Private Amidst Tomes and Squires

[Amelia Hawthorne]

The scent of old vellum and pressed ink lived in the air like incense, deepened by the faint trace of shroud magic that lingered between the pages of ancient tomes. The monastery’s library curved around them like a great cathedral, its arched walls forming a near circle, rising in graceful lines of stone. Lining those walls, wrapped rainbow-hued lancet windows in a sweeping halo of light. The morning sun poured through them in soft shafts of color, bright red and warm amber, rich violet, and cool sea-glass green. Casting fractured mosaics across the shelves, the floor, and the faces of those within.

Amelia Hawthorne stood just within that gentle radiance, her hands clasped in front of her, fingers twitching with restrained anticipation. This was where she felt most herself, amongst books and bindings, that faint hum of arcane etched into pages.

Parshen stood before them, a tall elf who cut a composed figure, his pale hair brushed the hinge of his jaw, and caught glimmers of stained light. He adjusted the glasses perched upon the bridge of his nose with one long-fingered hand, his tone clipped and clear as he addressed the trio of squires gathered before him.

​

“You will begin with the west alcove— bindings there have suffered in the last storm's damp. Catalogue what needs rethreading, what may be copied anew, and set them aside for me. You’ll find linen gloves in the basket.” He gestured toward a side table, its surface already neatly arrayed with tools. “Once your tasks are complete, you may remain and study as you see fit. Quietly.”

There was a dry, almost teasing note to the final word, but his expression betrayed nothing.

Amelia offered a small, stiff smile toward the squires at her side: Tobille and Sitra. She hadn’t spent much time with either outside of lessons, but she'd always admired the quiet yet eager nature of Tobille, and the quick, detailed questioning that Sitra had ready for all their teachers. They challenged her in ways she found quietly thrilling, not in the way of one trying to be better than them, but because they inspired her to want to be better with them. Always seeking to better herself in respect of the prowess of her peers.

She tucked her red hair behind one ear and resisted the urge to turn back toward the desk where her half-finished scroll on Master Grimstone’s curse dispellition theorem sat temptingly in wait. There would be time. Parshen had said so. Her brown eyes gleamed with barely contained focus.

"If you have any questions, you may find me at my desk— otherwise, you may begin." Parshen nodded demurely before retreating to his pile of scrolls.

@Tobille @Sitra

 

[Tobille]

​

Tobi never needed asking to spend time in the library. He sought it out often enough on his own, usually without Parshen’s strict oversight. It was more catharsis than chore, one of the few tasks that promised peace, quiet, and a sense of order.

Today, though, it felt like punishment.

He had good reason to think so. Yesterday’s incident had started innocently enough: he had borrowed one of the monastery’s botanical guides, lovingly annotated by Syr Josai, and wandered into the trails behind the tiltyard, where spruce and pine towered. Eyes down, spectacles slipping toward the tip of his nose, he licked his thumb and flipped through pages rich with pressed flowers and cider stains, drifting off trail as he puzzled out the difference between morning glory and moonflower.

The woods, ever obliging, opened their arms in welcome, needle and bough alike.

And before he knew it, he was completely lost.

It wasn’t so bad, or so he told himself, just before stumbling into what he thought was a stand of honeysuckle, judging by the sticky-sweet fragrance. What he found instead was the den of a territorial boar feasting on rotten fruit.

Unsurprisingly, he lost Syr Josai’s guide somewhere in his frantic, hollering, scrambling retreat through the underbrush. And before sunset, he required rescue by none other than Syr Lóthlindor, who hauled him from the treeline by what felt like the scruff of his neck. Like a disobedient pup.

The Order, of course, knew of the squire’s love for study, cataloguing, and solitude. Bidding him to it was perhaps too light a penance. So perhaps the real punishment was still forthcoming, something like extra training with Syr Darthinian or a lecture from the Captain of Dawn. Even so, the signs of his humiliation were plain: dirt wedged under his fingernails, a dent in the frame of his glasses, and a fresh bloom of blood reddening his ears.

Tobi was too busy dwelling on such things to catch more than the tail end of Parshen’s instructions. So much so that he startled when he saw Amelia’s stiff, confident smile, like he had missed something important and she knew it.

His ears flushed deeper. He cleared his throat, offered a hasty nod, and turned on his heel to comply so quickly that he walked straight into Sitra. He staggered backward in alarm, hands raised in apology, and promptly stepped on Amelia’s toe.

Off to a GREAT start.

"Oh, palgris piss. I'm so sorry. Are you okay? I'm sorry. I... let's just, I'll go get us some gloves." Tobi muttered, his scarred hands pinwheeling.

 

[Sitra]

The pursuit of knowledge was one that Sitra had always preferred to undertake on her own terms - in her own fashion - and she had possessed even less of an interest in doing so when it came with the expectation of playing librarian and labouring on menial tasks for the benefit of moldering archivists like Parshen.​

A man she was now blaming, rightly or wrongly, for all her present woes.

But could all that blame truly be laid at his feet?

A part of her whispered that she was perhaps being a little too uncharitable in her appraisal of the man, for it was through no fault of his own that he found himself burdened with the presence of three squires standing before him, now waiting patiently for instruction as to how they would go about the tedious chores he had saddled them with.

But at the same time, there was another, harsher part of her who wasn't as eager to entertain any such charitable thoughts; the part of her that was still as stubborn and quick to bristle at perceived injustice as the child who sat at the feet of the most patient teacher she had ever known, and the same man who took the brunt of her childish temper when her family had next to no inclination of considering her every want.

For in truth it had felt like an insult to have her training and education fall stagnant at the wayside whilst she was forced into the pretense of a servant, rather than that of a squire. Nor did it help that the more paranoid voices in her mind spoke of this whole affair as something that was punitive in some way that she could not immediately discern, although she had no way of knowing that for certain other than through her own personal conviction that this was due to her own failings. Or some manner of insult she had to answer for.

Nonetheless, she had long since learned to swallow down her indignation with some small degree of grace, as her parents and tutors had preferred her to.

And that was exactly what she did, once again, with the same ease it took to maintain the carefully neutral smile that she veiled her innermost thoughts with; looking out into the world without truly seeing, like the surface of a still lake as she nodded dutifully along with whatever it was that Parshen was saying now.

If the librarian deigned to notice it, he was either tactful enough not to mention her inattentiveness, or too busy to bother.

But as time passed, with the seconds marked by the droning of Parshen's instructive words, she had eventually come to notice the weight of Amelia's eyes on her - with a smile as stiff as it was genuine - and it was a gesture that she could not help but to return in kind; with the barest twitch of her lips breaking the illusion of composed tranquility that she allowed to settle comfortably across the soft lines of her face.

A ripple in the still pond, as if the little gesture was a stone skipped across its waters.

She might not have known the studious and noble Amelia Hawthorne as well as she should have, but they had more than enough in common to warrant Sitra's sincerity - if only due to the fact that the other girl was probably one of the few squires in the monastery who was born and bred into a family equal to her own in status, and who undoubtedly shared a story that mirrored her own in a myriad of ways.

That they were both daughters of privilege and expectations, with those things feeling more like chains to be burdened with rather than wings to be borne by.

Unless, of course, Amelia's family happened find the idea of sending their daughters to knightly monasteries as something to be commended, rather than condemned. But that was a possibility that she found to be... unlikely.

At least from the perspective of the culture that she was raised in and saw the world through, for Saknne was progressive only in that their lessons for girl children also happened to include arithmetic and the subtleties of commerce, rather than just matters of embroidery and courtly etiquette.

She would have to ask when they were next permitted a quiet moment together.

However, whatever other similarities they might have had was a topic that would have to wait another day, as they were hardly the only two present in the library. And the look that the two of them had shared had only served to blind Sitra to that fact.

Or at least, it did, up until Tobille found a way to rectify that oversight - making his presence known in the same moment that he crashed bodily into the taller squire.

What followed was a flustered and graceless stumble, the desperate raising of hands to steady oneself, and then an equally flustered and graceless apology that did little to cushion the impact and sudden jolt she had felt against her back as the wood of a bookshelf dug into yielding flesh.

Sitra had flinched in surprise, her smile all but faltering as she stared down at Tobille, as if truly seeing the man before her for the first time; her dark eyes taking in the squire only a few years her elder with an expression that made her look like the admonishing elder, rather than anything resembling a peer.

Blinking away her surprise, and the frustrated downward curl of her mouth, she returned his apologetic noises with a tightly-wound smile that had appeared as soon as she had caught herself scowling. "There is no need for apology, truly." She had blithely answered back, her response as programmed as it was hollow. "I should have been paying more attention as well, Tobille."

That was utter nonsense, of course, but she wasn't brought up in a household that spoke the truth.

So she instead took a quiet moment to compose herself and to rein in those frustrated thoughts, busying her hands with the idle task of rearranging the smock she had worn for this purpose. "But some gloves would be lovely, thank you. I imagine we will be in need of them before long."

Sitra had given him a long look then, as if in implicit dismissal.

Almond eyes met Amelia's brown gaze next, and her look softened in their meeting. "Well then, do you think we ought to proceed, Amelia?"

 

[Amelia Hawthorne]

Huffing a grunt in startled pain, Amelia already had her hands up trying to save Tobille's pinwheeling as she shifted her weight off the offended foot, flexing her toes within her boots to chase off the ache.

If she had had a sharp retort to give, it failed in the wake of Tobille's scarlet-hued frazzled charm and Sitra's composed, bristling dismissal. The two of them, so different, pulled her into their orbit like a planet dancing between stars and the thought drew the smallest breath of laughter into her chest, though it never quite escaped her lips for the sake of either of their prides.

Instead she answered Sitra with amusement warm brown eyes and a defrosting posture, "Considering we're still standing after such calamity? Yes, which is a better beginning than most group projects I think." Amelia hoped that the soft lifting of her lips came off as friendly as she intended, she wasn't particularly skilled at making friends, let alone speaking to people. But academics was a medium that she knew they all shared in some capacity, and common ground was better than any to start building the framework for any kind of relationship, although perhaps the scaffolding of their shared Order was sturdy enough to bridge what gaps may appear.

She plucked a pair of linen gloves from the basket and passed a pair to both before slipping her own on, tugging each fingertip into place with a careful precision that belied her eagerness. "Let's get a move on to the west alcove then, I'd hate for Parshen to think we collapsed under the weight of his instruction before we even started." She turned toward the shadowed curve of shelves, the fractured colors of the lancet windows painting soft streaks across her bobbed red hair.

@Tobille @Sitra

 

[Tobille]

Leave it to the young women of the Order to turn scorn for his foibles into a lesson in courtesy, so devastatingly polite it stung worse than being ignored outright. No Syr could teach him chivalry quite like this, and it was inconceivable that any of the true dawnlings or dusklings would show the same patience for his floundering. Sitra’s stiff tone and lingered look made it clear that such forbearance, such mercy, was not likely to be offered twice. And yet, unfortunately for Squire Sitra, Tobi seemed almost fated to stumble again, to prod her patience anew, and blunder into every pitying excuse in the book, with Squire Amelia left to play the role of warden.

Sure enough, he was tuned in and taken by Amelia’s steadying hand, her fingers brushing his so lightly they felt like filaments of spider silk. He blinked down at the thin white gloves she’d placed there, perplexed by how quick and deft she had been in retrieving them. "Ah, yes, let us--" he began, with the intention of saying begin, but found his words echoic and late, mere soundghosts of compliance trailing in the wake of the women who were swallowed by sagging shelfwalls and winking window light.

The light that only vaguely revealed the scope of their task. Tobi began mentally sorting the work ahead as he followed them -- damage assessment, material analysis, and proper documentation. Which texts needed complete recopying? Which could be simply rebound?

But evaluating the damage was like uncovering the soft, loamy soil from a mass grave, each tome a different study in the intricacies of morbid decay. Pushing up his round spectacles with the side of his thumb, he recoiled from the near-illegible writings of St. Cexteriane, and at the half-sheaves falling apart at his touch. It was so swollen that the mould growth keeping it together released a cloud of spores. He coughed, turned aside, hiding his face from Sitra and Amelia.

"Blegh… this is going to be so… educational. Parshen clearly has a gross misunderstanding of the word damp. How is this even salvageable?" He poked at a soft bubble on the spine. "I'm more worried about the monastery wardstones, and if they can’t keep weather out instead of in…" Yeugh!