LSRO: Chapter 364 - What a Waste

I officially despise deadlines.

But... also work my best when in a panic.

So it's sort of a catch 22, right?

~~

Chapter 27

What a Waste

It was all a bit of a letdown. Quinn felt slightly irritated. She’d been so excited to open this branch, but... tomorrow would have to do. 

“It’s okay,” Farrow soothed her. “It just needs specific mapping out and access to certain elements I’m unequipped to deal with right now. Which means it’ll take time to calibrate and buffer the area. That’s all. In 24 hours, it’ll begin transformation and be just like all the other branches.”

“That’s a relief. I was so excited to open it so we’d be almost done.” Truth be told, Quinn just wanted to have everything open so she could concentrate on ridding the Library of its problems. 

Farrow looked at Quinn for several seconds before smiling and patted the Librarian briefly on the shoulder. “We’re okay. This is just another step in the process, and then we’re done. Then you can save the Library from ever having to face this crap again.”

“That’s the plan,” Quinn said, flashing a tired smile in the golem’s direction. “Thanks, Farrow.”

“Never a problem, Librarian.”

Quinn moved away, toward food. She needed some soup and, apparently, a pillow because suddenly a wave of exhaustion was trying to envelop her, and she didn’t like it at all. Cook didn’t even need to speak to her. They just walked over and put a cup of cream of mushroom soup and a bread roll on a plate in front of her and moved away to make hot chocolate.

Quinn flashed Cook a smile. “Thank you,” she murmured, knowing they’d hear her. All Cook did was nod. Their ability to know exactly what Quinn needed at any time was uncanny. And yet, now that she’d been experiencing it for the better part of a year, Quinn never wanted to live without it again.

Malakai dropped into the seat next to her. She knew it was him without even having to look. Granted, her increased sensitivity to the whole Library probably helped… but she’d like to think she’d have known, anyway. Cook placed the same food in front of him and went back to their stove.

For a few minutes they sat side by side, both exhausted and weary. The soup had a slight spice that built up more with each mouthful. The bread with butter was the perfect complement. Quinn let out a sigh.

“I know how you feel,” Malakai said, and his usual playfulness was gone from his tone. He was just... spent.

Quinn looked at him, sipping her hot chocolate as she did so, trying to catch the melted little marshmallows with her lips as gravity pulled them away from her. “I bet you do. How did everything go?”

At first Malakai didn’t answer, his attention directed toward his own melting marshmallows, his face scrunched in concentration. Quinn nudged him and allowed the contact to linger. They both needed it.

“I’ve never met her. I’d barely heard stories about her. Just mentions. Just...” He leaned back in his chair and fiddled with his braid as it hung over his shoulder. “I wasn’t ready to see my mother again either. Why must family be so complicated?”

The question was rhetorical given neither of them had an answer, but Quinn gave him one anyway. “Not all family involves blood. Sometimes the family we choose is just the better one.”

Malakai smiled and glanced at her. “Yeah. Sometimes I think it definitely is better.”

Quinn felt herself blush and leaned her head against his arm. Damn elves and their stupid height. After a few more minutes, she’d downed the rest of her drink and moved to stand up, breaking the moment they’d had. “Thank you.” She said.

“I didn’t do much.”

“For being there. I feel like this is a moment I got to stop and not think for just a little while. I appreciate your being there.”

He eyed her seriously for a moment before offering a smile. “Anytime Quinn. You should probably go to sleep. It’s been a long day, and you look like you’re about to fall over.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said, but knew he was right. All she could think about was snuggling up under the covers, regardless of whether or not the universe decided to fall apart.

~~

The first thing Quinn realized when she fell asleep was how easy it’d been. As if some outside force was trying to coax her into slumber faster. The second thing she realized was that whatever this was, it wasn’t quite sleep, and it wasn’t a dream so much as an experience. She pushed herself up, only she knew it wasn’t her corporeal body that moved. This all played out inside her mind.

A psychedelic inner-mind experience?

Or something like that.

Her body felt lighter than usual, and the room she was in flickered in solidity. From her own quarters in the Library through to her old bedroom at home. She squinted around as the golden lighting dimmed in and out of darkness. Even the doors flickered, their wooden frames blending in and out of the wall. There one second, gone the next.

Everything around her warped, as if something was trying to mimic the images in her mind and found them fusing instead. 

Except her mind didn’t feel foreign or anything. It didn’t seem as if there was something in her thoughts with her that shouldn’t be. And with all of Milaro’s coaching, she’d be able to recognize something like that in a heartbeat or less. No, this had nothing to do with someone trying to possess her or influence her. This was something else entirely.

As it didn’t appear to be trying to harm her, Quinn closed her eyes as she sat on the edge of her bed, and allowed herself to relax. Her innermost thoughts halted, waiting until whatever she was supposed to see appeared.

The area around her shimmered, fleeting images passed her by until everything settled into an amalgamation of the two bedrooms she remembered best. Her college dorm and her Librarian quarters. It was a strange mixture, what with her bed not changing from the plush thing she slept in nightly now. But the desks and cramped space from her college days made the bed seem all too large. 

What do you want to tell me? She thought she’d spoken the words out loud, but realized that here, in whatever this space was, she couldn’t just speak out loud. It was an area of her own, affected by the mind, and so, only her mind could verbalize.

Which sounded way too complex for simply wanting to clarify that speech remained in the mind.

At first, nothing responded. Even though she felt a ripple of understanding, of something just beyond her senses. Nothing spoke, or moved, or responded.

Yet, she couldn’t help but reach for whatever had called her.

Without a shadow of a doubt, she knew it lay beyond the doors. It couldn’t come in here. Her sleeping quarters were her stronghold, her safe place. It didn’t want to intrude.

Stepping outside the door and closing it behind her, the walls rippled until they disappeared. A meadow stretched out around her, never ending in its fields and blossoms, butterflies drinking from flowers, bees collecting nectar. None of it familiar, none of it a memory. Quinn didn’t understand what she was doing here.

In the corner of her vision, she saw a familiar figure, and her heart stuttered. Pain lanced through her, dulled slightly by the dream state, and yet still very evident.

Jasper

She heard herself whisper the name and clutched her hands over her mouth. Logically in her mind, she knew her friend was dead, but a part of her heart had clung to her image, even in death. Her memory stayed alive, something worth fighting for. Something worthy of revenge.

It’s sort of me. Jasper’s lips didn’t move. I’m me as we were, as you wanted me to be, as I was for us.

Quinn frowned, not quite understanding the meaning and yet realizing that this was all a deeper part of Quinn than she usually accessed. Memories and emotions she kept hidden, locked away to deal with later. Well, she guessed, this was probably the repercussions from it. She was slowly losing her grip on reality.

Jasper laughed. Nothing of the sort, I’m afraid. This is just how you process things. Deep down until you find what fits with each other. You bend and you twist and you match bits and pieces with each other. It’s one of your strengths. Tenacity.

Well, well, well... here she was essentially giving herself a pep talk. Which seemed weirder than anything else in front of her.

Quinn took a breath and studied Jasper. What am I supposed to be figuring out then?

Jasper’s laugh echoed through the meadow. It rippled across the flowers like a soft summer breeze, joyful and free. But only for a second. Watch. Remember. Solve.

Images assaulted her mind, and Quinn fell to her knees, grasping at her head.

This is your own fault, you know. If you’d just deal with things as they emerged, you’d be much more emotionally equipped to weather this stuff. Jasper’s tone was matter of fact, even if the effect felt cruel.

Quinn’s head was on fire. The images continued to assault her in rapid-fire succession until she soothed herself enough to begin paying proper attention. And when she finally looked up, Malakai stood behind Jasper, a solemn expression on his face. With just that one look, she knew this was also a part of herself that she’d been concealing and not dealing with.

Fine, she muttered, I’ll look at myself.

The pain from the images melted away once she’d decided. So much that she could recognize them one by one. 

You’re missing the big picture both Malakai and Jasper spoke in a weirdly haunting harmony. You need to piece it together sooner than later. Now.

Suddenly the meadow transformed, and a churning lake sat in the middle of it. From out of nowhere, a waterfall began to descend. But upon closer inspection, what fell from it was sand. Very fine sand. Before she could wrap her hand around that, the sand collided with the chaos sludge from the filtration chambers, and a minor explosion occurred before they could melt together. Roots twined out from underneath the combination. They spread a pungent rotting odor, causing Quinn to gag. The amalgamation before her writhed and twisted, sucking anything and everything around her into it. Flowers, bushes, plants, grass, small animals...

Quinn shook her head, not quite understanding, and yet knowing they were all linked. It wasn’t hard, even now in this strange dreamscape, to figure out what the sludge and roots represented. She just couldn’t quite figure out the rest of it. 

Suddenly, the entire surrounding area was pitch black. Her eyes hurt with the sudden change. Bars of white static spread across her vision, like old televisions with bad reception. Images played across the wall, or the black in front of her. The car crash, the aftermath, the empty hospital. Her first encounter with the Library as she was pulled through, meeting Kajaro and almost dying, collecting overdue books from Dinali space and fighting the centipede creatures. The mimic, the filtration chamber, the sudden absence of books. People flit through the memories, all of them flickering, emerging, failing. 

Tenejo, Kajaro, Bill, and Bob _ the twin aracnios... People she wasn’t sure she could trust flickered there too. So many that it surprised her. It appeared she didn’t trust anyone.

The vials of magical signatures. They rose, and they spun together, becoming a focal point, like a reminder. 

They rose above her, twirling in the air with blood, and swirling runes, and dancing dragons that came closer and closer to her. 

It was like pieces of a puzzle she couldn’t put back together because she didn’t have the original picture.

She sat up gasping, eyes blinking open into the soft lighting of her quarters. She felt the smidgen of understanding she’d gained begin to slip through her fingers like the sand in the waterfall she still couldn’t interpret.

What a waste of a good sleep.

~~

I hate wasting good sleep

Much love

KT