{Elise} Where it is safe - A concept

Alright. So I may have been bitten by the Masquerade bug. I'm not sure if she's going to see the light of day, or what sort of approval level I'd need for the stuff I want her to know. But here she is.

"What are you doing here, 'Lees?"

The girl looked up, startled.

"Oh, Michael, hello... This is a library. I can't be here?"

"Of course you can, 'Lees, it's just it's after close."

"It is?" Her brows furrowed. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise."

"I didn't even see you come in, 'Lees, and i've been on the desk since I got here. How did you-"

"People don't notice me a lot. Your books are still in the wrong place."

Michael sighed. He knew that 'Lees wasn't quite right, but she was quiet, and didn't make a mess- far from it, in fact, he'd had to tell her several times that people were allowed to spread their notes a whole desk if there was space. But she knew the Dewey system better than he did, and kept insisting that it was wrong.

"You keep saying that, honey, but people expect them to be like this-"

"Only because that's what they've been trained to do!" She interjected, eyes glittering. She rose and ran her fingers across the nearest row of books, as if she were afraid of hurting them. "Just think. What are the schoolchildren studying at the moment?"

He stopped, and considered.

"Well, I know Liverpool Public is doing Settlement, as is Marsden Road..."

"You could move the Australian History books to the front here, like this-" she gestured, hands flying, "And then, if Liverpool Girls is doing that study of the Roman Republic you mentioned last time, you could put the books here, and move the stuff for the adults towards the back, because they're more quiet and patient and would appreciate the isolation, I suspect, from the little ones who make so much noise while they're searching."

"It's a cute idea, 'Lees, but then we'd have to move the books every term, if not more."

She blinked and looked at Michael with utter confusion.

"And? This is a problem?"

Michael sighed.

"Look, 'Lees, you need to go home."

"Alright, yes. It is past close. I am keeping you."

"Yes, you are, as much as I love talking to you. I don't want to find you in here when I come back around, alright?"

"Yes, Michael. Have a good night."

Michael went back to the front to tidy up the paperwork there, and return the held books that hadn't been claimed. When he went back into the sitting area, even though he hadn't seen her leave, 'Lees was nowhere to be found.

---

Elise Winton climbed down the ladder beneath the library with the utmost care. The book she had been reading was tucked under her other arm, and she didn't want to drop it. Sometime, she thought as her feet touched the damp stone beneath her, I will have to look into a proper bag to carry books from the library.

It had taken a lot of work to find her little study. Many of the libraries were new, and their secret places for the treasured, dangerous books that no one was supposed to know about had frequently been destroyed by uncaring, unknowing builders. Finally she had found one that had been preserved and was undiscovered.

Forty six steps later, she slipped into her home as the door clicked shut behind her. She went to flick on a light, and made a soft noise of irritation as the lamp didn't come on.

"How irritating." She murmured as she eased the old batteries out with her practiced fingers, "Must find more batteries tomorrow, mustn't be without spare batteries for the lights. That would be foolish."

Once the lights flickered on again, she carefully put her book down on her desk, square with the corner. Even though it was a mundane, somewhat obscure book about the evolution of Mesopotamian pottery, she had read it years before, and a note about some of the patterns on the latest era of samples had surfaced in her memory while reading her latest acquisition, and she had just wanted to be sure...

Ahah. Yes. A small pictogram on a fragment, no more than a shard, all but forgotten. It looked somewhat like a scythe, but the curves were in a style unknown to scribes of the time- or most of them- and to scholars of this day- or most of them, as well.

It had cost her a lot to get the small, yellowed book she nursed carefully in her two gloved hands like a child, and would cost her much more if anyone found out that she had it, but it had already proven worth it.

Here was evidence of the Ba'hara, or perhaps the root language that it had been born from. Perhaps there was more to be found for the clever scholar who knew what they were looking for, more light to be shed on the histories of those that had birthed her kind.

With painstaking care, she set the yellowed book in a padded stand so that she could read it, and selected a red pen to make her notes with.