Seph was always a little astounded by how many books were in the library.
She walked slowly up one of the aisles, running a finger along the spines of the books. Sonja had never had anything that could have been called a library, back at her big house in Anchorage. She did have this one bookcase, and it was filled top to bottom with all sorts of old things, but just the first floor of this library could fit hundreds of those! Seph had heard that there were much bigger ones in other places of the world, but she still felt that this place was impressive. That said, Seph didn't much feel like reading at the moment. She'd already read a good amount today, and whenever she read something, she undoubtedly had a hundred questions afterwards. It got a little tiring at some point. She was absorbing knowledge so quickly, but there was only so much she could absorb in a day.
Still, she much preferred reading to what some of her fellow Balaren did with their time. They loved their wolf forms, loved to spend time in the wild, be the princes of the forest that they were. Maybe it made sense, though. All of them desired to be that which they were not.
Seph let her mind wander. What are we going to do tomorrow? Would any of these books make a good gift for anyone? No, of course not, they're not even yours to give. Aaron's a wonderful dancer. I wonder if he'd teach me sometime? No, I'm not nearly as graceful as he is. He wasn't born with four legs, and then forced to learn to walk on two. But still, maybe he could teach me something. Where is Sinry? She had come here for Sinry, so she could see how she was doing. She did that a lot, since Sinry seemed so much more comfortable around her than most of the others. It also made Seph feel more comfortable. The knowledge that she could help people, and not the other way around, was very reassuring.
Maybe she was on the second level. It was supposed to be for the Evincal charges, so Seph didn't usually go up there. "Sinry?" she called out softly. It was always so quiet in here, she hated making too much noise.
The Cloistered Witch
No, no, no, no... nada. Nope, not there either. Oh wait-... nope. With her chin in her hand, Soren was sitting at a small desk by herself up in the Evincal level of the library, and her little area was hidden behind a few bookcases. Open before her were at least three different books, and several others that were closed, and clearly a bit ruffled, at the edges of the table.
The necromancer was poring over the book immediately in front of her, the pages a bit weathered and a relaxing shade of silvery yellow. In her other hand was a slate grey mechanical pencil which she was tapping against her cheek in immersed thought. There were clear signs that she had been in the library for quite a few hours, and the girl allowed a small yawn to escape her lips, pausing her pencil action and taking two seconds to rub her eyes before resuming it.
However, she jumped a bit, hearing a faint noise that sounded all too much like a voice, but somewhat far away. And Sinry thought she had caught a bit of her name. Her pencil had dropped from her hand, and began rolling towards the stairs. "Oh shoot." She muttered very quietly, quickly getting up to chase after it before she remembered the very important book she had just been leafing through.
Sinry turned back quickly, leaning over the table and snatching the book up into her arms, quickly scurrying towards the stairs and racing down after her pencil, which, by now, had made it down a couple of the stairs. She was constantly dropping the writing utensils, and knew all too well how they seemingly disappeared into Narnia, showing up again in the strangest places if she was even lucky enough to find them in the first place.
Her eyes locked onto the small object, and she realized, much to her horror, that it was heading straight for a crack in the flooring. It was her favorite pencil, so she wasn't just about to let it go without a fight, so she picked up her pace. However, what Soren didn't intend was her shoe tip to get stuck on the flat of her step as she made a misstep, tripping forward and the book going flying out of her hands.
She remained fairly silent other than a gasp as she plummeted, hitting a few of the stairs on the way down before coming to a stop right in front of Seph. Quickly, Sinry reached out, catching the slow moving pencil before it could disappear into the darkness of wherever that bloody hole went.
The Evincal had successfully skinned up her knees a bit, being as she was wearing cargo shorts, and she looked up at Seph with a comically dazed, though small smile. The book had flipped open and was currently sliding across the floor. It then hit the side of a bookshelf and ceased in its motion.
The wolfborn girl gaped in absolute horror as one of her best friends went crashing down the stairs. Her book went sliding across the floor, and Sinry had somehow managed to recapture her pencil even despite falling down the stairs, but Seph wasn't concerned about that in the slightest. She was supposed to be the one who occasionally forgot how to walk around, not Sinry.
"Oh no," she said worriedly, quickly moving to Sinry's side and helping her get up. "That was my fault, wasn't it? I scared you, and then made you fall down the stairs, didn't I? I am so, so sorry!"
When she was back on her feet, Seph hurried to grab the book that had slid away, and bring it back to her. She didn't bother to look at what it was or anything. Probably something to do with her necromancy. Seph wasn't bothered by Sinry's power like some of the other people were. She didn't know why... it just didn't really creep her out like it did for some of the others.
After returning the book to her, Seph carefully examined her. Other than the skinned knees, she looked fine. Maybe just a little flustered. "You're alright, aren't you? I didn't mean to scare you or anything. You know I wouldn't try to do that." That was quite true. Seph hated being scared or startled, and didn't think it would be any fun, unlike some of the charges here.
Sinry looked up at one of her closest friends, quickly picking herself up off of the ground and into a sitting position, rubbing her head with a tiny sheepish smile. "No... that's alright. It wasn't you who made me dive off of the stairs like a crazy person. But no, you didn't scare me, I just didn't expect you to be in the library. I mean... well, I mean that, I don't really expect anyone to come calling on me, y'know? So I was surprised by that aspect."
She then leaned forward, examining her knees carefully, poking at the skin softly. "This is alright too, I think. I can use it too in some of my training, so you didn't do too bad there either. Eventually I'd have to draw some of my own blood, and it's always really weird when you do it to yourself, if that makes sense."
Soren tilted her head back up, watching as the Balaren scurried to recover her book, keeping it somewhat open on that page. Meanwhile, Sinry replaced the pencil to the safety of her shirt pocket. She put one hand on her kneecap, the other reaching up for the precious book. As she lowered it to herself and briefly scanned over the page, she looked back up to her friend, about to say something else when her attention snapped back to the page.
Underlining the words with her finger as she quickly read over it, she brought the hand that was previously on her knee up in the air, snapping her fingers together. "That's where the little bugger was hiding!" She met Seph's eyes, a shy grin on her face. "I'm really fine. I've catapulted myself off of worse after these bloody pencils." Once more her gaze flickered down to the pencil, her lower lip sucked in a bit and her eyes dilated from the somewhat dimmer lighting in the building.
"Anyway, I was looking for this all morning." Sinry turned the book around, pointing to the picture of a wisp. "These are relatively rare, but they do live on the island. I need it for my training, but I didn't know any of its stats or where it resided. But now, thanks to you, I got the information I needed. I'm going to start hunting these as soon as possible." She gave a fractional nod of her head, resolute in what she wanted to do for the day.
Seph still couldn't help but feel bad. Scared, surprised... what was the difference again? Either way, she'd come into the library, and then poor Sinry had taken a tumble down the stairs. But... all things considered, it didn't seem to have worked out too poorly. Sinry was alright. Apparently it would help some in her training? Seph didn't really understand, but of course, she wasn't an Evincal, she was a wolfborn Balaren. Her ability was to become a human. Looking at it that way, pretty much every moment of every day was training her ability.
And apparently Seph had helped her somehow? She'd helped her find something. Huh. Seph looked at the picture of the wisp that Sinry was pointing to with interest. And Sinry was going to go hunting for them? "I could help you with that, if you wanted," she began, before quickly deciding to backtrack. "Actually, I've never been much good at hunting anything. I might just end up scaring them away." She thought for a moment. "Unless... maybe I could help you more as a wolf? I'd be quicker that way, and I could smell and hear better."
Seph could already smell and hear better than most everyone, being wolfborn, but in her natural wolf form, it was even moreso. And while she was telling the truth about being a poor hunter, that was relative to the other wolves. She was still likely quicker than most of the others when she was a wolf. That said, she really had no idea what hunting wisps entailed, and was more interested in just helping Sinry, to make herself feel better for causing her to fall down the stairs.
Before either of them could say anything more, however, there was a gust of wind. Seph instinctively tensed as Fleet blew into the library, shouted at the top of his lungs about the meeting in the courtyard, and then vanished. Cringing, Seph slowly relaxed before fixing the hair that Fleet had blown around. The wind born Navarene always startled her when he whipped around on the air like that.
"I hate it when he does that," she remarked to Sinry. She quite liked Fleet, of course, and found him very enjoyable to be around, but that particular trick tended to sneak up on her. "We should probably go." Seph led the way from the library, and to the courtyard, where a few of the charges had already gathered. When Aaron arrived, she happily plopped down beside him, giving him a warm smile in greeting. She too was quite interested in whatever Michaela had to say, as she felt that the woman was speaking directly to her when she said 'your purpose'. Purpose had been something Seph struggled to find since discovering her human form, and while she had certainly made some amazing friends since arriving on the Isle, she felt no closer to finding a place in the world, something that she could do with her life.
But perhaps small steps were still in order. Learning how to better function as a person would probably be a good first step.