When the Dawn Breaks [TBAU]

☆ Chapter 33 ☆

Joe liked to take pleasure in the simple things in life. Right now, for example, they were  appreciating the sound that the gravel path made under their feet. The rhythmic crunch-crunch filled their ears as they made their way to the library.

They carried a few books under their arm that they'd just picked up from Doc. The creeper hybrid had checked out some herbal healing guides, hoping to find some information to help speed along Keralis' recovery. Luckily for the hermits, Keralis was doing much better, after having time to heal, and he was even out of the infirmary now.

A lot of worry had been buzzing through the village because of their fellow hermit. Joe hadn't really been too worried, though. Well, of course, they had been sympathetic, but they didn't really have a reason to worry. They'd long ago figured out that Keralis wasn't quite the human he claimed he was. There was something unexplainable to the man, something just screaming of ancient magic.

So, Joe's case in point was that Keralis obviously hadn't been as injured as he'd appeared to be, whatever magic he had likely speeding up his healing processes. But, Joe was glad their fellow hermits were worried for Keralis. It was sweet to see all of their efforts towards helping him.

Sweet thoughts aside, Joe had reached their library. "After you, Joe. No, after you, I insist," they giggled to themself as they opened the big double doors to the building. Joe winced at the sad creaking cries they made, making a mental note to oil their hinges later as they shut loudly.

A low thud-thudding sound made itself known once the doors had quit their groaning, echoing through the quiet library. Thud-thud. Joe placed their stack of books down on the front desk, ignoring the sound for the time being in favor of scanning their eyes down the book spines and noting their numbers and authors, in order to properly sort them by the Dewey Decimal System, one of the things that brought satisfying order to a chaotic life. Thud-thud. Each book, unsurprisingly, needed to be sorted into the same section, so Joe gathered them back up to put them away. Thud-thud. A few other unsorted books had been left on the front desk, but they could get to those in a minute.

Thud-thud– Okay, that sound was getting rather annoying now. That's just what they get for not living in a vacuum, Joe supposed. Sound waves could be as irritating as they pleased with the medium to do so, and Joe so happened to live where sound could travel. It could be inconvenient.

Joe's pointed ears twitched as the noise reverberated off the walls again, and they headed in search of the source, books still in arm. It got louder the closer they got to it.

Rounding a corner into the back of the nonfiction section, they were met with books strewn across a table, some flipped open to random pages, and others stacked on top of each other. There was a small moth walking around on the table, weaving its way between books. Joe would've been concerned for the wellbeing of his books around a moth which they assumed was capable of eating the poor pages, had there not been a certain hermit– who owned said insect– locked in a contemplative pace next to the table.

It was Impulse, flipping through a small paperback as he paced, his tail flicking behind him and thwacking into the table legs rhythmically. Thud-thud. Ah.

"So that's what's been disruptin' the vacuum-adjacent environment," Joe hummed to themselves. Impulse paused his pacing and turned to face Joe, the low thuds abruptly coming to a stop. The demon blinked slowly, wide brown eyes staring Joe down confusedly. "Howdy!"

Joe smiled, abandoning their stack of books on the edge of the table in favor of curiosity. "Whatcha doin'?"

Impulse remained frozen for a moment or two more, clearly caught off guard by Joe's arrival. The demon gave a slow shrug, glancing between Joe and the books on the table, as if Joe already knew what was going on. "Research?" Impulse finally said, though he phrased it like a question, as if he didn't actually know what he was doing either.