in trouble. There were extremely clear rules, loud in their silence, that no one told her; until of course she broke one, getting her smugly amused expressions from a few other kids and definitely church-goers if that was the occasion. (She’d learned that expression early.) She didn’t know! Everyone seemed to assume she’d been here before, or that she knew the secret rules people played by, and that was beyond frustrating to her. 

But she knew if she threw a tantrum, she’d just be told off for it. It's not her fault that you don’t know what she’s trying to tell you! So she confined herself to hissing and letting out screeches of displeasure, when people got so loud around her that it made her feel deeply connected with every single muscle in her body that was suddenly insistent that it was being cheese grated; something that was happening more and more with disturbing frequency. Why did people insist on being so loud?! It should not feel like every word was a drum baton on her bones! It didn’t help that during those moments, sometimes it felt like the cloth on her feathers was suddenly made of the worst fabric in existence that made her want to hop into a river and never leave its currents.

And… the brightness of it all.

Enososin was used to the dark– cramped, warm, and cozy in its shade; it’s where she played most of the time with the other street kids, when she could get away long enough from whichever creche-teacher was watching over them. But here in the church it felt.. Almost weirdly bright. It made her contract her pupils, even when there was really no change in lighting from outside. Once, when she’d made it back out into the open streets, and found the crew, she tried to explain it to Rovena; the dragonborn had just looked at her strangely as they walked, and she forced herself to not be upset about the closest person she had not understanding it.

It was a new place. It was too loud. It was too bright. It was just too much everything.

She wanted to go home.

But that wasn’t an option.

Not one that made any sense if she wanted to actually eat, anyways. She was good at sneaking snacks, and making ‘elixirs’ in unused pots, but cooking for real still eluded her. So, she stuck to under her bed instead. At least, for indoor activities that she didn’t want to participate in.

Speaking of indoor activities, she tilted her head as she thought she heard a call from the current creche-watcher— ‘Saville’ or something close to that in sounds— could a kid not simply hide under her bed in peace?

She shuffled her inks and her parchments back to the wall of the space, hiding them in the shadows the best she could, before curling once more into a defensive position on her hands and knees with her wing tops pointed downward, purposefully fluffing up this time around. Don’t want or need a repeat of Mister Rollo’s hand; annoying as the majority of people were at the moment, even the ones she usually didn’t find upsetting, she didn’t want to bite anyone. She winced as she thought about it. She still wanted to apologize again.

“Child? Ch-i-ld,” the teacher called— quietly, which was nice— as they approached the room she was in and padded through the aisles, “Where are you, little one?”

In a split second decision, she crawled from under the bed and started creeping along the sides of the beds and room so she avoided their line of sight. Wasn’t too different from avoiding the shinies, except instead of getting possibly tossed into jail with no way out except asking for her parents, now she’d get a light scolding and taken forcibly to wherever the other kids were. Even if she wasn’t interested in the activity, they still wanted her in the room so they could keep an eye on everyone.

Which is exactly what she did not want to have done, especially as she crept along the wall to the doorway. She wanted to be alone.

“Child, where are you?”

That was another thing. She didn’t know if any of them actually knew her name, and that annoyed the hell out of her. To be fair, she could acknowledge that there were quite a number of other children, and she didn’t introduce herself, but her name had been mentioned. And she remembered all of theirs. She couldn’t very well snap at the yuan-ti when they did it, (mostly because as of late they’d actually stopped doing that), but snapping at an adult was an entirely different matter; they generally didn’t like listening to ones they deemed too small and she wasn’t interested in finding out if that was the case here.

So she ran.

She pushed off her back foot, dashing out the door with a sharp left turn, and out into the hallway for the brief couple of seconds she had to get a head start on the adult who had a lot more leg for their running than her. 

If Eno had been in the alleys or just in town in general, she’dve stuck to every shadowy surface she could possibly use; but the Church was quite well lit, and not a lot of shadowy parts to tuck and roll into. Which led to the unfortunate reality of running in a well-lit hallway, with very noticeable sounding claws as she did so, led to the inevitable conclusion that she was going to get spotted. 

And by the startled sound now a fair distance behind her, that’s exactly what had just happened.

Luckily for her, it was also the exact same reason she had made her little map; but seeing as it wasn’t done, it was a perfect time to do some more exploring.

Skidding around a corner to the sound of quickly clicking claws, she sprinted at full-tilt down the hallway to get to where she needed to be to possibly ditch her second tail, which was rapidly approaching— there! At the T in the hallways she turned another corner that would lead to the main rooms, making sure she was out of sight, before digging every single one of her claws into the weird nooks and crannies of the walls– pushing herself like a lizard on the wall– and climbing up into the rafters of the ceiling, pressing herself tightly to the beams and watching the teacher turn the corner promptly, and hustling down the hallway she had just juked him on.

The clicking of shoes faded off, and she waited until even with the straining of her hearing she couldn’t hear them. Then, she began to whisper a slow ten-count as she confirmed it. As silence in the literal sense reigned, she chirruped to herself— pushing her body from the tight squeeze of the beams and swinging down to the floor with a click of claws.

It was never quite ‘mission accomplished’ when she dodged people until she was back home with her family, so here it was always just adding more time to that internal clock in her head. And this little maneuver would buy her at least a bit of time before Mx. Saville came back around to see where they had lost her.

Time to get a little lost and find where she is.

Heading the opposite direction of the way Mx. Saville went, she started heading doing a series of random twists and turns– her only markers being the signs of wear and tear on the ancient walls and the differences of the bits of stained glass decorating the windows; a good way to remember the place, and a good way to realize if where she didn’t recognize.

It was very quick to get to that point, with how much random zig-zagging she did along with her walk, because she soon found herself at a curiosity; a winding staircase she absolutely did not recognize.

The stairs led upwards. This hadn’t been apart of the ‘tour’. She checked quickly around and behind her with a quick couple turns of her head, and confirmed no one around that could tattle, at least not this second, but that was subject to shift if she stood here for much longer. Maybe she’d be able to actually find a spot that wasn’t so. So? Everything.

With a nod to herself she started crawling as fast as she could up the stairs.

By the second circling of steps, she had identified that this was absolutely the tower’s stairs; there was no way it couldn’t be with how it was shaped. The stairway itself was enclosed as she crawled, no little divots or doorways that would possibly lead to other floors, and she took note of the little alcoves in walls where those candle-holders would most probably be lit at night; but for now, they were both empty due to it being day, and simply shaded by the spiral. This place alone would be nice to hang out in, she thought, and continued her way upwards, now curious as to what was at the top.

She only really needed to take a breather and a small break from her speed-crawling on the stairs near the top– the only way she knew it was near the top was the fact there was a little plateau right around the corner where she paused.

After breathing a bit, thinking about whether or not she had it in her to continue her race up if there were any more stairs, she huffed, and pushed herself to her feet and walked up the steps to see instead of just the little platform stop of a staircase, but accompanied by a door.

Huh. That was always promising.

She didn’t really approach the door with caution, but she did open it slowly– testing the creaky factor— as she pushed the handle.

Briefly marveling at the fact there was not even a squeak from the hinges as she entered, that was immediately blasted away by what was in the room as she gasped in wonder.

The room itself was quite large, bookshelves lining the walls— absolutely stuffed to the brim with books and some overflowing into stacks next to them. But the main thing that grabbed her attention was the fact that the walls started sloping— turning into the arches of the roof, curving themselves into a dome above her head– absolutely covered in something dark and shifting and spattered with stars. She recognized the glow of the night on the ceiling and for a brief second she thought the roof just wasn’t there, and had instead been replaced by the sky itself. Then of course there were the metal objects, perfect circles and shapes too chunky to be called a circle but too egg-shaped to be anything but; identified by the sheen and reflection of the false stars strung up from above and wondered what on earth all this metal spinning and these devices attached to all of it, as well as surrounded by it, was.

There was more than that in the room, like a table, where there were odd metal things on said desk to her left and another strange device pointed on the platform the pointed out into the world– her only clue that it definitely was still daytime, and the fact that the twinkling on the ceiling was absolutely not correct— even though it kept dragging her eyes to it— and more atop the books.

There were so many things in here, and she had absolutely no names for nearly any of them.

Distracted as she was, Eno didn’t really register the click of the door behind her until she heard an amused, if curious, noise, upon which she spun her head and fluffed up her feathers in alarm. 

Wings. 

That was what she first locked in on. Giant, spectral wings attached to an equally large, robed, person. Were they as tall as Rollo?? Taller? Where did the Church keep finding these giant pretty people?? Because there was not a single doubt in her mind that this person was pretty. Super adult pretty. What was the word— Gorgeous. That one. She seemed to glow; not quite literally, but on second glance, yes also literally, from her general demeanor, to the softly lit eyes, to the wings enshrouding them. Wings on her head as well, fluttering gently amongst their long hair, also decorated— no, not decorated, growing from— the long strands grabbed her attention too. A word whispered to her in a late night bedtime story told by her mommas of humanoid people with beautiful wings sprung to mind as she stared.

Aasimar.

“Oh,” she blinked at the tall winged lady. “Is t’is your spot?”

Some common words she genuinely could not get to function with her beak yet. There were simply too many consonants requiring her tongue to do weird things in her beak— She was good at it, but some were just… difficult. It had a habit of making it sound like she had a lisp, but a clicking one.

It frustrated her just a smidge as she basically whistled the word. The person tilting their head with a small smile lessened that a bit– mostly out of sheer bafflement at a humanoid being that big. Who let them do that. Who let anything get that big that wasn’t a tree or something. Shrink, would you, or she might get squished.

“Yes, I think this would be considered ‘my spot’,” they mused, gliding gracefully across the way to stand closer to her, paired with a curious eyebrow raised with a deeper tilt of her head, and allowing Eno’s head to twist to a position that didn’t threaten going too far around, “May I ask what you’re doing in ‘my spot’?” 

“Nothing!” she squawked with a violent shake of her head, “Haven’ ev’n touched anyt’ing!”

The person chuckled a bit, raising their hand to cover their upturned lips, “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. I was simply asking what you’re doing up here.”

“Oh. Sorry,” she scratched at her cheek gently, “I didn’ mean t’ yell, neither. Uhm. I was looking for a spot to, ahm. Kinda be alone? Er. Not alone. But yeah. Alone works.”

“Looking for solitude?”

She tilted her head in the opposite direction the aasimar tilted their own.

“An uninhabited place– no people; a place to be alone.”

“Oh!” she pointed at the person with excitement, “Yes! That!” Her hand dropped as she considered the room again, “Looks like I kin’a failed on t’at a bit though. I like this place a lo’ tho’. You picked a good spot.”

“Thank you, I like this spot a lot as well,” she gave a little bow, “but if I may ask a couple more questions?”

“Sure?” she chirped, “Dunno if I could answer, but I’ll try.”

“Nothing strenuous— stressful or hard. Just what is your name? So I have a name to a face.”

“Ah!” she pointed to herself as she signed her name and then fingerspelled it along with her words, “I’m Enososin! Mos’ people jus’ call me Eno, tho’. Wha’ about’chu? May I know yours?”

There was recognition in that split second before the aasimar smiled even wider and signed back a word– a ‘C’ and the word for ‘wing’, and then fingerspelled it. “Celestine. I am a Saint of the Church.”

Oh, well that was news! “There’s more than one??”

Saint Celestine laughed. “Well, of course there are…! It would be unfair to put all the responsibility onto one person, wouldn’t it?”

Eno frowned. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but…

“No.. it wouldn’....” She looked back up with renewed interest and chirr in her throat. “D’you have different jobs? ‘R d’you all share the same job?” “Yes and yes,” they chimed, walking away towards the desk.

“Yes an..–? Hey, hold on!” she called and trotted after her, pondering as she went over the contradictory statement. “So y’have the same job, but you have a different job too? What are they?”

“We protect the people of the world, but in a more local sense, Kingston; we have the same objective, but different ways of protecting the people.”

“How do you do yours?” she peeked over the edge of the desk as she stood on her very tip toes and hopped, trying to get a bit of a better look, “Does it hav’ t’ do with all th’ metal stuff in here?”

“Yes it does;” they held up one in particular that looked like a triangle with extra parts. “They are instruments to help me keep watch on the sky, and help me monitor its ever shifting, but static, ways.”

That’s. A lot. But her brain latched onto one word in particular. “Instruments? Like a tuba?”

“Instruments can also mean tools; it generally applies to more sensitive equipment.” They looked down at her and gestured to a small pile of metal in the corner. They looked like broken pen nibs. “Fragile, delicate in some way. So no, not quite a tuba.”

“But they help you look at the sky?”

“Yes.” It felt like a stupid question but it was right on the tip of her tongue. “...Does the sky have threats?”  “Yes.” “Like… dragons…?” she questioned hesitantly.

“Not quite,” they chuffed in amusement, “but I am also on the lookout for threats of a mortal kind.”

She made a confused noise up at the Saint. A plea for an explanation before adding onto it with— “Mortal?”

“Ah,” they clucked in realization. “I should have clarified; I do not watch the ‘sky’ as most people define it,” she pointed upwards and outwards; towards the platform leading more outside of the interesting room and out into the wilderness, “I watch the sky. The cosmos itself when it deems to show itself. I mark their patterns and their whispers of the future ahead. They can tell of dangers or good fortunes. Mostly, they talk of the state of the worlds and things they’ve seen.”

“The stars talk?” She whispered in awe.

“Yes,” they nodded down to her, focused back on their work, “to those who listen, to those who learn to lend an ear.” “I wanna be able to hear them,” she whispered to herself, quickly losing herself in the pondering of the logistics on how she could prove to the stars that they could also tell her things. She had talked to the night sky before! They knew of her at least— She could keep secrets if they wanted! Or tell people what they were trying to convey! She didn’t really know what the stars would want but that was ‘a part of the process’, wasn’t it?

“You may learn, in time. Though I think you’d best go back to your classmates; they’ll be looking for you by now.”

She grimaced with what was definitely not a pout and anyone who told you otherwise was a ‘narc’ as Soir said. “I’d rather learn about this than wh’tever they’re telling us downstairs.”

“Is that why you were looking to be alone?”

Eno scrunched up her face as she thought. Explaining that this place was extremely weird, and it’s so loud, and really bright in a way that no one seemed to understand, was probably not going to fly well in the face of someone with the title of ‘Saint’. She didn’t really know what a Saint was or did, but there was a certain ‘power’ behind it, leading credence to the idea it was the same as someone saying ‘Admiral’ or ‘Your Grace’, or whatever they called Old King Cole. Or that’s what the others in her group outside of here sang when referencing the King. 

“..A bit,” she hedged. “Yeah.”

“Why else?” “Too loud.” she answered promptly. Easiest one to explain. “Er. Not th’ right kind of too loud. It’s loud.”

They seemed to think about something. It wasn’t a quick or long something, but it made their face do a strange thing and go blank. That always freaked her out a bit. She didn’t like when humanoids did that; beast-kids always had a bit of body language to tell her if things were still ok, but almost none of the humanoids did that, or if they did, it was absolutely never consistent, so she was left in the dark. But their eyes flicked back down to her and they tilted their head once more as they asked; “Then perhaps you would like to be alone with me?”

“If I’m wi’h you,” she refuted, “I’m not alone.”

The Saint nodded in acknowledgement at her point. “Then would you like to be quiet buddies together?”

She thought about it briefly. Then she gave a nod. Yeah. Saint Celestine moved silently and with great care around the room, they would be very quiet. That would be nice in comparison to, well, pretty much everywhere else she could think of, minus the woods.

That would be really nice though. Maybe that’s where she’d head off to next time she needed a break from all the loud-mouths. Though maybe wait a little bit until her next ‘outing’. The creche-teachers were gonna be watching her really closely after this little move.

“Here–” Celestine prompted, starting to look through the shelves with the efficiency of someone who knew where everything was. “How much can you read?”

“Uhm.” That was a weird question. Normally, when someone asked a question she didn’t like she’d simply give them a Look that apparently she had ‘inherited’, and they quickly backed off. Though because her new ‘quiet buddy’ had asked, she genuinely thought about it. 

She could read most words, she thought, if she sounded them out. She knew her alphabet, and she could extrapolate meaning from context clues of other words surrounding it. If all else fails she could pull out a dictionary– she’d done that a few times when she went to a library. If she was at home she’dve just asked her moms. Alternatively, Zofaas. Mostly she just asked the Librarian what the word meant so she didn’t have to fetch the book, but sometimes there were just too many of them in the book so she just had it next to her on standby.

“Do you hav’a dictionary?” she asked in return.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll be fine.”

They raised an eyebrow and smiled ever so slightly again. “Smart girl.”

She nodded in definite agreement. “Sometimes!”

There was a moment as the adult traced along the spines of huge books for a moment before landing solidly on one. “Here is your dictionary,” Celestine chimed, handing down one of those hefty books to her– she struggled for a moment before holding it like a large tray– “should you need it. Over here is the main star of the hour; a book about stars, planets, and other celestial bodies.”

As she followed with the dictionary, the Saint easily pulled a completely different book from an even higher shelf and handed it down to her— balancing the book on top of the dictionary, she called with surprise; “Oh!” Hey, that was the Saint’s name! Or. Kinda their name. Close! So that had the same meaning, or something very close to it probably. “Ohhhhh. Is this the ‘cosmos’?” They nodded. “A part of it.”

Huh!

WIth a small twitter of interest, she tilted her head at the books. They were really heavy— though she really should have expected that from the dictionary, a book about every word in the Common language in case someone didn’t know it. But the one on top of it was her main interest at the moment, and she took a moment to actually observe what had been given to her. The face of it read a long title, which by itself took her a moment to completely read; Stars and Planets: The Most Complete Guide to the Stars, Planets, Galaxies, and Solar System, emblazoned on the book with a dark cover, lighter text and shape as an artwork. 

Perfect.

Eno gripped the books with determination and began to search the room via spinning her head while stationary. There was a little crook in between a few stacks of books that looked cozy, and had light from the large opening leading outside. That would very much work as her new resting place. Getting over there was a little trouble, with how hefty the books were, but once she began to perch in the spot, she placed, and definitively opened the stars book. 

Immediately, she was a little overwhelmed. 

That was a lot of words. 

Also spaced kinda weirdly on the pages— why were the blocks of text printed down like how mom or mama would write a grocery list? Or she guessed since it was also similar to how a paper for the news would be put down, it wasn’t too odd, but it still looked strange to her. She guessed some people might just be weird in how they decided to put the text to their page, and the owlin decided she much preferred her books to be solid blocks of text. Not whatever this weird jumping text was.

But, these things were not gonna stop her, by thunder! So she inhaled in preparation and started taking things one word at a time.

The night sky is one of the most beautiful sights in nature. Yet many people remain lost among the jostling crowd of stars, and are baffled by the progressively changing appearance of the sky from hour to hour and from season to season. 

In the night sky, stars appear to the naked eye as spiky, twinkling lights. Those stars near the horizon seem to flash and change colour. The twinkling and flashing effects are due not to the stars themselves but to Earth’s atmosphere; turbulent air currents cause the stars’ light to dance around. The steadiness of the atmosphere is referred to as the seeing. Steady air means good seeing. The spikiness of star images is due to optical effects in the observer’s eye. In reality, stars are spheres of gas similar to our own Sun, emitting their own heat and light. 

It must be emphasized that you do not need a telescope to take up stargazing. Use the charts in this book to find your way among the stars first with your own eyes. 

Telescope?

With a small skimming over the pages, she did not see any little pictures of ‘telescopes’, so she muttered to herself with a chitter, “Feel like this is missing somet’ing here.”

“I don’t think it’s the book missing anything,” said the saint as she jumped a bit at being heard, but they cautiously agreed with a nod as they considered something. “But you might be.” 

They seemed to eye their shelves without moving. “If you look over on that third shelf, you might be able to find something that would help you.”

Eno chirped a startled thanks and hustled over to the shelf she’d been pointed to with a critical eye.

Taking a steady look through, it seemed like it was all star related books over here.

Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses. That was an immediate grab. Astronomy seemed to be the more adult term for ‘stargazing’, and that was what she was reading about. Yoink.

The Little Book of Exoplanets immediately caught her eye, due to the fact that it had labeled things in her current book as exoplanets. They were briefly touched over, but telling her about something and possibly not going fully into it set her hands a twitchin’. She’d like to know what all those were in full detail if she was able. 

Sidereus Nuncius? That sounded. Really uppity. Which meant she was obviously going to take it. It was a roll of the marbles whether or not it would actually be good or not, related to stars, or even whether she would understand it. But it was still probably a good idea to check it out. She grabbed it and added it to her little pile.

There were several others that also caught her attention, but she settled for these three books alongside her current one; she could already tell her head was going to hurt by the time she got through these and she didn’t need even more pain to be wrought upon her.

With a quick bounce in her step— as these were not nearly as heavy— she hopped right back to her little spot, flipped open her books and set herself into reading.

…

It was a long time in silence with nothing but metallic clicks and the sound of pages flipping; the occasional noise from the only two in the room, but the hush was what reigned over the tower.

And with that long silence, when there was suddenly a slightly frantic, but quiet, knock on the door both occupants jolted. Both she and the aasimarian Saint looked up from their respective tasks and looked briefly at one another. She sheepishly twittered in embarrassment at her lack of realization. They had both gotten quite little lost in their own world.

Saint Celestine glided over with grace and opened the door to a stressed looking Saville holding a candle. She noted it highlighted the angles and deepened the shadows considerably on the person’s face; sure, she could see through those dark pools just fine, but that really only happened at certain times of the day. Surely, it couldn’t have been that long. Just to confirm her suspicions, she looked over her shoulder.

Oh, that was very much the night sky.

She let out a trill of vaguely amused worry as she felt that weird squiggling feeling start from her quickly beating heart, and started to overtake her insides; making it feel like worms and snakes had taken up residence instead of her stomach. Ohhhh she was definitely in trouble if she didn’t think quickly on this one.

The Saint and the watcher were exchanging quiet words as she hustled over with her books. She wasn’t done yet, dangit, and she was gonna finish them! Probably in the morning! Maybe! If she could get away with it! But, oh boy was she gonna show her face right now, because yes, she existed, no she did not actually disappear, and do not yell at her please and thank you.

“There you are!” Saville gasped as she peeked around Saint Celestine’s side, their eyes widening and face becoming stern. “You gave me a severe bit of a slip, little missy— for the past entire day! Please, don’t do that again.”

She opened her beak to call her own defense, but Saint Celestine beat her to it.

“I noticed the little one sitting on my steps; I offered a book to read to keep her busy as I worked and we both lost track of time. Don’t blame her too harshly for something I should have been remembering about.”

She coulda told a better lie if the pretty Saint lady was gonna do that. But she didn’t say anything, especially after the teacher visibly deflated in relief. 

“Thank you for watching her. Though,” now they looked down to her with a raised eyebrow, “you’ve missed all three meals, little lady. How ‘bout we get you something to eat and then tuck you away into bed.”

She hooted in annoyance at the continued names. They sounded too… Distancing, if that was how to correctly use that term in the dictionary. If they were gonna try and scold her they might as well actually use her name. “Call me Eno.”

“Oh,” their eyebrows raised. “My apologies, Eno. But my offer still stands, methinks. And don’t forget to leave the books here.”

She almost protested in defiance of the request. She wasn’t done! But she quickly remembered that she did not have a library card, and she thinks these might actually be a ‘personal collection’, rather than ‘public property’. 

So instead, she looked at the books and stared hard at the titles. Stars and Planets, Sidereus Nuncius, The Little Book of Exoplanets, Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses, and the dictionary. The Sidereus one she was going to need several different dictionaries probably because that was in a completely different language. Hopefully she’d remember all that. Or maybe she could ask them for the same books– maybe through combined effort they could remember together? Either way, Eno did her best to imprint the names into her mind. 

When she was sufficiently confident that she might be able to remember the books in the morning, she then turned and raised the collection back to Ms. Saint Celestine. “I’ll be back t’ finish them!”

The aasimar took them with an amused air and nodded gratefully at both of them. “Of course. I’ll keep it ready for you.”

As Saville gestured for them to go, she turned briefly and waved excitedly. “Bye bye, Ms. Saint Celestine! I’ll see you soon!”

<<Bye bye, Enososin.>> They signed, with a smile, and gently shut the door behind their quickly turning backs.

***

Prologue; One - Two (here!) - Three - Four

High Seas; It Begins - Something's Wrong - Blood in the Water pt. 1