The land of Aria

The library

"Did you find anything useful" asked Alice while sighing.

They both spent the last few hours in this maze of bookshelves which were so overloaded that the wooden planks were bent to a dangerous point. Some of the books were so old that some pages have become loose; they had to be extra careful with them.

"Nothing yet" said Kate as she jumped of a short ladder. Her gaze was flowing around the room.

There were just too many places to look for, and the whole building was so breathtaking that you'd get distracted at every corner. The sealing was high and light and so were the walls so it seemed more spacious that it actually is. There were carved in ornaments at the meeting point of the wall and ceiling.

The second floor was just a lane where you could pass and bookshelves mounted to the walls.

The wood they used for the shelves was a dark reddish tone with a few exceptions were they changed it for lighter one because the old one was rotten out or broken. They were usually on the bottom were it would be harder to notice them.

There were a lot of people there but it wasn't crowded. That itself is enough to show the size of this place.

Earlier they asked someone who worked here for directions to some historical or geographical books and she told them they were on the second floor's eastern wing, but that was one fourth of the enormous circle. It was almost impossible to find something useful in such a short amount of time.

"Hey, let's go to a shop or something to at least find a map. I don't want to live here until I know what else is out there" Alice commented.

Kate looked toward the wing were, supposedly, the book they wanted was hidden, and thought.

"Let's try to ask someone else. I don't want to give up just yet..." she asked and looked at her friend waiting for her approval.

Alice sighed.

"Only another half hour, OK? I'm getting sick of this place"

A smile appeared on Kate's face, and she dashed down stairs. However, Alice just stayed were she was and kept looking at some other books unwillingly. After about ten minutes she got sick of it and decided to go look for Kate.

She went down the stairs and roamed the halls, sometimes bumping into others and then politely apologizing.

Finally she found her. Her eyes glued to a book with a worrisome expression on her face. Though, Alice didn't notice that because her face was masked by hair that loosely fell over it.

"Hey did you find anything?" Alice asked tapping gently on her shoulder.

Kate jolted up in surprise. She relaxed when she saw who it was and placed a hand on her heart.

"You scared me..." she said breathless.

"Sorry" Alice felt slightly guilty, but the feeling passed in a matter of seconds "So?" she asked, trying to bring up the previous question.

Kate raised an eyebrow in confusion, but then said "Oh! Yeah..." she said and pointed at the pile of books behind her.

Alice stared in awe and ran to the pile.

"Wow, great job Kate! You got a map, with detailed explanations of every continent and larger cities, and also all the known dangerous creatures, plus survival books..." she said as she read the titles.

"How did you manage to find all this in ten minutes?" she asked, a smirk appeared on Kate's face, but then remembered. "Wait there's too much. How are we going to go through all of these? We have to go somewhere for the day and were running low on cash" Alice said.

"We will just go through this one today and pick where we'll go. After that let's go find some supplies and head out" she said lifting up the book with the maps.

Alice thought for a minute. Wondering about the other books and thought they should know about. So she just asked.

"Well" Kate started "if we choose to leave this place we'll go through the beast and survival books too, but only briefly. We can determine a safe path, maybe follow other people and go like that" she said and Alice continued "And if we stay here, we find a part time job and go through all of these completely and decide slowly, right?"

Kate nodded. And they got to work.