Austermeer to Room 207, Sunday Afternoon

[raisedbybooklice]

The carriage ride from Summershall had been...long. Very long. Well over a day and through the night, though they had stopped at an inn for a few hours around luncheon, so she could wash up, change, and have a meal in a chair that didn't move. After the first few hours, she hadn't paid much attention to the landscape out the window, preferring to lose herself in one of her favorite books instead, but the rumble of the carriage wheels over an unfamiliar surface had her glancing up.

And that was how she'd gotten her first glimpse of the sea, through the small square of window. It was more gray than blue and vast and the salt smell reached her even up over this bridge they were crossing (which felt longer than even the fabled Bridge of Saints in Bassbridge, Austermeer's capital city). Her face was pressed into the small gap for the entirety of the crossing, amazed that something could be so big and all-encompassing. She was so taken up with the sea that she nearly toppled out when the carriage door opened.

The driver blinked down at her as she scrambled for balance. "We're here, Apprentice," he said, offering her a hand to help her step out of the carriage. Her chest was being loaded onto a funny vehicle by a woman in clothing unlike she'd ever seen. "This conveyance will bring you the rest of the way," the driver explained. She looked at him in mute dismay; although they'd barely exchanged ten words on the trip, he was from the village of Summershall and at least familiar. Nothing else that she could spot from her vantage point was. "It's too steep and narrow for the horses to get up," he explained gruffly. "Gots t'turn around here unless I plan to get stuck."

Elisabeth nodded and offered her hand. The new driver finished securing her coach and gestured to her. "Into the rickshaw," she said, "And we'll get you up to the dorms quick as you like."

"Oh!" Elisabeth said, eyes wide. "This is a rickshaw then?" She'd run across the word in books, but had no idea what they'd looked like. Already she was learning so many new things!

Unlike the coach, Elisabeth spent the entirely of the rickshaw trip gaping at everything she could see. The town looked like any village in Austermeer, right down to the cobblestones, but nobody she spotted did. And then the town was left behind and they were on a long road going ever upwards, and suddenly there was a castle. "Is that where the king lives?" she called.

The rickshaw driver laughed. "Naw, that's the school!"

Elisabeth pointed at the next huge building. "Is that a palace?"

"Nope!" She was still laughing. "That's where you're gonna live. That's the dorms!"

Elisabeth was still calculating how many grimoires a Great Library the size of the dorms could hold when she was dropped off in front of the doors. There was someone waiting there with a key and her room assignment, sent by the moose, they said, which Elisabeth assumed was some kind of slang because how could a moose send anybody anywhere?

And then she was carrying her carpet bag and her trunk up to her floor - thank goodness only the second because her trunk was heavy, thunking up each step - and into room 207, her home however long until the Director could be convinced to let her return.

[Door and post both open!]

Comments

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Well, if it helps, this is barely a normal school, so everyone gets to figure it out together at first," Sabine assured? told her.

[raisedbybooklice]

"Is it true, we really go to school in a castle?" Elisabeth asked. "That's what the rickshaw driver told me, but it seems awfully fancy."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"We do," Sabine confirmed. "Our class schedules are kind of weird, but at least the setting is good."

She was still not over the classes here, even if she wasn't taking as many as when she got here.

"What was the last place you came from like?"

[raisedbybooklice]

"I came from the Great Library of Summershall," Elisabeth said proudly, drawing herself up to her full six feet two inches. She touched the key that hung against her light blue robes. "I've been an apprentice there since I was thirteen, but I've lived there my whole life, cause I was left on the doorstep when I was a baby."

She didn't sound particularly sad or hurt about that. It was just a fact about her, like having blue eyes or freckles when she went into the sun for too long.

"It's...a lot like the other Great Libraries, I guess. Wardens, archivists, the grimoires, booklice. We store up to Level Eights down in our vault."

That sure was...a lot of words she was throwing at Sabine right there.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

First off, this girl needed to meet Lana. Second, she'd unpack the baby-on-a-doorstep thing later, maybe.

"Did you say booklice?"

[raisedbybooklice]

Fortunately, she would! Shortly!

"...Yeeees?" Elisabeth said. "Don't worry! I didn't bring any with me! My old roommate claimed the ones we had in our room so she could keep running experiments."

You weren't making it any less weird, kiddo.

"She's pretty sure she is close to figuring out how they get so big." She gestured, hands apart far enough to hint at something roughly kittenish in size.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

Sabine found she didn't want to ask this question.

"...How big are the books?"

[raisedbybooklice]

"The grimoires?" Elisabeth asked. "Oh, well, it depends on the grimoire. Some are almost as big as my torso and there are a few that are itty-bitty, hand-sized. But most of them are just a little bit bigger than regular books. Well, longer anyway. They're all really thick. It's was really hard to make a grimoire, back when sorcerers were allowed to, so they wanted them to be big enough to fit all the spells."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

And sometimes you got really big booklice. Okay.

"So are you a magic user, then?" Sabine asked.

Which was so not a weird thing here, now that she'd been here a year.

[raisedbybooklice]

"Oh no!" Elisabeth said, recoiling in horror. "I'm no sorcerer!"

She nearly put her hands up to her ears to make sure they hadn't gone pointed, but no. The magister had had perfectly normal ones. She did glance down at her feet to make sure hers weren't suddenly cloven; they'd never gotten a chance to check his, after all.

"I couldn't be a sorcerer and an apprentice in the Grand Library anyway. We're there to make sure the sorcerers can only access the grimoires under very specific circumstances!"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Oh! Okay, sorry if that was apparently super offensive," Sabine said quickly.

[raisedbybooklice]

"Sorcerers get their powers by making deals with demons," Elisabeth explained, wide-eyed. "Throughout history, they've done terrible things with their magic and stuff. The most powerful grimoires contain terrible spells that can do things like raise an army of undead or let sorcerers mind control innocent people. That's what Great Libraries are for. They protect the world from grimoires and grimoires from the world."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Then I'm really glad those exist," Sabine said, and frowned. "I should also probably warn you that if you see anyone around here using magic, they most likely not have dealt with any demons."

...Well, Illyana. Not that Sabine knew that.

[raisedbybooklice]

And Constantine. Her new boss.

...It was like Fandom was deliberately undermining everything Sabine was trying to do here.

"Are there lots of...people who use magic here?"

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"A few?" She didn't even have a ballpark, really. "And a few who don't use magic, but it might look like it. It depends on where they're from."

[raisedbybooklice]

"How can you have magic that isn't magic?" Elisabeth asked, utterly confused.

Nothing about this place was like anything she knew at home.