The Rivven Chronicles ( Watty Awards 2013)

Chapter 3: The Daily Routine of a Librarian

The Second Librarian rose early, just before the sun, anxious to start her day. In her washroom, she scrubbed her charcoal colored face and brushed quickly through her thick white hair. It was kept short and choppy, but her bangs had grown to the length were they fell directly into her line of vision. She brushed them away from her forehead and pinned them to the side. After washing, she dressed quickly in a white, long sleeved tunic and white leggings. She then laced up her tan calf-shin boots and made her small bed, smoothing ever noticeable wrinkle from the quilt that covered it.

            Quickly, she swept the room with her eyes, satisfied with the order of things, and made her way down the long corridor outside of her room. Stopping at the end of the hall, she tapped lightly on the First Librarian’s chamber door before whisking gracefully down the side stair to the library proper. Ivan had requested the early wake up call, but she was sure he would complain about it for the better part of the day. The drow didn’t mind. She would shelve books and dust and catalog until he had decided being awake was not such a bad thing.

            Once down stairs she decided that her first activity on this day would be the same as it always was. Dusting. She dusted the counters and the tables, the books and lamps. Then she swept the floors and opened the curtains, letting in the day’s first rays of sunlight stream into t to warm the cold floors. After starting a fire in the large fireplace in the lobby she unlocked the French doors that had kept the general public out until then.

Normally the library would have at least a few patrons within its first hour of business, but on this day there had been no one after the first three hours and Ivan had yet to show his face even though all of his assistants had been up and running for almost two hours. Most of them were first year graduates from Quindesti’s Scholar Academy and the Ursal Library was an ideal place for most sage and librarian would-bes to take their two year internships before moving on to another library. Or trying their hand at a position at Ursal. Ivan had only granted ten assistants permanent employment in the thirty years that the drow had been there and only two of them were still there, having only worked there for four years each.

The drow didn’t interact much with the First Years. Not because she didn’t want to, but because most of them were wary of her, staring at her black skin, but refusing to meet the stare of her red eyes. She didn’t mind their rudeness, they would warm up in time, they always did.

“Second Librarian Veloci?” A quiet voice said from behind her. She turned around in her chair to face the first year assistant, a tall, nervous boy, with sharp features and a thick shock of brown hair.

“It’s just Vel,” She corrected, smiling. “What can I help you with?”

The boy smiled, shyly and confessed, “I don’t know where Cableman goes.”

“Janis Cableman is considered a fictional author,” Vel said, “So his work will be in the west wing. Anything else Lew?”

He seemed shocked that she knew his name but smiled again, warmer this time, and shook his head, “No, that’s all, thanks…Vel.” He bowed and skirted out of the lobby, off to the west wing. She watched him go, feeling victorious. One down, nine to go.

            Vel decided the next hour or so of her day would be dedicated to shelving books so she started with the books that rested on the low bookcases on either side of the great fireplace, kept for pleasure reading, something Vel did often after hours. The shelves went deep and were dark in color, dark like the creature that waited atop the first book that the drow had the misfortune of pulling from the shelf. Vel placed it on top of the bookcase, which was a little over waist high for her, and bent down to retrieve another out-of-place book. When she straightened she saw it, black and eight legged, it stood a terrifying inch tall. She shrieked and threw the book in her hands at the spider, which nimbly avoided the flying object.