Rustling robes; hasty bare footsteps, scuttling around the room. “Princess, have you seen–oh dear–”
Brea blinked herself awake. It took her bleary eyes a moment to focus; it took another moment for her to groan and lift her head off the table where she’d fallen asleep. She’d dozed off in the library before, lulled by the quiet and booksmell and sunlight, but usually it had been in one of the comfortable chairs that dotted every room of the library she had explored so far. This time, she’d made the mistake of staying up half the night reading charts he had given her of the stars–
A pause; a nervous little laugh.
“Of course not,” he had said. “They are courses plotted by Sifan mariners, to find their way by sea.”
“Oh.” The shuffle of scrolls changing hands. “Thank you.”
Another moment of hesitation.
–and gone to bed only when he had shooed her from the library. Her second mistake had been to come back immediately after the afternoon meal, determined to study; instead she had drifted off, it seemed, in the dusty silence of the room. Her hair was a mess, and she could feel a mark on her face from lying on the tabletop, and her neck and back weren’t going to be happy with her.
Now skekOk was fussing around, and as she watched him she realized that he was feeling his way around the bookshelves, patting frantically at every flat surface he could reach. His anxious mumbling had woken her.
“Scroll-Keeper?” she croaked, which opened into a jaw-cracking yawn. Her legs were cold, but her top half and shoulders were warm. Something started to slip from her shoulders, and she caught it by reflex. A blanket. A shawl? “Is everything alright?”
(There should have been a ‘my lord’ somewhere in there, she knew, but somewhere along the way it had fallen out of her speech with him. Her mother would have had words to say about it, none of them pleased, but he didn’t seem to mind at all and so neither did she.)
“Yes, thank you–well–” He paused in his searching to wring his hands anxiously, shaking them from the wrists as he did when distressed. “My spectacles. I seem to have misplaced a pair, and I’ve no idea where they’ve–oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.”
Oh dear, indeed. He could barely see with two pairs and a half. “Where was the last place you would have had them?” she said without thinking, and stopped. Useless question, had never been helpful to anyone since the first time it was asked. After a moment’s thought, she amended, “What would you have put them down for?”
That made him stop. “Erm,” he said. He wasn’t shaking his hands anymore. “Er.”
Brea waited. She knew it was no use rushing him.
“Well,” he hemmed. “Well… I suppose there aren’t all that many, erm, places I would have put them–”
At that moment something bright winked at her eye, making her wince. She squinted it shut, shielding her face, and glanced at the desk. Something shone at the edge of the map she’d been studying, trying to copy onto blank parchment she’d borrowed from the library’s stores. The angle of the sunlight had changed just enough to glare off of–
“Found them!” She held up her find, careful of the old, old frames. Older than she was, probably, it occurred to her. It was the middle pair, the only one she’d noticed he didn’t keep on a chain. “Funny, they were right here.”
When she looked over her shoulder to show him, he looked flustered, and suddenly dots connected in her head.
(At least, she was fairly confident that was flustered. Skeksis faces had turned out to be surprisingly easy to read, compared to gelfling.)
Brea hesitated. And then, heart beating in her ears with her own boldness, “Maybe you dropped them when you were tucking me in.”
He drew his head in sharply toward his collar, looking deeply embarrassed. “Ah,” he harrumphed, and she grinned. She’d guessed right.
“Thank you.” She scooted the chair backward to stand up, her own ears burning now, and kept the shawl about her shoulders–thick and soft and muted brown–as she moved toward him. He muttered to himself as she approached, and stopped when her feet did.
“Here you go.” She held out her hand, glasses held carefully by the bridge between finger and thumb, and after a moment’s hesitation skekOk reached for them with long claws.
Well, let him have them, she thought to herself. This was awkward enough already. But she was feeling bold today indeed, and on impulse she ignored it.
Instead she reached out and took his hand, pressing the spectacles into his palm. “It’s alright, you know,” she said. “I don’t mind. It was very nice of you.”
He peered down at her, and she stared up at him. A sharp ray of sunlight sliced across his shoulders, leaving his face unreadable in the dimness above it. She knew she’d only be a blur in his vision, but her heart pounded in her throat anyway.
He didn’t pull his hand away. The seconds ticked by.
And then, “You are very welcome, Brea.”
