Asteri crossed his hooves and looked down at the map. “Aren’t you tired yet?”
Naida didn’t
look up from where she was carefully tracing crinkly bits of shoreline, lying
on her stomach on the enormous parchment that the chimera had pulled out of a
storage cubby. “No. I’m just about finished…”
“It’s been
a whole day!”
“I have a
lot of catching up to do!” Naida set the pen carefully in its holder and rolled
over on the inland sea that she’d already drawn. She laid her head on her arm
and was asleep in a moment.
Asteri
watched over her as she slept, lying in the golden light of the library. Then sat up and hunched his shoulders,
breathing and straining as if he could make himself grow faster just by willing
it. For an instant there was a flickering image of wings over his back but they
were no more than shadows of shadows, a ghost of true wings.
He didn’t
even notice when Temis spiraled slowly down from her door, soaring without
flapping so she didn’t disturb the papyri, the papers and pens. “She’s finally asleep?”
Asteri
startled and nearly rolled off the edge they were on. He drew a huge breath and then clamped his
lips together, let it all out in a long, quiet hiss. “Don’t scare me like that!”
“Sorry,”
Temis said but didn’t sound terribly sorry.
“Syb is still sleeping off her great work and I had no idea this Kitten
would be so book hungry.”
“Hmph. More drawing hungry. She’s worn down three blue pencils just
edging the ocean she’s drawn.”
“Have you
gotten to her country yet?”
Asteri rose
and trotted over to the south coast. “You
see. She did the coast and the mouth of
the Nile, but then broke off and came back up here to detail this island.”
“She’s
afraid of it. Of learning about her
people.”
“I don’t
understand why.” Asteri sat down by the
stairs with a huff. Temis reached out and gathered Naida up in her forepaws
cuddling her against her breast. “I’ll
nap with her in my nest for a bit and we’ll be down again in a bit.”
**
Next day
Naida came hopping down the stairs, refreshed and ready to start where she’d
left off and Temis glided down to settle neatly on her haunches, folded her
wings with a flip and wrapped her tail around her paws. She settled her long hair with a shake.
“Asteri!
Asteri did you SEE the cold storage cave? There’s whole AUROXEN hanging in
there! I didn’t know there were that
many on an island. I thought there would only be sheep and there’s cheese! And air-dried hams twice the size of what I
had! There’s jars and jars and jars of
things from Silk Road! All the way
EAST! The hams… there’s dried racks of
ribs I couldn’t eat one by myself if I gnawed on it all week! ‘n fish bigger ‘n
me! ‘n-“
“Yes, yes,”
Asteri bounced up the spiral stairs from below, a bag full of scrolls hooked
over one horn. “Temis, I need the Kitten…
Your spectacles are hanging in a niche I cannot get into.” He waved his head,
curling horns spreading wide now, the scroll bag swinging wildly.
“Hey!”
Naida ducked under the swinging bag. “Temis? What’s he talking about?”
The sphinx
ducked her head, looking sheepish. “I…
well in the last little while… I’ve found it hard to read.”
“She means
the past two hundred years…”
“Oh!” Temis
put her muzzle in the air. “Bring up
someone’s age!”
“I’m older
than you!”
“Only in
your adult form!” she teased. “You have
to grow up again!”
“Oh, just
rub my muzzle in that,” he snorted. “Naida
come on, it’s only down eight floors.”
“Only eight
floors,” she said. “I’m coming.”
On that
floor there were grand wooden shelves with gigantic codexes bound in leather,
chained to the shelves. In the distance
there was an echoing animal call and Naida stopped. “Don’t worry,” Asteri said. “That’s just another librarian.”
“Good?”
Naida shivered. “Asteri can we just get
back to Temis please?”
“Oh, yeah. Over here.”
The shelves
were too narrow for Asteri to fit between now, and Naida wondered how Temis had
gotten there in the first place, or whether she’d dropped her reading glasses
while she was flying.
The
spectacles hung in one of the chains, and Naida reached up and unhooked them
gently. The books stirred in their
shelves and she looked up, startled, but they were all still. “I’ve got them!”
“Great! Hey, Naida I can still fit up the stairs…
ride me up!”
She
clambered onto Asteri’s back, wondering why she needed to ride when it was only
eight floors, but he leapt onto the spiral and Naida gulped and caught her
breath. “The library is always growing,”
Asteri said as he jumped up a dozen floors.
And then another dozen.
“But… how
can I find anything?”
“It doesn’t
shift if you’re on a floor, but it does when you’re not looking.”
“I’d better
stay with you or Temis then…” She said, uncertainly, breathless, clinging to
Asteri’s ruff as he bounded up trying to catch up to the floor they’d left
Temis on.
“Yes. Here we are.”
“Oh, I didn’t
bend them did I?” Naida slipped
gratefully off Asteri’s back. “They’re
beautiful!” She looked at the metal
rimmed glass lenses. They were ground out
of some kind of rosy crystal and when she reached up to help Temis slide the
loop over her head, found herself gazing into magnified pink tinted lion’s
eyes. “Does your hair go over or…”
Temis
grinned. “Over, please.”
Naida gently
pulled the long blond hair/mane over the loop, settling the glasses firmly on
Temis’s head. She put up a talon and adjusted them slightly before looking over
the tops at Naida. “Before you ask. One of the Smith’s apprentices made them for
me, before they fell in love with His Wife… as they all do.”
“Um…”
“I have a
stack of codexes here for you. We are
going to start with the rise of humans and how they came to Kush for the first
time forty thousand years ago.”
“Um…”
“Start with
that polished horn there with those marks burned into it. That’s the oldest human record I have.”
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