Needless to say I am not happy at finding not only have the Academics cleared the books from the occult section again, but now their number has doubled and they are close to having outright war erupt in the Library.
Not worried about the books, the Library, or the Librarian if someone forgets their place and damages a book. Dog-ears annoy her but that can be reversed. Cracked spines are redeemed by cracked bones of her choice. But to maliciously damage a book, for whatever excuse, is to incur the wrath of a Power. There are worse things than being banned from the Library. Like having your existence erased from the books within.
(For the curious, yes, all inscribed works are here. Not just “books”. It looks like books to me because that is the paradigm I know best. But what books you have access to limits what you can see on the shelves. And not all the information you read in the Library can be brought back with you to the Waking.)
So the dignified, prim, and proper scholars are now arguing something about the lineages of certain (not even) secret societies and the abuse of leadership by one of them. I lurked behind a full stack trying to spy if I could snatch one of the books when I heard a name drop followed by oceans of derision, adulation, poison, and praise.
Great. Soap operas. When I turned to walk away, I found the Librarian standing behind me. She was smirking in that way one knows a secret but is bursting to tell it.
“Wait. Lemme guess. You could have given me a copy of each of those books yesterday.” Her grin widened. “But because I was fixed on the idea of how libraries work in my world, I assumed one fixed copy per book.” Her open smile warmed her face. “You arranged for me to run into those guys.” The smile bounced. “You lil stinker.”
Her laughter held an echo of her true size. “Want those books now?” She brought her hands from behind her back and presented me a powered on tablet showing a spinning icon of the Library on the screen. My turn to laugh.
“Eh… No. I don’t.” My answer surprised me but not her. “I still got what I needed. I needed to talk it out, to force the jumble of thoughts into coherent lines that could be supported or refuted. I needed an audience to measure against and measure for.”
She tapped the screen and pulled up a list of the reference books I was looking for. She scrolled down to “Mother Mary: The Sacred Feminine”, “Marianism in the Roman Catholic Church: Heresy or Restoration of Balance”, and “Who was Mary? Who is Mary now?” and held up the tablet for me to see.
“And this topic?”
“It was pointed out yesterday that until I get settled on what map I’m going to use for my Tree of Life, I won’t be able to get a good grip on that puzzle. I’m okay with the general idea of Mother Mary now. And she needs to stay a general idea until I get my framework set. Otherwise, I’ll be reaching from an incomplete scaffold. And we know how that goes.”
She nodded in agreement. “So, will I be adding topics concerning the Black Madonna to this list as well?”
I took a long while to answer. She smiled to know she has started all my mental gears into quick spinning. “Um. Not yet. … If this Mother Mary is using icons and images that I know and am visually familiar with to reach me, then the same may be of the Black Madonna as well. It’s an image I have often seen in my life, but I wasn’t the one to put that name to it. So what I’m calling a Black Madonna, may not be so.”
The deliciously wet sound of a hand slapping a face tattle-taled from around the stack. I took that as my cue to leave and thanked the Librarian for her help. She nodded sweetly at me, but her demeanor changed to murder as she turned the corner to deal with the children academics.
As I left, I noted I still have yet to read a single word on any of the matters but already I am several steps further along than when the epiphany struck me down.