- Messages
- 20
- Character Biography
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Public Library, Elbion, Mid-Morning
The stacks felt like another world, quiet and cool and carrying that faint, dusty scent she’d grown strangely fond of over the past week. Serelai slipped into it with a soft exhale, letting the hush of it settle over her shoulders after days of noise, sweat, and too many drunk men thinking they were being subtle.
It had been well over a week now. It hardly felt real that it had already been that long since she and Lilette Blackbriar arrived in Elbion together, only for Serelai to be instantly swept up by the tide of the city. Every morning she had gone to the College and its endless forms, interviews, tests, reassurances, and the slow, grinding wait between each step. Being here in person helped, of course, but the process still demanded patience she only barely possessed.
The evenings had been easier in their own way. The tavern near the riverside had taken her in without much fuss, and the coin, though modest, felt like a small victory each night. The work was loud, fast, full of wandering eyes that she’d learned to meet with a razor smile. They made comments; she made far sharper ones. Watching their dopey, semi-stupored faces drop had become its own kind of sport. At least it paid, and at least it made her feel like she wasn’t entirely drifting.
Still, in the rare quiet moments, her mind drifted to the pale nun she’d stumbled upon in that vast desert. She wondered if Lilette was doing alright with whatever business she had with the College. She wondered whether she’d been eating properly. Whether she was avoiding temples altogether or had found comfort in one. The thoughts came in brief flashes, slipping away before she could linger on them for long.
Today was the first morning she’d managed to claw free of obligations. No forms to fill. No shift to run. No one demanding she present herself, justify herself, explain herself. Just a few hours to breathe... and to study. If she could find anything in these shelves that might give her an edge with the College, she’d take it gladly.
So she wandered the long aisles of the library, fingertips brushing the spines as she passed. Heavy tomes on theory. Narrow volumes on elemental structure. Treatises that looked dry enough to turn her to dust if she opened them. There was not a huge deal of interesting works here. She assumed all the good stuff was kept by the library under strict lock and key. The idle thought made her click her tongue once in protest as she continued browsing.
Her boots made soft sounds on the stone floor as she drifted deeper into the corridor, half reading titles, half lost in her own head. The city noise felt far away here, wrapped behind walls of paper and quiet.
Serelai let out a slow breath, turned another corner in the vast hall of the public library, and kept walking.
