@visiel
For some reason, Min doesn’t expect the section in the Crises library on magic to be labeled ‘MAGIC’ in a massive block letter tag over the relevant aisle. Most libraries at home that she can remember shelved volumes like the ones under her fingers under ‘FANTASY’ or ‘MYTHOLOGY’, or if they were being especially general, ‘RELIGION’.
But, you know. People here in the Ark can actually do magic, so there’s a whole area front-and-centre of the cavernous bone-marble library hall devoted to spellcasting tomes, treatises on magical theory, studies of magical objects. Min investigates by pulling out spines at random and reading the first chapter, taking notes if it seems promising. Unfortunately, a lot of the books tend to contradict each other. Almost as if they were collected haphazardly from a number of different universes with different rules for magic.
Min drops a heap of her best finds onto a mahogany side desk inlaid with carvings of Gothic horrors and waves away a cough at the amount of dust the fall produces. The single visible staff member, a rat dozing at the front reception, startles awake and directs a petulant squeak at her. “Librarians,” Min says companionably to her books.
She sits down. The hefty tome on top of her pile was ostensibly written by a mage from Rausten, a country she remembers Knoll mentioning, making it probably her best bet for now. If she’s going to ask Knoll for help learning magic, it makes sense to learn the rules of his magic specifically. Well, a close enough kind of magic, anyway.
But before she can get started, a shadow passes across her desk, human-shaped and blocking all the candlelight from the chandeliers suspended impossibly high above. Min cranes her head around, frowning. “Hey, d’you mind? You’re in my light.”
Walking through the library, Visiel, too was looking for a book; specifically, on the technology of the Ark. Of course, it wasn’t going to be in this section, but Visiel doesn’t know that. After all, she isn’t entirely convinced she’s ever left her world, only that she’s in the far future of her own. She walks towards the magic section, paying no attention to the woman reading at the table next to the magic section. She looks carefully, seeing very little that actually catches her eye as being about technology. Finally, she notices it; a book on enchantments. She picks it up, opening it up and reading into it. It doesn’t seem like she even realises there’s someone else in the room...
