"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Abby had promised Charlie Rotmore that she would find a way to visit him sometime soon, likely after she had dropped lunch off to her husband. As Abigail was learning, that was always a bit of an ordeal.
She had already dropped off lunch to Barty and visited with him awhile before going in search of Professor Rotmore's office. When she had found it, Abigail gave a few gentle knocks and waited.
As she did, Abby fixed up her hair and smoothed out her clothing. Abigail was a good actress, first and foremost. Which really helped to seem completely normal when meeting a man she barely knew while the center of her underwear was torn and she had just been in the bathroom washing away evidence of tears.
For an added bonus, Abby even wore sunglasses. Although, she didn't have any black eyes. She liked how trendy they looked, and they really went well with her hairdo and current clothing.
He looked down at Abbey Woodman, who was wearing a pair of red, heart shaped sunglasses. It was november, and the school was pretty dark. Why someone needed to make it darker he never knew. Maybe it was to be cool or something. He had seen films where the hero, or often antihero wore sunglasses.
"Please come in, come in" said Charlie with a beaming smile, holding the door open for her, waving at the sofa nearest the door with one han "take a seat on the sofa, i'll make a pot of tea."
He walked over to the overhead cupboard beside the sofa and pulled out a teapot, a large diffuser and wooden box, and a pair of mugs. He put two measured spoonfuls of green tea into the diffuser and placed it into the teapot.
"So, my library?" Charlie said, with a wide beaming smile. Charlie set the two mugs on the table and carried the teapot over to an electric kettle on another worksurface. He filled the kettle up with water from a glass carafe, switched it on, and waited for the water to boil.
@Foxy
Abby grinned and swept into his office, taking a second to look over the controlled chaos before sitting on the couch nearest the door as Charlie readied them some tea.
Abigail couldn't recall the last time she'd had tea. It made her feel fancy, but she didn't normally sit with people and shoot the wind, as they said.
She crossed one leg over the other and took her sunglasses off to get a better view of what she assumed was his library. Piles upon piles of books.
"I have to admit, this was not what I was expecting, but I should have, huh? It is an office." She giggled to herself. "I apologize if I happened to interrupt you. I should have told you beforehand I planned on stopping by, but, well, I happened to be around and decided why not? I have some free time before I have to get making the dinner for kids and Barty."
She paused to take another look around, impressed at his acquired selection, although she hadn't a chance to properly look at any of it up close.
"They look old," she said while motioning to a few books. "I take it most of your fiction selection is old classics? I'll confess I'm less read than I'd like to admit. A truly terrible book partner, I'd say."
"It's fine, i've been expecting you for a while now" Charlie said with a smile, sitting down on the sofa opposite Abby. He looked slightly confused at the reference to the fiction section in his office. He chuckled. She thought this was his library
"Oh no" he said with a smile "All of this is the books I need at quick notice, needing to look up a fact or check the timing for a procedure There wasn't enough space on the walls, so it kind of spread to the floor. My library is in the Sarcophagus."
And with that there was a sound of bone on bone and bone on stone as the stone shell of the sarcophagus scuttled out from behind the desk, the bone creature which contained it moving it's limbs like a strange many legged spider. A pair of long limbs were draped over the top of the sarcophagus, which strained for a moment and lifted the heavy lift to reveal the contents. Inside was several shelves on either side of the empty space within, shelves that jutted back wider than the sarcophagus. On the shelves were various objects. A violin. Several bottles of whisky. Tools. A closed umbrella covered in a rubber ducky pattern. But that wasn't the main feature. The main feature was the grand staircase which swept down into the sarcophagus. It was lit to about halfway down by torches which flamed with a strange purple light, but illuminated the stairway as if it was normal. Beyond that there was only darkness. On the varnished wood of the floor of the stairs there were varioud scratch marks, some of them inches deep into the wood.
"Most of the left wing is my library." he said with a wry, happy smile. "And my fiction section is quite extensive. I have everything from Plato to Pratchett. And that is why we are having our little book club, for you to read anything your heart desires."
@Foxy
"Oh!" Abigail said, eyes widened and mouth puckered as his sarcophagus opened. "I should have expected that," she said with a wry grin.
Abby didn't hesitate before heading down the spiral staircase into this hidden "library." Pocket dimensions were still an odd thing to her. Five years on this island and Abigail wasn't used to everything it had to offer.
As they went deeper in, Abby took her sunglasses off and clicked them to her shirt to help her see better in the torchlight that led their way.
"Echo!" She called out before cupping her ear in hopes of hearing her voice echoing around the shelves of books.
Abigail paused to admire Charlie's violin. "You play? I always liked the sorter instruments. They were so gentle, but then they could make this terrifyingly loud orchestra."
She plucked tenderly at the violin before turning her attention to the titles he possessed. Simply put, it was a fuck ton. "Well, shit. I think we'll need a more open place for a book club, but this is a good way for us to get book ideas. You got a whole manor in here, huh?"
"I play many instruments, but nothing beats the beauty of the violin." He looked longingly at the instriment, imagining the bow humming across the strings, and debated picking up the instrument and playing a brief sonata on the instrument, but thought better of it, and carried on down the stairs after abby, spiraling down to the tiled floor of the library. He briefly checked a small screen at the bottom of the stairs, a temperature and humidity monitoring system and, attatched to it, was a strange light orange rock. All was good.
"Welcome" said Charlie with a flourish "to what might well be the largest library on this planet" Bookshelves stretched out in three directions disapearing into the distance before either of them could see a wall. Behind them though, was a wood panneled wall with an open door which led into a grand dining room. The immense bookshelves had four layers, about eight foot high, with a metal catwalk at each layer, and metal staircased to access each layer. It was impressive on a grand scale, the sheer literary knowledge contained within its walls. Each bookshelf was neatly labelled in Charlie's immaculate copperplate handwriting, and each had a number. Dams, building. Dams, destroying. Decompisition. Deforestation. Demons, Aramaic. Demons, Goetic. Dentistry. Deserts. Diets, animals. Diets, humans. Diets, fashion. Dinosaurs. There were stacks above these, labelled ascending alphabetically. and but these labels could be seen from the ground. Many of the books looked identical. Black mottled leather bound covers, with gold titles embossed on the spine. But each book was different.
"Well theres plenty of open space" said Charlie as he imagined his mental map of the inside of his home. It was quite strange, expanded in a modular fashion depending on what he needed. The Kitchen led to the billiards room slash bar, not to dining rooms, which actually led to the gallery. The boneyard, the hanger which held Charlie's undead, had it's own room, at the end of the main corridor, and was constantly being expanded.
"If we discount rooms containing the undead, like my labs and the boneyard, theres the great hall, the dining room and the gallery."
@Foxy
"I always used to wish I played the piano," Abigail admitted with a wistful sort of laugh and the shake of her head. "A silly dream. I just thought it would make me seem... I don't know, more sophisticated. I wanted to be one of those people playing in the early morning. I always liked the look people got about them when they took on a classical instrument, but I have no real patience for it myself."
When they'd reached the bottom of the stairs and Charlie showed off the huge library at his disposal, Abigail gasped at the sheer number of books. She wasn't sure if she'd find what she was looking for here, but it was worth a try.
Recalling what Barty's personal journal had said, she looked at Charlie with big, curious eyes and asked with the excitement of a small child; "anything about Pagan Love Gods?"
"Thats one of the joys of life, you can learn at any age. Keep striving for more. Theres a piano in the music room that i'm sure you can slip into after you've given Bart his lunch. I can teach you if you would like?"
That was his job after all, to teach. He was mainly tasked with teaching necromancy, but he would happily teach anyone anything they wished to learn, be it how to properly construct a pagoda or how to look after chickens.
"Pagan love gods?" Charlie questioned for a moment "it's a bit of a complicated umbrella that. Pagan covers everything from norse to roman. But i can take you to the section on Love gods. Follow me" he said with a smile, before walking off down one of the aisles.
They both began to walk down the aisles. He was glad they hadn't ran into any of the Children of the Library yet. They were undead specially built to take care of the books. It wasn't his name, a friend of his, a lich called Tārārolang had used the name to refer to the spirits who tended to the scrolls in her monastry. Charlie had liked the name, and used it.
The lettering slowly ascended from D, to E to F, and eventually, to G. Charlie pointed at the large shelf titled 'Gods, Love'. Almost all the books here had the black mottled appearance with the gold title, but several were not books, they were a sheet of parchment sealed between two panes of glass.
"Here we are. Love gods. Everything I know on love gods, everything from Áine to Yue-Lao."
@Foxy
"So Egyptian? Are they under the Pagan umbrella?" Abigail asked, trying not to show her irritation.
Nothing made sense. Her whole mind was whirling, and it sounded like something had broken. To Abby, she wondered if this sound was in the real world as well, but she knew it wasn't.
Abigail looked through the books. The titles didn't give her much to go off of, and so she had to open them and scan them as casually as she could manage to see if any information jumped out at her. Her stomach hurt. She felt like she was about to be sick.
"Pagan is actually a rather rubbish umbrella term. It simply means gods that are no longer worshipped, like the norse and celtic pantheons. Its kind of odd really. Some gods keep their lustre, their holy power, and some... change when they aren't worshipped as much. Many demons were once gods, demonized by the religeons that came afterwards. In some ancient languages, demon and divine being are even the same word. Beezlebub was once worshipped as a god by the philistines, now he's a judao-christian demon prince. Same with Baal, once a Phoenician god. You do get the odd demon claiming to be the god they once were."
Charlie had noticed that over the years. He wasn't sure what caused it, but he had a few theories. Maybe gods reflected the people who worshipped them. Then a religion comes along telling their worshipper that their old gods were actually demons, then thats what they become. Unfortunately, he had never been close enough to divinity to watch a full lifespan, but he had heard tales from high demons he knew of their past lives being worshipped.
@Foxy