The day had been long, like each one before. The week had been long, like last week was. The month had been endless, feeling like a year, and years turned into decades into days into a haze. How long had she been working here? Too long to remember, but it was work she rather liked. Even if her fingers got dirty from the ink on the scroll and bound book pages, she always held a fondness for the scents and quirks of the library.
She wasn't a woman educated by noble standards, but had learned to read well enough on her own to get into a simply cataloging position at the library. It was perhaps because she was so persistent (and annoyingly so) that she had even gotten in in the first place, and now it was hard to get rid of Miss Artemis Longfellow, even now, when she was months into a depression of revenue and a pay cut where she worked at nearly half the salary she had before.
But she tried not to let that get to her. A job was a job, and during these times of war, she wasn't going to complain when many had suffered many losses elsewhere with the lives of men or with bad crops from the too hot summer.
This was one such summer day, where the air was sticky and hot and unforgiving, and one where even those who hated water prayed for rain. Tonight it seemed those prayers would be answered, for as the library was closing, the rains had began. The rumbling purr of thunder was a welcome sound, and the thrum of rain helped keep the other wise unnatural quiet of the large and vacant after hours library a bit more sane.
And Artemis liked the sound of rain, even as it was pounding on the ceiling over head. She had been climbing the ladders and humming to herself while putting away the volumes of Essyrni histories ( a period of the kings, reigns one thru the eleventh of the first Kings) when she noticed how dusty the tops of books shelves had become.
"Oh, this'll never do." She fished for the kerchief around her neck and undid it with one hand,t he other bracing herself against the heavy ladder that laid against the tall shelving. She shook the kerchief out and reached around and began to wipe the dust away. By now, she was several hours into her night shift when she noticed something moving between a break in the books.
She paused briefly and took a step down to have a better look see, but when she noticed there was some strange man on the other side, it startled her so much that she jerked back with a gasp, banging her head off the bottom of the shelf above her and forcing her to stumbling into the books below. And it didn't take much to dislodge the books from their position, as Artemis caught herself against the shelf and watched in horror as a pair of history books flapped down in a furry of pages towards the poor unfortunate soul below.
Fearful it might be her boss in whom she just may have hit over the head with a pair of history books, she jerked back from the book shelf out of fear, and out of sight, a hand sealing over her lip as her dark eyes were froze open in terror. Ansgar's name!? What should she do!?
Not wanting her boss to have to come around the other side to find her and climb up the ladder and throttle her himself, she knew she had to take responsibility, and was rushing down the ladder, blathering out all sorts of apologies as she rounded the aisle and came to the other side- only to come to a sudden stop with her mouth open and eyes wide in confusion to see it wasn't her boss there after hours- but a complete stranger.
And not just a plain jane stranger either- because the man had an absolute roguish charm to him that had left her completely and utterly frozen in place.
