Chapter 12: Day 12

Day 12,

Morning thought: I’m living on a tropical island.  I need to spend a proper day at the beach sometime.

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I finally made it to the library without needing directions!  In less happy news, this morning’s sprite trick was to get one of the puffy sleeves of this oversized shirt from the old archivist caught on the porch railing on my way out of the house, causing me to rip a hole in it.  Or maybe it’s my own fault and the sprite just happened to be watching and found it funny enough to laugh at.  Hard to tell, but the former is the less embarrassing story to go with.  I didn’t really feel like going back in and changing and I figured there was enough extra fabric to cover it up, so I just rolled with it.

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I had a much more sociable visitor than usual at the library today.  Not long after I made that last entry a woman showed up to return a small stack of books.  Or so she announced as she was coming down the stairs from the entry room to the archive.  When she saw me, she cut off mid-sentence and then started stifling a laugh.  And valiant effort that quickly came to ruin once I spoke up and asked if I could help her with something.

After a few moments she wiped a tear and apologized, explaining that she used to come here a lot ever since she was a child attending reading lessons and had been friends with the old archivist despite the age gap.  Seeing me in his clothes, wearing his pendant was a bit of a shock that threw her off balance, but then seeing how poorly they fit it just looked too much like a kid wearing their parent’s clothes to keep a straight face.

Well aware of how silly my limited wardrobe had a tendency to look, I accepted this apology with a chagrined chuckle of my own.

She went on to introduce herself as Lin, and explained that she’d been hanging onto the books she brought in since before the old archivist passed away.  Right after that it’d been hard to bring herself to visit the library again, and from there it turned into one of those things you procrastinate indefinitely out of habit more than whatever the original reason was.  As I took the books (a few story collections, a treatise on anatomy, and a compendium of various plants) to add to my ongoing re-sorting she asked if she could stay and browse for a while.  She was the first visitor to want to do that instead of finding something specific then leaving.  I saw no harm in it and welcomed her to it.

This of course soon led her to discover the temporary mess I’d made and the books I had reshelved that were now in different spots than she remembered.  I explained what I was doing.  She was a little put off by the idea of moving books from where they had always been and throwing off her memory of where she was used to finding everything.

It eventually sank in that I was talking to someone, possibly the only person, who actually knew the layout of the library and had an inkling of the prior organization system.  This of course got me reasonably excited and I started asking her about it.  She admitted that even she never fully understood the why of where the old archivist shelved things, but she was still able to give me some explanations of how she remembered what went where.  Some of the mnemonics baffled me, but I was still able to pick up on some patterns I’d missed before that should help with the reorganization.

I started to ask Lin if she’d be willing to help out with the project then stopped myself and apologized, realizing that wasn’t what she was here for and that she must have her own job to get back to.  She laughed it off and said that she didn’t mind stopping in every now and then.  There’s precious little to keep the Village doctor busy unless someone’s coming into the world or leaving it, and even less for his daughter/assistant.  It’s why she was able to spend so much time here in the first place.

Somewhere during all this she must have noticed the hole in my sleeve and offered to mend it, saying that she makes a hobby out of patching up old clothes.  Called it practice for sewing up kids that fall out of trees and fishermen who weren’t careful with the teeth on their catches.  I told her I’d appreciate it.  She said to call it payment for picking out a book for her to borrow the next time she showed up and then left, cheerfully humming to herself.

As it turned out, she showed back up as I was closing up for the day, this time carrying a bundle of some of her old patched up clothes.  She said she was glad to have caught me before I left and then insisted that I change into what she brought me so she could take my shirt and get started on mending it.  I was a little taken aback and more than a little embarrassed, both by the charity and by a woman I’d virtually just met telling me to change clothes.  But between her insisting that she had plenty of clothes, her promise to stay out in the entry room while I went back downstairs, and the prospect of wearing clothes that actually fit (or at least fit better) I relented.

Fortunately, I had already picked out a book that I thought would be of interest to her as requested and brought it back up with me after I’d changed.  It still wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was a world of difference nonetheless.  The expected exchange of compliments and thanks followed along with the exchange of book and clothes.  She ended up taking the vest and trousers along with the shirt, claiming she’d been wanting an excuse to try out alterations instead of just patching.  I figured even if it was her first time trying it, she couldn’t possibly make it fit worse.

Leaving for the evening we said our goodbyes, started out in the same direction, laughed, and made brief small talk that soon faded into a companionable near-silence (which is to say, me not talking and Lin quietly humming) for several minutes until our routes home diverged.

Did I just make a friend in a day?  Why does the idea of that feel… odd?

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