💾 Archived View for r2aze.observer › archive › 2008-06-10-emotional-flutter.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 23:38:17. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Abruptly, the space between the shelves turned from pitch black to a flood of searing white light. Dorothy turned to Michiko. “Is this…” she started asking, but was interrupted quickly, rudely and most importantly, massively.
It is impossible to mistake the howling of a non-aerodynamic object falling from a great height for anything else. You can only hide behind something – a trench is best – and cover your head with your hands. They say it doesn’t help much, but such is the normal reaction to this sound.
Rika slept peacefully, covering under her blanket, and did not notice how the shoe fell directly into the middle of the low table beside the couch. In an instant, everything changed and silence was broken by thunder.
The table didn’t just crack, it sent shards into all directions, it’s legs going right through the floor as if knocked in by a steam hammer. A shockwave went across the floor, as if it were a lake, or maybe, a swamp, anything but the solid stone floor it really was, and following it, from the remains of the table, were cracks, thin and twisty like cobwebs, which reached the edges of the library cylinder in a fraction of a second.
The couch Rika slept on was thrown violently a couple of meters away and fell on it’s back. When Rika finally crawled out from under her blanket and, hanging off the side, rubbed her eyes drowsily, what she saw were the two shoes, standing lonely in the middle of the catastrophe.
And while she was looking, a wave of paper flooded her.
The bookshelves on all the floors of the Library all the way up to twentieth – if you can talk about floors when it’s really an Archimedes screw – fell on each other like a long line of dominoes, and books, as the theory of gravity directs, fell out, crawling between the railing supports. Actually, most of them have not even reached the center of the cylinder, but enough floors were affected to make it look like the shoe cracked a hole open in the floor that the books were attempting to get sucked into in a paper whirlpool.
Thankfully, a sea of books is still not a liquid, and when the books finally stopped, Michiko, surfacing in the book sea somewhere close to it’s edges, swiftly ran to the kerosene lamp, lying on the side but still somehow not broken, and still burning, and picked it up before the fire could escape.
“So, sleeping beauty,” she asked, handing the lamp over to Rika, who still looked around dumbfounded and tried to figure out whether she woke up already or not. “What were you dreaming about?”
“Revolution, little girls, snow, and floating point,” Rika replied tersely, climbing out onto the surface of the paper sea and carefully taking the lamp with both hands.
Dorothy finally crawled out from under the bookshelf that fell on her, for which she had to crack that unfortunate piece of furniture apart and toss the halves aside, which, with her almost victorian dress, looked rather rather stupid. “How’re the shoes?”
Rika looked at the shoes and smiled, before carefully settling the lamp by the shoes to start undressing. “They’ll do.” Standing around in only her panties and tossing the charred suit aside, she dug around in the books, covered mostly by her long hair, glowing with that pecuillar bright red of a light emitting diode. “I have things to do,” she mumbled.
“I can imagine,” Michiko said, looking around. “Try not to screw everything up too much?” she said, imploring. “There’s people in there, everywhere. They still have their stories.”
“Don’t worry,” Rika smiled, pulling a white skirt out of some book and putting it on. “I know what I want, I know where to find it… What I don’t know is how to make it happen.” She stood up to look at Michiko while buttoning up her heavy wool jacket. “But it will happen, by hook or by crook, by direct editing or by goodwill of these people. Those who stand in my way, they will be sorry… or else,” she added, a scary grin spreading out on her beautiful face. And then bent down to fasten her new shoes.
Michiko folded her arms on her chest and looked at Rika with a frown. “I know. I’m just asking you to try.”
“I will,” Rika nodded, and added, “For warmth. For happiness. For flames,” before stretching out her arm and yelling, “Hautecleur! Init zero!”
Her suitcase jumped out from under the paper sea, glistening in the twilight, booming in an unearthly voice all over the Library, which normally does not offer an echo of this kind, and shouldn’t have done this now, with the books dampening the sound. “_OUI, MADAME._”
The suitcase locked into Rika’s outstretched hand, unfolding into a shiny crystal structure, very much resemblant of a Gatling gun. Michiko backed away, as if knowing what Rika was going to do now. Come to think of it, Michiko was the only one present who possibly could know. But whether she knew or not, Rika just jumped straight up into the air, and instantly, an explosion right under her feet propelled her upwards with tremendous force, tossing Michiko aside like a ragdoll.
Dorothy crawled towards Michiko, helping her up by the light of the kerosene lamp Rika left standing on what remained on the table. The lamp was shining brightly like a little star. “I see what you meant,” Dorothy said uncertainly. “I think I do, at least.”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” Michiko mumbled, standing up and dusting her police uniform off. She looked up to see the tiny flame of jet exhaust slowly disappearing somewhere in the gloom of the near-infinity above. “Just pray she doesn’t wreck the place now.”
Dorothy settled on her knees, looking up. It took Michiko a whole ten seconds to take that in. “I didn’t mean it literally,” she said.
“I’m not doing it literally either. I’m praying that she gets what she wants,” Dorothy replied. Looking questioningly at Michiko, she added, “Is that wrong?”
“Not really…” Michiko smiled at the android. “I just don’t know who you’re praying to.”
“I don’t think it’s important,” Dorothy replied, still on her knees. “In here, a prayer by itself will have to do.”
She wanted to add something else, but was interrupted when a hand took the hat off her head. Lilith – dirty, battered, freshly dug out of the paper sea, but strangely, smiling, – put the hat on her own head and grinned.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Lilith said seriously, looking up, before stepping on a bookend and disappearing in a bright flash of white.
⬅️ MetaFairytale: The Pendulum Which Begins to Swing
➡️ MetaFairytale: All the Strange, Strange Creatures (YANA edit)
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