The Library Caper! (Sage / Invite)

[Jacinda Blake]

Jacinda was accomplishing two thinigs at the same time. First, she was meeting the request of the sweetest teacher at Cullen's, Professor Florence who had requested they get together this afternoon in the library.. Second, she was there now, effectively hiding from her friends, who would only venture into the place if there was a mandatory essay due.. She was in no mood to chat, not after the arrival (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=17938) at the school this morning..

So she'd made her graceful, icy exit. Ethan had been lucky not to find himself up a tree, and here she was sitting in one of the comfortable leather wingback chairs, shoes off, feet tucked up and reading a book while she waited..

Another mean grin, the second that day, formed on her lips as she read one passage quietly to herself..

"Fill all thy bones with aches.", she quoted, with what she hoped passed for an evil chuckle.

The truth was, she didn't have an evil bone in her body. It was just a day dream, not something she'd actually do, but Ethan had hurt her and she was not going to be forgiving any time soon.. fellow mutant or not. He'd abandoned her. So, he could figure Cullen's out on his own.

[Anita Stern]

After giving today's newcomer a tour, the resident librarian at Cullen's entered briskly through the door to what she now maintained as her territory. Which was oft-times...quiet. Not just because it was a library, but there were a large number of students that only ventured within its walls when they had to, if they really needed something from the countless volumes housed there. Sometimes it was a case of one or two adolescent male students parusing sports or entertainment magazines while holding hushed conversations, glancing occasionally over to her. At which she would smile, and roll her eyes when they weren't looking.

Boys will be boys. Some boys... and that thought ended there as she saw Jacinda curled up with a book. At least there were the few that shared her appreciation of this place. It made her feel a sort of unspoken kinship with those ones.

"Hello Jacinda." She said softly, placing her two books on the nearest tabletop before sitting on a chair beside it, at the edge of the seat. She put her elbows upon her thighs, and rested her chin in her hands, trying not to peer around and figure out for herself what the younger woman was reading.

"What have you got your nose into now?"

[Jacinda Blake]

Instead of answering in a normal boring manner, Jacinda responded to Professor Florence in a manner they would both be partial to. Literary quotation. It was nice to be a nerd in the company of other nerds, not that she thought either one of them were truly nerdy..

"I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of my mind..." She peeked up from the book in question and turned the cover around so that it was displayed for Professor Florence to read - not that she would need to..

The Tempest.

"Hey, I'm sorry about earlier. I know that was a far depature from normal for me. I just wasn't ready for that situation.." Jacinda closed the book with a sigh.

[Anita Stern]

"Oh. Classic. Good choice."

Anita smiled, then sighed a little herself.

"Really, I understand your reaction a little more than you think. I know if an old boyfriend suddenly appeared on my doorstep...well, I would feel a little 'fight or flight' too. I graduated high school early, at 16. My powers seemed to come just at that time, as I was counting down the days to our grad trip to Australia. I was a cheerleader, and I used to care about popularity. Jocks were no stranger to me, especially football captains." She half-smiled somewhat deviously at that thought.

"It wasn't until I acquired my gift that I started to see how pompous and self-absorbed minds influenced by so much adrenaline and testosterone were. However, it wasn't them that shut me out, so much as the other way around."

The librarian pushed herself up into the chair and relaxed.

"It still doesn't make it any easier, does it..."

[Jacinda Blake]

"No, it does not."

That was one of the best things about Professor Florence. She was more like another student, albeit a slightly older one, that you had to refer to respectfully, but still she was young enough to still get things.. like idiot ex-boyfriends.

Jacinda felt something like a smile coming on. "I didn't know you cheered too. Awesome."

"You know.." She lowered her voice. "I never thought of Ethan that way though. Things were actually pretty good between us, up until that night. Then suddenly I became some kind of horror movie creature in his eyes. It was really awful.." Jacinda frowned remembering..

"Creep..", she muttered. "It doesn't matter. I really don't care if he goes to school here. I was just in shock. I have new friends, and other activities that have made a thing like this seem silly. Really, I'm fine."

She smiled to make her point.

[Anita Stern]

It would be left at that. The appearance of old flames sometimes - ok, more than sometimes - opened old wounds (Daniel Hartford, for example.. a thought groaned in her head. Not gonna go there..). Anita glanced to the book Jacinda had been engrossed in prior to her arrival, and gestured to it when she spoke next, changing the subject altogether.

"Were you just reading that for pure enjoyment, or was there any other reason?"

Admittedly, from the librarian's understanding of Jacinda's gift, the fact that the girl was reading The Tempest was a little more than ironic.

[Jacinda Blake]

"You mean aside from the fact that it's Shakespeare?!" Jacinda mocked distressed shock.. Grinning she patted the book in question where it rested on her knees.

"Actually it was already sitting out. The title caught my eye. I thought it a fitting moniker, if you get my..." She sent a gentle breeze through the librarians hair with a smile... "..drift?"

[Anita Stern]

Anita laughed, curling her legs up in the chair, and pressing her hands together between her thighs.

"Works for me. The irony was screamingly obvious."

The young-looking woman reached up to scratch the end of her nose before returning the hand to the other. A sudden and inspired grin took over her face next, after her hand left it.

"I feel oddly and mischeviously adventurous. What say you we scour the library for secrets? I've not browsed the whole of this place. That would take eons on my own."

[Jacinda Blake]

"That sounds like just the thing to take my mind off my woes.." Jacinda smiled and quite reverently replaced The Tempest to the table where she'd first found it sitting in wait.

To be honest, she was quite curious about the rest of the libraray as well. Yeah, it was a great place to sit and do school related work quietly, and yeah she was one of the students who was known to check things out just because she liked to read, but there were so many rows of shelves.. So many areas that she hadn't even skimmed the surface of. To her, books had personality. Far more than just the words printed between two covers, they seemed to tell stories of their previous owners. Stories of how they'd been treated and sometimes even amusing notes in their margins left little clues about the past.

This would be fun!

[Anita Stern]

"Alright, then! Let's get moving."

Anita hopped up from her seat and rubbed her hands together. Any building, any library that had been around for any amount of time had its secrets, however big or small. Beckoning Jacinda to follow, the short, curly-topped librarian almost bounded off, heading down an aisle of books, searching for a good place to start. She called back to her student -

"Tell me about anything interesting you find, ok?"

[Jacinda Blake]

"Right! Will do, Boss Lady!"

Jacinda had an idea for starting her explorations. She often stacked things up on shelves and then forgot them before wandering off, she was sure she was a librarian's worst nightmare for organization, like that.. It did inspire her though, she pulled rolling ladder over and climbed to the very top, seeking along the top most shelves..

"Remind me to come back with a can of Pledge and a cloth..", she muttered.

Jacinda would have just blown the dust bunny colony out of her way, but she would sully the entire room with a haze of dust if she did so, and Professor Florence would not thank her for that...

[Anita Stern]

Anita began amongst the history books. Not everyone liked history classes (with the exception of a few), and thus, tended not to care for the books as much. Running a finger along the spines of a shelf situated at her eye level, the librarian-teacher came across a particularily abused looking tome, laying on its back, amongst all the other volumes which were standing upright. She slid it carefully from the shelf, as the book was as wide as it was tall, and recieved it into both of her delicate hands.

The front cover was matted with more than one layer of dust, which in removing, would be much like an assignment of cleaning the chalkbrushes in a mid-90's school detention. Instead, Anita turned the hardcover and glanced at the spine for the title (which in touching the book, she knew anyhow) and caused a large amount of the dust to fall off the front in the process, anyway. A thick cloud of the stuff rose a moment, then descended to the floor. Anita rolled her eyes and sighed.

"Seriously... how quickly does dust accumulate??" She muttered, mostly to herself, partly in slight disgust. "I really should set aside some time just for cleaning the bookshelves.."

In any case, she opened the book to the inside of the hard cover, to look for notes, which she found none. Same with the back cover. She then decided to turn the book spine-up, and let the pages dangle. A folded 8 1/2 by 11 ruled sheet fell out, and fluttered to the floor. A slight smile came from Anita's face, showing interest. Placing the book back where she found it, the average height woman bent over and retrieved the folded paper, opening it as she stood. Within, there was a long back-and-forth note expressing annoyance and exasperation at one of the faculty...

...is SUCH a slave driver. What ARE we doing in this class, anyway?"

Anita rolled her eyes, skewing her smile into something unsurprised. The part after the complaints detailed excited teenage talk about the latest album of one band or another, and gushy notes about the latest 'crush'. It reminded her of her pre-gift days, her own giggles with her girlfriends. That brought a smile back to her face.

"Cute..."

[Jacinda Blake]

"Seriously, Professor.. We have to clean this! I'll come by later in the week and we can...", Jacinda trailed off.

With a gust from no where, she held onto the ladder as it was rolled along on a sudden breeze closer to Professor Florence.

"Did you find something good?", she asked, eyeballing the paper..

[Anita Stern]

Anita had folded the sheet back up, but when Jacinda came near and questioned it, she just handed it over. No harm in that, really.

"Just gossipy notes. Someone left it marking a big ol' history book that looks like it hasn't been touched in...well, at least a couple years. Unless the dust around here is mutant, too."

She let out a small laugh.

"But I doubt that. Have you found anything interesting yet?"

[Jacinda Blake]

"Nope.. just dust.", she admitted.

Figuring maybe they could clear an area at a time working together, Jacinda scurried back up the ladder. The nerd in her started rearranging titles that were out of order, and dropping loose papers (the ones that didn't contain anything interesting) to the floor to pick up and toss out, when she climbed back down..

[Anita Stern]

Anita ran a hand along the spines of books in shelves as she walked along, slowly, aisle by aisle, her eyes looking for suspicious things, her mind gathering info of out-of-place items between the pages of books. Near the end of one row of shelves, the petite woman stopped, having caught sight of tortured binding. A pitying look crossed her face as she used both hands to pull the book - a softcover on anatomy - out of its place, and flipped through it, coming across a set of photo pages. In one corner of a page depicting the human heart, there was a heart with the initials of two people, and an addition sign between them.

She smiled, running her thumb over the indentation the penmarking had made on the page, and giggled to herself at the thought the symbol conjured.