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

[postcog]

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.

Comments

congrats!!

[lesserkey]

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.

now I really need to get Abhorsen done

[postcog]

"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.

it's so good

[lesserkey]

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.

[postcog]

"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?

[lesserkey]

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.