There is something about libraries. Something in the air, impossible to find anywhere else but there. Something almost sacred, the way noises somehow seems muted and softer and the air always smells of paper and dusty covers and knowledge¸ somehow. If knowledge had a smell, it would smell like a library.

Kaleida had always loved libraries, and, more importantly, books. Books and books and even more books, stacking in wobbly heaps above her head as she slowly fell asleep, rocking into a comfortable sleep in the hammock hanging between the bookshelves. There is nothing more soothing than falling asleep protected by rows and piles of books, stories stoically standing next to each other like guards, all around her. Maybe that’s why she had moved in there once upon a time, sneaking through the tall oak door, through the marble arches towering over the front desk and onwards into the library itself. At least that’s what she assumed she had done. She had lived here for so long her early days in the library seemed to have dissipated, turned to smoke in her mind and seeped out through the air vents. Sometimes she suspected that should bother her, but she couldn’t understand why, and always ended up pushing the thought away with the help of yet another world trapped inside cardboard covers.

 

As always, Kaleida was woken up early that morning by the sound of shuffling steps, and more out of old habit than actual conscious decision, she stood up in the hammock, loosening one of the knots holding the hammock in place high up in the air, turning the hammock into a rope, clinging to it while sweeping all the way up to the top of the high bookshelf, landing on it perfectly, the loose end of the hammock still in hand. Below her, she saw the librarian, Mr. Atramentum, slowly walking by, slippers making a soft, shuffling noise against the dark wooden floors. She did not know how old Mr. Atramentum was, or how long he’d been running the giant library all by himself, but sometimes she liked to imagine he was a fairytale creature, thousands of years old and full of wisdom. He didn’t really look that magical with his worn-out, grey and green sweaters and slow walk in old slippers, but Kaleida had learned long ago from her books that magic could be hidden in even the most mundane things – actually it was often a bigger chance magic would be found in the discreet than in the flamboyant, so she supposed Atramentum might be a magician or a wizard or something of the like. Either way he wasn’t magical enough to know about her existence – or perhaps he did but simply didn’t care – and Kaleida had been able to live in the library ever since she got here a few years ago. It wasn’t as if she caused trouble, anyway. Quite the opposite, actually. She usually spent her days jumping from shelf to shelf, putting the books in the right order, sorting them by author, date of writing and personal preferences and keeping a general watch over Atramentum’s precious library. She wasn’t as much of an intruder as she was a guardian, she liked to think.

 

Atramentum took out an old leather-bound book about dragons, flicked through the pages with a fond smile on his wrinkled face, and put it back – in the wrong place, as always – before shuffling off into the distance to finish his usual morning stroll through the library before opening. The visitors to the library were few and far apart, and when Kaleida, rarely, tried to pay attention to them, their features tended to be blurry and easily forgotten, and she didn’t really remember any of them as individuals and more as a foggy blur of bodies in movement, none of them worth remembering.

When she was sure Atramentum had walked down the giant spiral staircase in white marble to open the library for the day, she used the partly tied loose hammock to swing herself down onto the floor, her feet only making a soft thud against the wine red carpet covering the middle of the aisle. Tied to the wooden beams in the ceiling, the other end of the hammock still hung, and Kaleida clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and a tiny hummingbird, carrying a tiny ball of light in its claws, rose to the sky, flew in a tight circle around the knot, and the hammock fell into Kaleida’s arms.

“Thank you, Lux”, she said, smiling at the hummingbird, which chirped happily, its brightly green and pink feathers glowing faintly in the light of the glowing ball in its claws, and swooped down beside her, the ball of light hanging in its claws suddenly bursting, covering the entire bird in a soundless explosion of light. When the light faded, the green and pink hummingbird had turned into a small bedside nightlight in gold, peeking up at Kaleida while fluttering its light, now caught in the lamp’s light bulb. When the lamp talked, it did so without any visible mouth and with a voice way deeper than could be expected for a scrawny little bedside lamp.

“The usual stroll?” Lux asked, and Kaleida nodded before walking up to the ladder on wheels standing next to the bookshelf, enabling guests to pick books from the top shelves. Kaleida usually used it to get on top of the shelves themselves, though. Lux hopped up on the palm of her hand, letting Kaleida carry him up the ladder and onwards to the top of the shelf. Kaleida cast a glance upwards towards the giant crystal chandelier and then nodded to Lux, now standing on her shoulder, who sent out a flicker of light which travelled up to the unlit candles in the chandelier, lighting them up with a gentle glow, which spread like warmth over the aisles which were often darkened by tall, cluttered shelves on both sides. When one chandelier was done, Kaleida leapt across the narrow gap between shelves to land on the next bookshelf facing the next chandelier, which Lux once again lit up.

They usually spent their mornings in this fashion – jumping from shelf to shelf slowly spreading the gentle candle light across the library. They finished their work around noon, when they took a book break in the huge pile of pillows in one of the many small reading rooms which were spread across the library, so many and far apart that you usually never bumped into other readers and was left alone in your room with your book. Kaleida read a post-apocalyptic novel about life on a distant planet a thousand years in the future, and years of practice made her finish the book mere hours later, when Lux once again turned himself into the green and pink hummingbird, and by holding the light in one claw and Kaleida’s hand in the other, he flew her out across the great main hall and gently sat her down on the frame of the biggest chandelier, which hung there, made of steel, crystal and diamonds and at least five meters in diameter. Lux sat down on her shoulder, and Kaleida gently swung the giant chandelier like a swing across the air, dangling her feet over the edge and watching the dark wooden floors six meters below, not even the least afraid of falling. This was yet another thing Kaleida sometimes thought she should be worried about, but pushed out of her mind by the joy of watching the library from air while sitting on a crystal swing six meters above. Besides, her best friend was an unusually strong hummingbird more than willing to save her life if she asked him to, so she probably had nothing to worry about anyway.

She sat there studying the blurry figures below her picking out books, reading on the back, flicking through pages, going over to Mr. Atramentum at the front desk to borrow one or perhaps put it back in the shelf. A few people occupied the armchairs standing around the giant fireplace on the wall opposite the front desk, and Kaleida smiled when she remembered all those lazy nights lying in front of the slowly fading fire, basking in the afterglow of the warmth while reading a book, hummingbird Lux sleeping soundly in a pile of down on the armrest.

At around seven, when the evening started colouring the windows black, the last visitor left the library and Kaleida head the loud click of the lock of the door and Mr. Atramentum’s steps shuffling off into the first aisle downstairs for the last look around before he returned to his bedroom at the top floor, in the tower. Kaleida and Lux did the same, skipping across shelves to look for wrongly placed books, trash having missed the trashcan or stray books left on side tables. The routine was well trained by them both by now, so when Kaleida softly landed on top of shelf with the fantasy novels beginning with a “D”, she was surprised to find Mr. Atramentum standing by a door leading to one of the reading rooms. His fingers twitched impatiently, and it seemed as if he was hesitating to open the door for some reason. Lux stopped hopping, craning his light bulb at Kaleida with a look best described as confused. Kaleida and Lux stood silently watching the old man taking the decision with a deep breath, putting his hand on the door handle and pressing it downwards, slowly.

Atramentum disappeared into the room, and as soon as he had done so, a loud roar rose up from behind the door, sounding like a lion’s but much louder and more intense, as if the lion in question was two meters tall. Two giant, terrifying roars were heard from the other side of the door before Mr. Atramentum was back again, a thick book clutched to his chest and his sunk-in, pale blue eyes having grown two sizes with sheer fear. He cast a glance over his shoulder towards the door before hurrying off to the narrow, winding staircase leading up to his home in the tower.

“What was that?” Kaleida mumbled to herself, and Lux hopped up to the edge of the shelf, peeking curiously towards the door.

“It sounded like some kind of animal”, he said, and Kaleida held out a hand for Lux to hop up on.

“Should we take a look?” she asked, and Lux laughed slightly.

“I never thought I would hear that from someone who has read forty horror books in just the last six months. Yes, let’s go look into the room with the gigantic, roaring beast in – what could possibly go wrong?”

“Whoa, get off your high horses, Lux. Admit it, you want to know what’s there”, she said, knowing Lux passion for adventures all too well.

“That wasn’t my point, but yes.”

A few seconds followed in silence with Kaleida and Lux staring at each other, before the clock hit nine and the few electric ceiling lamps on the ceiling automatically turned themselves off, leaving the two friends in the glow from the almost burnt out candles in the chandeliers with excited smiles on their faces. The absence of light made the prospect of adventure even more exciting, and Lux quickly switched shape to the green and pink hummingbird, flying Kaleida down to the door. She thanked him with a discreet nod, smoothing out her long, black locks with the pair of pink and green stripes given to her by Lux long ago as a gift to match his plumage, and waited until Lux had taken his place on her shoulder before carefully pressing down the handle.

 

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A/N: So. I'm new to this website and got asked to publish this story by someone on another writing site, so I thought, well, why not? Anyhow, this story was born from a conversation I had with a couple of friends about how awesome it would be to live in a library. My mind kind of went bananas from there, and Kaleidoscope was born. There'll be seven more chapters like this, so it's not that long. Hope you'll stick around for the journey, and thank you for reading!

2: The Secret of Atramentum

She stepped into the room quickly, before fear got the best of her and made her back out of it, and closed the door behind her in one swift motion, her eyes immediately darting across the big room. Every single wall was covered from floor to ceiling with stuffed bookshelves, and a few armchairs and piles of pillows to read on lay spread out across the room. A few of the pillows were torn apart, though, the stuffing scattered across the room like snow, and it didn’t take the pair long to trace the source of the destruction.

In the middle of the room, eating from a huge bucket of what seemed like raw slabs of meat stood an enormous dragon. It was the fairytale kind of dragon – two meters tall, emerald green, a long tail swaying contently as it ate, a pair of elegant, giant wings folded neatly on its back, its eyes thin yellow slits and the claws on its paws at least a decimetre long. It looked terrifying; the epitome of a fairytale antagonist, and Kaleida had never seen it in the library before. Of course she hadn’t – a giant dragon was one of those things you’d remember living with, probably. She recognized the bucket holding the meat was one of the buckets Mr. Atramentum used to catch rainwater whenever the ceiling in his tower was leaking, and she suspected he was the one delivering the meat to the dragon as well. She wondered why mysterious, might-be magical Mr Atramentum with the old slippers and kind face would hide a dragon in his home, and seemingly doing nothing to get rid of it, and then remembered the thick book Atramentum had exited the room holding. Perhaps Atramentum was as surprised by the dragon as Kaleida was, and was looking for the same answers as she did. She took one last look at the dragon, and left the room before the gigantic animal took notice of her and Lux.

“The book”, she said once on the safe side of the door, answering Lux questioning flicker. “Mr. Atramentum brought a book out of the room. Perhaps it has something to do with the dragon.”

Lux made a shrugging sort of motion and said:

“Worth to take a closer look at, I suppose. We’ve got all night.” He looked up and met her eyes, his light turning into his own kind of mischievous smile, and Kaleida didn’t need more comment than that.

They snuck up the winding spiral staircase in stone, and reached Mr. Atramentum’s bedroom at the top some minutes later. Atramentum’s room was a perfect circular shape; the cold stone floor covered with a sleek deep red carpet and heated up by the elegant fireplace crackling comfortably in a corner by an armchair obviously meant for reading in. Atramentum himself lay in his gigantic, king-sized bed – Kaleida had always found the sight of small, skinny Atramentum all alone in the big bed kind of sad – and Lux carefully hopped up on his bedside table, nodding politely to the elegant, Victorian reading lamp standing there, and nodded towards the thick, leather-bound book beneath him.

Even though the floor was pure stone and there wasn’t a creaky floorboard in sight that might wake Atramentum, Kaleida still minded her steps as if balancing on slippery stones across a river, and as soon as she reached the night stand she picked up Lux and the book and scurried down the stairs, not wanting to stay too long and risking getting caught. She couldn’t remember life before coming to the library, but she liked the life here and was going to take every precaution to keep her place in there. Maybe Atramentum wouldn’t mind her staying there, but she didn’t want to risk it. Especially since she didn’t know where she would go if not for here – she hadn’t been outside of the library since she got here and had no memory of her own family or past, and without life in the library she really would be completely lost.

She and Lux sat down on top of one of the bookshelves in the fantasy-department, a few meters from the door hiding the dragon, and Kaleida cast a glance at Lux, gathering herself, before carefully opening the heavy covers.

The book contained a fairytale, and Kaleida quickly realised this was the kind of book she often found herself loving, not only because there was something special about reading big, thick books with leather covers and titles in gold, but because of the stunning worlds hiding inside of them. The plain, brown leather hiding a colourful, sparkling world of kings and queens, evil witches and fire-breathing dragons was a contrast appealing to something in her. Sometimes she liked to think of books as kaleidoscopes. A plain, ordinary looking thing, hiding extraordinary colours and shapes and a completely alternative world from what you thought was something ordinary and mundane. So much hidden away in something so little.

“Books really are beautiful”, she mumbled to herself as she carefully, almost lovingly, flipped through the thick parchment-like pages, not sure what she was looking for and the beauty of the book making her forget she was actually searching for something in the first place. Lux, always the more level-headed of the two, soon lost patience, and flicked off his light to call for attention.

“Can you spot anything unusual?” he asked, and when he turned on his light again Kaleida shook her head.

“It seems like any other fairytale, I think. A prince rescuing a princess from the hands of an evil dragon, but then getting beaten by the dragon somehow...” Kaleida said while skimming through the final chapter of the book. “It seems as if the princess defeats the dragon herself and runs off with another princess in the end.”

“Nothing about a dragon hiding in a library, then?” Lux said, reading the story over her shoulder. 

“Not that I can see”, she said. “But it’s a good fairytale from what I can see. I think I’d like to read it.”

“Do it, then. Perhaps hearing the story out loud will make us see something we missed”, Lux said, and Kaleida nodded and brought Lux and the book with her down to the big fireplace in the front room, lying down on the thick carpet in front of it and with Lux lighting up the words, she started reading.

The flowing language and magical plot soon drew them both in, and after the first few chapters they had once again forgotten they were supposed to be looking for clues. The clue itself made itself know without them having to look for it, though, when Kaleida reached the fifth chapter. The prince had just made his way up to the tower and spotted the princess sitting in its window waving at him.

“As the prince took a step towards the animal, separating it from the princess, a loud roar, the power of a thousand lions, echoed over the quiet space”, Kaleida read. “His eyes travelled upwards, and found it was looking straight at him. A...”

Kaleida abruptly got silent, and Lux looked at her.

“Come on, read on. Don’t stop in the middle of the action!”

Kaleida shook her head, and tried again.

“Found it was looking straight at him. A...” Her lips moved, tried getting the word out, but were not able to.

Lux sighed, and said:

“I’ll do it, then. He spotted it. A...” Lux, just as Kaleida, found he was unable to say the word “dragon”. It simply would not come out of their mouths, as if something physically held it back.

“Why can’t we say it?” Kaleida whispered.

“I don’t know”, Lux whispered back. “But it must have something to do with the dragon in the library.”

 “You said the word!” Kaleida exclaimed, and pointed at the word in the book again. “Try reading it again.”

Lux tried, but once again, the written words refused to be pronounced.

“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen...” Kaleida thought – probably not considering that this comment was directed to her living nightlight best friend with a deep bass voice – and tried, and failed, to say the word while reading from a different part of the book.

“So, my conclusion is that we can say the word ‘dragon’, but not read it”, Lux said.

“But I’ve read dozens of books about dragons to you. Why would the word stop working all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know”, Lux said, turning himself into the hummingbird with a small poof of light, flying away up to the fantasy bookshelves, returning a few minutes later with another fairytale book in his claws. He turned himself back to lamp form, and Kaleida quickly found a passage in the book mentioning a dragon.

“He found himself unable to take action against the beast, just managing to stare plainly and terrified as the dragon came closer”, Kaleida read, and her face split up in a triumphant smile. “I could say it!”

The dragon in Atramentum’s fairytale still refused to be pronounced, though, no matter how hard she tried.

“It only applies to that specific book. We can talk and read and think about dragons, but not in that book”, Lux thought out loud.

“Perhaps we should spy on Atramentum for a few days, see if he figures something out?” Kaleida suggested, and Lux nodded.

“That sounds like an appealing idea. We’ll start tomorrow morning. Now, let’s return the book and go to bed, please.”

“Sure. You take the book and I’ll prepare the hammock”, Kaleida said, and Lux sighed slightly before returning to his bird shape, flying off towards the spiral staircase with the book in his claws next to the ball of light. Kaleida looked after him as he disappeared, no part of her questioning what a strange creature her friend really was. Sometimes she thought Lux wasn’t actually a lamp being able to turn itself into a hummingbird – or, for that matter, a hummingbird being able to become a lamp – but that everything that was Lux really was in that ball of light. It was the only thing remaining constant in his shape shifting, and it was usually where it seemed his voice originated from and his emotions could be interpreted from.

After a quick scan of the surroundings, Kaleida decided she wanted to sleep in the fairytale part of the fantasy department – might just make a theme out of it since fairytales had basically followed them around the entire day. Many years of practice made her finish the work of tying up the hammock comfortably high up in the air above the aisle, hidden from people sneaking through the corridors (as long as they didn’t look up) while still covering them in the safe feeling of being surrounded by books. She had just gotten into the hammock with her latest book when Lux returned again, landing softly on her chest. He usually was a bird when he slept, since it was much more uncomfortable for Kaleida to share a bed with a bedside lamp made of golden metal than a tiny bird with soft feathers, and when Lux had gotten settled in he let the little ball of light go, and it slowly rose up to levitate a meter or so over them, providing an excellent nightlight as they slept.

Kaleida read him half the book before one of the gigantic clocks standing in a corner indicated that it really was time for them to go to sleep, and Kaleida put her book aside, rolled over to her side and smiled softly as she felt Lux nestling into the crook of her arm, his green and pink feathers soft as silk and his tiny, sleepy breaths being the perfect sedative, and Kaleida drifted off to sleep feeling safe and cared for, despite there suddenly being a gigantic dragon living in her home. That fact alone should tell you something about the uniqueness of libraries. They always keep you safe, somehow, having the possibility to take you with them for fantastic, mind-blowing adventures without ever having to leave the comfort of the armchair in front of the fireplace, and even though for the first time, Kaleida and Lux adventures wasn’t fictional, the library still gently convinced them it was, lulling them off into a safe sleep, the books a silent promise to keep the stories and fairytales contained until someone decided to live inside them once again.

3: The Books That Spoke

The pair finished the lighting of the chandeliers as fast as they managed the next day, being done with the work around the same time as the first visitor entered the library. Kaleida and Lux spent most of the day following Atramentum around, sneaking after him on top of bookshelves and swinging between chandeliers to remain unnoticed. He visited the dragon briefly around noon to feed it, but beside that he acted like normal – probably too busy looking after the visitors to have time for mysterious antics. They followed him the entire day, and they couldn’t deny a feeling of disappointment when Mr. Atramentum went to bed at nine as usual without even casting a glance at the mysterious book.

“Should we sleep in the fantasy department today too, or do you feel like moving?” Kaleida asked, and Lux made his own version of a shrug.

“It doesn’t matter. It might be easier to just hang the hammock in the same place today – it’s still lying on top of the bookcase in the fantasy department, I mean”, Lux said. “Besides, it looks like we’ll be involved with fantasy books for a while. Sleeping among them might help us along.”

“Good point.” Kaleida took two steps on the ladder on wheels leading up to the bookcase where she left the hammock that morning, before Lux stopped her.

“Kaleida, wait.”

Kaleida stopped in her tracks, retreating down the ladder and going to stand next to Lux, who was hovering in front of one of the shelves in the bookcase. Lux sent her a meaning glance, and Kaleida, knowing the library as well as she knew her own pockets, immediately knew what Lux had noticed.

“The sorting system”, she said, quietly.

Mr. Atramentum used a simple type of sorting method for the books in his library. Every genre had its own combination of letters, sitting on a white sticker on the bottom of the back of the books, and for further preciseness they also had a sticker with the first two letters of the title of the book and the first letter of the author’s first and last name beneath. It was a fact that Kaleida knew the sorting system and the different combination of letters better than she knew her own date of birth (she couldn’t remember it and had just decided on April 23rd since it was the date of World Book Day), and her entire being squirmed when she saw a few books on the shelf had been rearranged.

“Why do people do this? Can’t they just take the book they want and leave the rest of them alone?” Kaleida said, annoyed, and made a move to put the books back in place. Hummingbird Lux landed on her hand, stopping her motion, before she could, and nodded towards the books.

“Didn’t you notice?”

“Notice what?”

“Read the sorting system labels from left to right”, Lux said, deadly serious in a way Kaleida knew better than to question. As she read the combination of letters, her skin grew colder and colder. The white stickers at the bottom of the books’ backs hadn’t just been randomly rearranged – they were arranged into a message.

“Help us.”

“What is this?” Kaleida said, her voice growing more and more quieter as a slow, cold prickle of fear started to spread beneath her ribs.

“I don’t know. From the look of it, a cry for help”, Lux said, even quieter. The ball of light he carried was only shining slightly, not wanting to be seen. Noticing even Lux being scared really got Kaleida’s adrenalin flowing, and she bit her lip hard in the hope of coming up with a bright idea or a non-scary reason why this message existed right below their current sleeping spot. No one beside themselves and Atramentum was in the library after hours, and Atramentum didn’t go unnoticed with his shuffling, slow steps. It couldn’t have been him, but it was neither of them, and they had controlled the sorting system mere hours ago, when the library had already closed. Whoever had made this message was here in secret, just like them, but unlike Kaleida and Lux, they didn’t know where their mysterious new housemates were, or if they were as dangerous as the beast hiding in the reading room.

“We have to find them”, Kaleida said. “I can’t go to bed knowing there’s someone out there, possibly in danger or possibly dangerous. We have to find them to decide which one they are.”

“Agreed”, Lux said, lighting up the ball in his claws again, reaching one of his claws out towards Kaleida. “It’ll go faster if we look for them flying.”

 

Kaleida’s heart beat a hard and steady rhythm of nervousness as Lux flew her high over the bookcases and open spaces of reading spots, his light casting an almost ghostly light over the room beneath them. She wished she had been small enough to sit on Lux back instead of hanging in his claw. Even though she knew she was safe with him, it still made her feel more exposed. Like the mysterious guests suddenly could jump up and grab her feet at any time.

After a few minutes, Kaleida noticed a few of the books in the biography department had been wrongly sorted, and her heart skipped a beat since she knew for sure she had tidied up that part of the library after it closed for guests.

“Land there. I think it might be another message”, she said, and she heard Lux pull in a short, nervous breath through his beak before doing as she instructed.

Just as she had expected, the letters on the white stickers formed words, and while Lux levitated behind her watching her back, she read the message.

 

“We don’t know where we are please help”

 

“They’re lost”, Kaleida said. “They must’ve gotten locked in here somehow, and can’t find their way out.”

“Understandable”, Lux said. “This place is enormous.”

“Let’s go look for them, then”, Kaleida said, and Lux nodded, picking her up by the hand again, increasing the brightness in his ball of light to light up more of the library. They slowly flew over row after row with sturdy, quiet books before the light seeped down between two shelves and a small yelp was heard from in between them.

“Hello?” Kaleida quietly let out towards the source of the noise.

“Is there someone there?” The noise answered, and Kaleida nodded towards Lux to fly over to their mystery guests. Below them, books in hand – probably making another spooky message with the sorting system’s help – they spotted two people. A short girl with a round face and long, dark green hair hanging in soft, flowing curls around her face, and a tall, skinny boy with an extraordinarily symmetrical, attractive face and sand blonde hair shaped into a small, carefully styled Mohawk.

They must have made quite an entrance – a black haired girl descending from the skies with the help of a tiny hummingbird, illuminated by the orb of light in the bird’s claws. From an outside point of view, they looked like something divine. Kaleida reached ground and Lux let her hand go in favor of sitting perched on her shoulder, intensely focused on the strangers in front of them.

“Hello”, Kaleida repeated, taking a hesitant step towards them while suddenly becoming acutely aware of the fact that she hadn’t communicated with anyone beside Lux since she came to the library – and since she didn’t remember life before the library it meant this life was basically her entire life, further meaning she had never talked to an actual human being in her entire life, making the whole process about two million times more terrifying than it was prior. “I’m Kaleida, and this is Lux”, she said, mimicking the actions and lines she’d read about in books about first meetings. You were supposed to introduce yourself, and they were supposed to do the same, and a foundation of friendship would be laid out from there.

The tall, attractive boy spoke first.

“I’m Philip the Third.” He kept his gaze high, his chin lifted in a confident way that clearly indicated he had no self esteem problems whatsoever, the kind of person who seemed to be very, very proud of the fact that he had a number following his name. The green-haired girl spoke next.

“And I’m Jade.”

“Jade and Philip, I understand”, Kaleida said.

“The Third”, Philip added and Kaleida nodded without really caring.

“I assume you are the ones leaving messages in the bookshelves?”

“It was my idea”, Philip added, and Jade rolled her eyes, clearly indicating that fact was probably less of a fact and more of a side effect of being very proud of being the third in your family called Philip.

“Great. Well, either way, we’re here now, so we can help you get out of here, if you like”, Lux said, and Jade and Philip (the Third) looked at him in awe for a moment when they realized the bird was now a lamp, before they gained their composure, and Jade said:

“That’s very nice of you, but we don’t think we want to leave this place.”

“Fair enough. I can understand that”, Lux said. “Why, if I may ask?”

“Because we didn’t come from outside the library”, Philip (the Third) intervened.

The stunned silence from Kaleida and Lux part said it all.

“Then… where?” Kaleida said, and Jade shrugged.

“I don’t even remember anything before I woke up inside the door a few hours ago. I only knew that my name is Jade, and that I needed to find whoever runs the library”, she said, and Kaleida looked at her with a strong sense of curiosity when she recognized the problem. She had also no memories prior to walking through the front door, only knowing her name was Kaleida and that she needed to find that mysterious talking lamp.

“Well, I remember where I came from, and I’d very much like to return there immediately”, Philip said.

“Sure”, Kaleida said, going silent for a moment, before adding: “Where exactly did you come from?”

“From Eccha”, Philip said. “I was just about to go downstairs for dinner, when I turned around a corner and suddenly found myself here. Miss Jade ran into me a few seconds after my arrival, telling me we needed to find you, and well, that’s what we’ve been doing since. I’d like to return now, please.”

“Eccha…” Kaleida mumbled, having trouble placing the name but clearly remembering reading it somewhere. She rubbed her eyes trying to get the dried-out sleepiness out of them to be able to think more clearly, but wasn’t successful. She yawned widely, making both Jade and Philip do the same.

“Actually, I think I’m too tired to figure out solutions to this problem right now. I have a few extra hammocks in a cupboard that you can borrow, and we’ll figure this out tomorrow”, Kaleida promised, and Jade nodded while Philip complained.

“But I want to get home immediately!”

“Feel free to look for a way home while we sleep. I’m not going to stop you”, Kaleida calmly said, and Philip went silent for a few seconds, looking quite annoyed, before muttering something about ‘show me the bloody hammocks then’.

Kaleida, Lux and Jade put up the two spare hammocks a few meters apart from Kaleida and Lux so that they were still in the same aisle but wouldn’t disturb each other, and Kaleida watched in amusement how Jade and Philip carefully but clumsily from inexperience got into their hammocks, wrapping the blankets around them while trying to find a comfortable position in the hammock that didn’t mean accidentally falling out of it. It didn’t take Kaleida more than a few seconds to get into hers – and she was so exhausted from the day that she didn’t even read to Lux before she curled up against Lux soft feathers and fell into a deep sleep, preparing to face the adventures face on in the morning.