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Warm, soothing goo surrounds your body. It's so hard to move, and impossible to think. You may not realize it yet, but you have been selected for the Crew of the Vesmir.

Oh, sure, you may not be capable of anything good or wholesome, and fine, you not even know what space is, but that doesn't matter to your moon-sized captor. You have been chosen, stolen from the only home you have known, and are now forced to suffer the indignities only a ship of kobolds can provide.

Perhaps it's not as serious as all that.

Somewhere between the crystal spheres and the endless void of space drifts a giant, living, silent ship. The Vesmir. Home.


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1.9.5; Time for a Story; Ozymandias Crow has an audience.
Topic Started: Apr 10 2009, 12:52 AM (91 Views)
Ozymandias Crow

The library was for a space of moments almost empty, almost peaceful. It didn't last long, as the euphoric creatures began pouring back into the Library not long after having vacated it bearing the two new 'Crew-members'.

Ozymandias Crow was not sure he had quite agreed to be a crew-member just yet, but that was beside the point. He had agreed to help the Librarian, Sorts-By-Light, with the books. At the time of the promise, Crow had envisaged a period of heavy lifting, perhaps punctuated with paper-cuts. He wasn't really sure how they were supposed to get to the higher shelves without using...Those-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, but he had assumed with his superior height, that reaching said shelves would have featured prominently.

That was before he figured out that the Kobolds couldn't in fact read any of the books in the Library. More importantly, before the Kobold Librarian had figured out that he could. And so it was that he was now ferried with great enthusiasm, and occasionally over-familiar touching, to a chair suitable for a creature of his stature in what once might have been a quiet corner of the Library.

It was a safe bet that little more transcription would happen today, Crow mused. To think, so many books transcribed by sight alone, like in the days before print, when Monks and their novices controlled the production of Books.

"Alright, alright. You will have to quiet down a little, or you won't be able to hear me." He called out as the Kobolds eagerly cleared all the nearby tables. The little creatures somehow managed to manoeuvre the great tables out of the way, stacking them so that they could all cluster about him, crouching down knees-to-chin like excited children. A sea of rusty-brown scales in the vast rainbow-ringed halls.

The Librarian, Sorts-By-Light, apparently having managed to tear himself away from Eugen Metzger's leg, appeared to one side of Ozymandias and handed him a book to read to the congregation, an almost religious excitement.

"Let me see, alright. This one?" He flipped back and forth for a few pages, the strange lettering seeming to swim together and take on meaning as he did. "It seems to be about the bone structure of humanoids, skeletons and so on." He began reading, starting a little way past what appeared to be a prologue. The chapter seemed to cover in rapid succession several different kinds of humanoid, not all of them remotely familiar. He managed to get most of the way down the third page, reading aloud carefully and haltingly, before another book appeared, proffered by a painfully hopeful looking Kobold. The book was enormous, but the Kobold's expression was such that Ozymandias couldn't help but take it to read a while. He passed the book on skeletal structure back to Sorts-By-Light and said quietly, "My associate, Doctor Metzger, who came in to the Library with me. He would very much be interested in this book. Could you see that, as soon as he has had chance to calm down, he receives it? If you ask nicely, I'm sure he will read parts of it, when he has chance."

Having passed the book along, Ozymandias turned his attention to the second, larger book. A quick flip revealed it to be about two birds. A love story of some sort, perhaps? The style was sparse, somehow Oriental or Asiatic. It seemed to have elements of allegory involved, perhaps also being about the creation of a world. It was also, very much about birds, however. Quite charming, actually.

However, before more than a page had been read, another book was handed to him, and the bird-story taken and carefully stacked beside Crow's feet.

The new book was a children's book, quite clearly; A Picture book on how to garden. The Kobolds received this information hungrily, having managed to fall to something at least resembling a hush. Still, with all the whispering, Ozymandias found himself having to talk quite loudly, enunciating the strange 'Engineer' language carefully.

The picture book was replaced almost immediately by another, a history of America. He flipped, skimmed, reading a paragraph here and there to the skittishly excited creatures. It was like no history of America that Ozymandias recognised, seeming to dwell in depth on the Nazi takeover of the American subcontinent. He paused, puzzled. What even are the Nazi's, anyway? Perhaps I should ask the Doctor, it does seem to have something to do with Germany.

He did not get far. An increasingly rapid succession of books were thrust at him, barely enough time in between to read a paragraph, a snatch of sentences, getting only the faintest idea of the book's content. He would protest, and read them further, but each Kobold clutched their proffers with such heart-breaking insistence. He was powerless to resist. Besides, the blur of random, alien and familiar tomes was intoxicating, a mad juxtaposition of the mundane and the fantastic, by way of the impossible.

A book, extensively detailing some kind of acid of mutants, (a dinorhibo..what?). A Novel, or what appears to be, about the Sky-Castles of Jha-quelar. An anthropological study about the Hidden Cities of the Universe (this last tome raised an eyebrow, and Crow was sure to nudge it under his chair, imprisoning it between his feet in something of a death grip.)

He skipped the next after the most cursory of scans, "A cookbook, I believe." Perhaps best not to read to them from a cookbook full of recipes for the preparation and cooking of lizards. They were excitable enough, these creatures.

Fiction followed: A story about a girl in a space station, finding some lost artifact. A man solving murders in the deserts of the mountain planet, Oobeck. Then a personal journal about the drama of strangers, the form of writing and ideas, its informality difficult for the early twentieth century Professor to follow. The next, a comic book about a sports team located in a small rainforest city was equally baffling.

The torrent of books continued, every Kobold in the Library seeming to have queued up to find out just what their favourite book was actually about. His throat became dry, raw from shouting above the din of whispers. He was caged by the growing stacks of books, but he read on, caught up in the fervor, the joy of it all.

"Please, Sorts? I would be indebted to you if someone could fetch me a jug of water, or whatever it is this place has to drink. I suspect I shall have to get used to reading aloud!" He smiled to the little Librarian, a weary well-meaning expression barely spoiled by the Professors slightly-too-large, almost luminous eyes.
Edited by Editorion, Apr 10 2009, 04:57 AM.
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