Lorenz looked around the guest quarters he'd been escorted to. It was clear that they were designed for humans and not the flowerlings. It made him wonder about just what was going on here.
"Are they suitable? We have another if not," Dahlia Crocus piped in her cheerful little voice.
Lorenz looked over at the little flowerling. She was clad in a flowy white gown that complimented the flowers that sprouted with abandon over her limbs. True to her name, they held the shape of crocuses but had a multitude of petals like a dahlia. Lorenz had to admit that the flowers were truly beautiful. Even Cora who disdained gardening would be happy to see them.
He smiled at the thought. Cora thought she had everyone fooled, but he'd noticed the small bonsai sprinkled around her house, survivors of the last time her mother had managed to get into Cora's condo. That woman had stripped everything of value she knew of, leaving behind the bonsai and the mounted game cards on Cora's walls. Those were the more expensive things that had been in there.
Some people just didn't know how to value things. Cora's mom was lucky that Cora hadn't wanted to press charges, despite both him and Heidi urging her to. All they could do was help her move what little was left to her new place.
"This is a very nice room," Lorenz told her.
"Then I will leave you to rest. Is there anything else you'd like?" Dahlia Crocus asked with a smile.
"A book, perhaps?" Lorenz responded.
He looked around again. The room was once magnificently furnished, its glamour dulled by time. There wasn't much dust on the elaborately carved furniture, and the cloth coverings, while worn, still retained most of their former elegance. Despite the large desk before a gigantic window, there were no reading materials or study items anywhere. The desk was a clear expanse of polished wood except for an ornate little statue in one corner of a lady holding an opaque glass ball.
"A book?" Dahlia Crocus perked up. "What sort of books do you like to read?"
"Um, anything research related." Lorenz gingerly pulled out the desk chair and sat in it. It was surprisingly comfortable despite its fussy appearance. "I really like to look things up, figure out how they work and things like that." He ran a hand over the desk with a smile. "I'll read pretty much anything."
The wood of the desk was smooth and satiny under his fingertips. It made him marvel at the ability of the programmers. It all felt so real despite him knowing that it wasn't. He glanced at the huge four poster bed. There were more of the opaque balls set in branch like holders there at each head post.
Now that he noticed, the opaque balls were everywhere, especially at places where one might sit and read. This entire room seemed to have been built with readers in mind.
"Truly?" Dahlia Crocus laid a finger against her chin as she tilted her head to one side, causing a cascade of blue and white petals. "Well, we do have a library. It might have something to interest you."
"Really?" Lorenz looked up in interest. He held up a hand and caught one of the drifting petals. "Where's the library?"
*****
The library turned out to be a marvel. It made Lorenz wish he had a ray gun to shrink it down so he could put it in his pocket and run away with it. It was the first time in a long while that he regretted that he still hadn't made fiction fact despite all his research.
There were shelves that lined a gigantic room from floor to ceiling. Ladders carved out of a pale, white wood were varnished, carved and stained with intricate vine designs. A few tables were strewn about the middle of the room with chairs neatly placed.
Then there were the books. They didn't fill every shelf, but there were so many shelves that it almost didn't matter. There were floral themed bookends that blocked off parts of shelves, and on those shelves were more of those opaque glass globes set in a variety of garden themed holders.
The floor was a wood parquet of interlocking light and dark woods with little inset scenes of gardens done at random intervals. At least Lorenz assumed that it was random. There was no logical sequence he could fathom after his quick glance.
Dahlia Crocus led him to a desk that was set apart from the others, visibly vibrating with excitement. There were books, folios and writing materials set neatly in sets across its large surface. A discreet set of file drawers, their size small, sat behind the desk flush against the wall. Lorenz studied it for a second before deciding that it was sized for flowerlings to store things.
"This is my first time actually having a reader in the library," Dahlia Crocus said with a bright smile. "No one is really interested in coming here other than the cleaners. That's why there's no dust," she explained to Lorenz.
"You're the librarian?" Lorenz was startled. He'd thought that she was Queen Lydia's lady-in-waiting or something.
"Yep! Learned it from my great-grandfather. It's a family thing," Dahlia Crocus said with a shrug. "Don't worry. I know where most of the books are."
Lorenz looked around the library again, feeling his mouth start to water. He wished he could spend a couple weeks here, reading but was reminded of the war going on outside of the flowerlings' sphere of serenity. He ruffled his hair, thinking.
"Do you have any histories?" Lorenz asked.
"Of course we do!" Dahlia Crocus scurried away into the depths of the room.
Lorenz could see where she went solely based on the fact that her petals were a blue so pale it was nearly white and so glowed a little in the light of the globes. She climbed a ladder and pulled out a book from a high shelf. Then she pulled out a few more.
"These should be histories," she said a few moments later as she thumped the pile of books on the table.
Lorenz tried not to show his surprise. The pile of books was almost taller than the little flowerling, and she handled them with consummate ease. The thickest book was bigger than his forearm, the pages thin and edged with a silvery metal.
"That's mythril. To keep the pages from being damaged by age and damp," Dahlia Crocus said, following his line of sight. She glanced back towards another set of shelves. "I think I have some more to recommend. Just a minute."
Lorenz slid into the chair, watching the silently growing piles of books. With each addition, Dahlia Crocus became more and more cheerful until finally, she showed up with just two books cradled in her thin arms.
"This should be it, I think," she said, gently placing them on the only other clear spot on the table. The first one was in front of Lorenz. "When you're done, just stack them on the floor or on another table. That way I know they need to be reshelved."
"Okay," Lorenz said, looking from one pile of books to another. They towered over his head, and yet the library shelves still looked untouched.
There was a small, subtle chime that came from the librarian's desk. Dahlia Crocus looked towards the desk, smoothing down a few wayward petals on the flowers decorating her shoulders.
"I must go. Queen Lydia is summoning me," she told Lorenz.
"I thought you were her lady-in-waiting when I first saw you," Lorenz admitted.
"Oh, she's related. Great-aunts once removed and all that, but I mostly follow the families." Dahlia Crocus trotted towards the door. "I'll be back soon!"
Lorenz watched her go and then turned his attention back to the books. The first one he picked up was titled 'Legends of the Crossroads.' That made him frown. He vaguely remembered an ancient television show with something similar. Cora had made him and Heidi watch it when they were ten, claiming that it was scary. Lorenz rather thought it was because she was interested in one of the stars, no matter that the show was older than her mom.
A couple of hours later, Dahlia Crocus had still not returned. Lorenz had figured out how to turn on the reading lamp attached to the desk, bathing it in light. The mounds of books had been turned into tiny hillocks, their previous contents distributed to the tables around Lorenz depending on their eventual subject.
Right now, he was examining a thick book titled, 'A Treatise on Mystical Gardening.' It was bound in a thick green leather and limned with mythril. Most of the older books were limned in a metal of some sort, mythril being the predominant choice. Lorenz had taken a quick breather to check the forums and saw that older gamers were making furious bids and promises on posts that mentioned the metal.
Those philistines would probably devastate this library, tossing the books into a furnace to smelt the mythril off. The thought made him scowl. It was one of his mentor's pet peeves, the destruction of old books for the metals that illuminated them. The old professor could rant for hours about the topic while conducting his experiments. It was a good training for his mentees since they learned to work with a very loud distraction.
Lorenz laid the book down, tapping a finger on its cover. His time was limited, so he wasn't sure if he wanted to skim the book. However, his childhood adventures in the garden pulled at him to at least look at a couple of chapters. Cora had mentioned that she was doing some sort of farming the last time he talked to her. Perhaps it would give some sort of helpful tips since none of the crops she had mentioned sounded run of the mill.
Lorenz picked up the book again, intending to put it on his 'to read' pile. Since he was a player, he didn't need to sleep in game. There were posts on the forum expounding on the benefits of doing so, but Lorenz was still a beginner. The potential gains would outweigh the loss in being able to finally peruse some books.
As he tilted it to put it on top of the pile, a slim folio fell out of it. Lorenz completed the action, his attention caught by the folio. It was cream with green and silver embellishments. He carefully opened it to find a book that shouldn't have fit inside. The book was titleless and bound with silver embossed green leather. The silver made fanciful leaves over the book's surface.
Lorenz carefully opened the cover. Embossed on the inside in a dark silvery ink against a light green page were the words 'The Journal of Charlize.'