voicetest | Setting is a library | Canon is The Old Kingdom Trilogy Series

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Setting is a library | Canon is The Old Kingdom Trilogy Series

The library is...impressive. Not like her own, the Great Library, carved into a mountain and full of hidden passages (and deadly creatures). Still, it's full of books she has never seen. None of them have magic in them, but all the new information she was finding made it up for it in spades. Lirael had never read about the things she was reading now, and such as her curiosity she could very well ignore the fact she had found herself on a weird place, most likely away from the Glacier. Or maybe she entered a room that had another library inside? It could happen.

Noises blur out, people blur out. It's just her and the books. She likes it that way; silent, neat, ordered. If she focuses on it she can spend a little longer in here without freaking out.

Not freaking out is very important.

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The intrusion of some distant, faint sound is probably all the more noticeable for the silence that had come before. It is squeaky, too regular to be that of a mouse or rat. As it continues and nears, she might recognize it as the sound of some kind of wheeled cart. Presumably, someone or something coming with a load of books. There's plenty of time for her to retreat and observe from a less obvious vantage, if that's her preference.

The person pushing the cart proves to be a young man frowning in consternation at the shelves. He doesn't recognize them, and he thought he knew the archive he started working for just a few months ago very well. As he slows to a halt, a dog of some sort, dull gray, short-haired, trots alertly to his heel with its ears tipped forward.

"Can you go get the map for this section?" It's phrased as a question, but by the expectant look and the way the dog immediately runs off the way they came, it was really a command. Kai takes the opportunity to scan the nearest shelf, perplexed.

"'Palladian Grammar and Metaphysical Appropriations'?" He says out loud to himself, at an appropriately hushed volume.

You don't become Second Librarian of the Clayr's Great Library without growing accustomed to all kinds of library-related sounds (and not-so-library-related sounds too). It's not exactly like the carts she's used to push around, but the sound is similar enough to give her more than enough time to scurry a couple of shelves further down the line, eyes peeking carefully as to not be found and, Lirael assumes, scolded for wandering around. Her fears are short lived though, not because of Kai's presence, but the dog's.

He has a dog.

Envy hits her hard for a moment, leaving an aftertaste of remorse she intensely dislikes. Not a moment ago she was wandering the Great Library with the Disreputable Dog, which up to some point could have been considered her dog, although the animal didn't only talk back, but rarely followed orders. Her best friend in the world wasn't here though, but this...man had managed to kept his. Of course, even though it seemed to be an intelligent enough animal, it was no Disreputable Dog (who Lirael was fairly certain was no dog at all anyway). Had she been there, the Dog would have most likely forced her to go and talk with this man, Lirael was certain.

What Lirael hasn't quite noticed just yet though, is that her hiding technique is actually rather poor and she's pretty damn visible from where she 'hides'.

..maybe he won't notice?

He spends another minute or so looking at the titles on the shelves, increasingly uncomfortable with the selection. No way would the archive have collected any of these. Perhaps he should take a look inside one of them to make sure. And where has that demon gotten to? It's usually much faster. Kai turns his gaze back in the direction they came, and finding nothing of interest to look at there, naturally then looks in the opposite direction. At which point he realizes someone has been standing silently on the other side of the shelf for an indeterminate amount of time and he gives both a little jerk of surprise and a little yelp.

"D-dana?" He sounds like he knows it's not whoever Dana is, but he wishes it were. He also makes a small twitchy hand gesture, nothing recognizable as Charter, but one which nevertheless results in an odd chiming noise and a bark from far away. The hasty patter of four paws follows. Dog summoning?

Lirael gasps, soundlessly, and then ducks, momentarily disappearing from his sight. Dana? Making a quick recount of librarians, Lirael can't remember a Dana among them. Maybe he's just calling any other Clayr? But how could that be, when everyone else is dark-skinned and golden-haired? It's impossible to confuse Lirael with any other Clayr, after all. And why is he there, anyway? He's clearly not a Clayr. This is all too confusing.

The noise and the patter makes her gasp again. He's calling the dog back, which means he's not a dog at all. Guard-sending? Is she about to get attacked? Peeking out again, Lirael lifts her hands, apparently defeated; she's the stranger here, right?

"P-please don't attack." She talks very, very softly, and if the library wasn't as silent as it was he would have probably missed it.

Add to that his strange clothing, of odd materials, unnecessary layers in odd geometric patterns, but he hesitates at her request. The dog appears at the end of the aisle and comes charging down. Kai gestures at it so that it knows not to attack. The floor is slippery, unfortunately, and its speed carries it — in a sitting position — skidding past the cart and into the shelf, where it solidly connects with the lowest row of books.

"Sorry," Kai says to the dog, though it made no whine or noise of complaint. "Uh. Sorry," he adds to Lirael, hands still raised but now in a more conciliatory position. "I... I don't know where I am and you startled me."

His demon does not have the map, after all.

Lirael watches how the dog skids and hits the shelve, perplexed, but says nothing. Could be a sending anyway, albeit one lacking the mannerisms of its shape. She can't sense its Charter marks though, which makes her a bit uneasy. No scent of Free Magic either. Curious.

He does look strange, although Lirael, in her light blue tunic (linen pants underneath), white scarf loosely wrapped on her head (barely covering her black hair), wrap-up ankle high sandals and her yellow vest isn't precisely the spitting image of normalcy. Less elaborated, perhaps.

"You...don't?" She lowers her hands, taking a tentative step towards him. "Me neither."

She's still talking really low by the way.

The dog resumes a more dignified position and remains standing by the shelf, staring at Lirael. No panting, and no noise since its first bark. Some breeds are like that, and some dogs not friendly by individual nature, but this one is still pretty weird.

Meanwhile, Kai takes her in at a glance, guilt growing. She looks like she's only a teenager, and given how timidly she speaks, he might have frightened her a lot more than she frightened him. The clothes he lacks any context for, but the important bit is that they're both lost. Being a people person by necessity as much as by choice, he tries smiling at her, a carefully calculated degree of friendliness that falls between 'greeting a visitor to archive' and 'meeting an acquaintance's younger sibling for the first time'.

"Well, this isn't good," he says, but he doesn't sound very worried. "I'm not sure what could have happened. I'm Kai, by the way. Nice to meet you. Apart from the circumstances."

Lirael's knowledge of dogs comes from either her encounters with them in the Lower Refractory and from books; the Disreputable Dog barely counts. In any case, dogs are meant to make noise, even if it's soft and measured. This dog? Lirael was pretty sure it was just the shape of one hiding something else.

Considering Lirael isn't really fond of talking as a whole, the fact she's trying is a big deal. His smile feels safe enough, at least.

"I'm Lirael." As she says that her hair falls like a black curtain over her face. Her eyes wander back to the dog with interest. 'Hi', she mouths at it.

The dog-thing gives no sign it understands, though it does. Its continued attention is not hostile, at least, only watchful.

With Lirael's attention on the dog, Kai reaches up with one hand as if to rub at his right eye. It's a more convenient pose than simply shutting it, as people have misinterpreted that as winking in the past. Through his left eye, he can see — some sort of magic, he thinks. Not a type he's familiar with, not set or contained in array of sigils, except, perhaps, something shining from behind her hair, on her forehead. He can't see it clearly.

The biggest thing is that she either isn't a demon, or is an entity so far above his paygrade it doesn't matter. Kai lowers his hand, and steps around the cart to put it on the dog's head.

"Why don't you assume public behavior protocols for a while?" The question-as-command again. The dog immediately perks up, the ears in the right position, the tail starting to wag. It's not one hundred percent genuinely dog-like, but it's much better than before.

"I'm just going to see if I can get a message back to where I came from," he adds vaguely for Lirael's benefit, though he assumes and intended for the dog to be distracting. It creeps forward, eager but cautious to sniff at Lirael.

There's just a lot of staring from Lirael's side. She senses something that feels like magic coming from him for a moment, but again, neither Charter nor Free Magic, just a weird tingling on her Charter Mark. So he's definitely a creature of Free Magic, which is good, but he's also an unknown...which could be bad.

The command takes her by surprise, and even more how the dog acts afterwards. Pretends to act, she tells herself as her hand goes to give it a few tentative pats, brushing her hair out of the way. "What is it?" The question is for Kai, of course. "It's not a sending..." Wow, look how many words she's stringing together. Him not being Clayr certainly helps.

To his other statement, she just nods. She has already tried, but it didn't seem to do any good.

He moves some books around on the cart, uncovering scraps of paper. The pen takes a bit more hunting down.

"Ah, we — called up a spirit and told it what kind of body to have. Is that like a sending?" Kai sounds distracted as he writes, but he isn't at all. The dog subjects Lirael's hands to extensive sniffing before essaying a tentative lick. In as far as possible, it's gathering what information it can, but it is a very limited demon, like Free Magic on a choke chain far harsher than the Charter. The choke chain is traceable back to Kai, which wouldn't be a surprise.

"No..." She tries not to sound dismissive, because he obviously doesn't know what a sending it. "A sending is...made of magic. Just magic." No spirits or anything like that. That sounds more like Dead Hand.

She can feel its connection to Kai, which gives her enough confidence to scratch behind the not-dog's ears. "Have you, um...seen another dog? Female."

His 'message' is mostly notes on this encounter as well as the surroundings, but if Lirael takes a look she may notice it seems to be nonsense, as it's enciphered.

"No, I'm sorry. I, ah... I was in my library, where there'd only be dogs like this one, and I'm not sure at what point I ended up here. You were the first person I came across."

The unasked question dangles delicately at the end of his answer, an invitation to volunteer her own circumstances. It seems best to use a light conversational touch with Lirael rather than asking too many direct questions of her.

"Me too." That's all she says for a while, as she's only now realizing she couldn't possibly be on the Great Library, not if a stranger had walked into here just like that. Or could she? For all its strange rooms, the Library never really connect her to places outside of the Glacier. Surely she had somehow ended somewhere completely different.

That wasn't good, at all.

"I mean- I was on my own library, too. On the Glacier." Maybe he knows of it? And knows a way back, too.

He glances up from his note as the dog gently thumps its tail against the floor. There's no recognition in his face.

"'The Glacier'?" Kai repeats cautiously. There are capital letters in the way Lirael said it; he almost wonders if she's from somewhere in Mongolia. If there weren't discrepancies in the way she reacted to the demon, the unusual array of magic he saw through his left eye, he might believe they were from the same world. He's about eighty percent sure they're not.

"Of the Clayr," she adds, because if he doesn't know that then he's certainly not from around, as in not at all. She hasn't started thinking about different worlds being a possibility, but she's getting there, slowly. Kai certainly feels alien in more ways than she can explain.

Still, her voice carries some disbelief. Who doesn't know about the Clayr's Glacier?

The apologetic look that precedes his response is probably answer enough.

"I'm sorry, I've never heard of that. And I think you won't have heard of where I'm from either." Kai hurriedly scribbles a few more words and angles what he intends to be a reassuring smile at Lirael. "I know I'm not in my world, and maybe you're not in yours either. But it's okay. This spirit should be able to travel back to mine. The people I work for won't let us come to any harm."

While not a lie, this is certainly the most optimistic rendering of the likely outcomes, if his demon can in fact make it back. The dog prances away from Lirael's hands to peer attentively up at Kai, tongue hanging out in its best imitation of canine eagerness.

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Setting is a library | Canon is The Old Kingdom Trilogy Series

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perfect library partner tbh

shamelessly employed dog demon for exactly this purpose

doge pls

surprise it's not even a fun dog

D.Dog best dog amirite

stands like statue while Lirael pets it, only fetches ball when commanded

she's too used to unruly mutts tho

someone should play D. Dog for sure

that would be the best thing ever and I would pull whoever does to all the games ever

I've only seen a Mogget or two so far!

I found a D. Dog

congrats!!

now I really need to get Abhorsen done

it's so good

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