all of the astronauts;, open.

The town library wasn’t much in terms of teenage hang-outs where one could get down with their homies in da club, but, perhaps fortunately, Levi was not an ordinary teenager, and that was probably why he was not in the aforementioned club (he also worked in one, and there was only so long a guy could smell like cigarette smoke and alcohol before it started to get gross). Instead, Levi was spending his Saturday afternoon in a haven of learning. It was the same place he always sat- right at the end of the place, in a desk that you couldn’t spot unless you tripped over it, right underneath a massive window that gave him all the light he needed without having to turn on a light. The sight of a teenager with his feet up on a table, leaning back on two legs as he flicked through an old, dusty tome would probably look, to an outsider, like a scene from a movie where one did heavy research before taking on demons- but Levi wasn’t researching how to kill demons and he was completely engrossed in switching songs on his iPod rather than learning anything (right now, anyway).

Levi wasn’t particularly an introvert, but he would rather be in a place that made people think he was a vampire than get distracted in the middle of his work. And he did have to work. A meeting with his tutor had proven very bad for him – his grades weren’t up to scratch and they were unsure why his quality of work had fallen so sharply. Although not one for cynical thought – he had a strong belief that if you were too cynical, you’d miss all the opportunities – he had spent most of the meeting wondering what on earth they would have really thought of him if he had told them the truth – that he was distracted because he was unable to find someone important, that his sister wasn’t answering calls, and that, frankly, the work could’ve been a lot more interesting. Instead, the lecturer had suggested a large book for him to read and Levi, lacking a social life on that day in particular, had decided that he might as well read it; he didn’t want to fail, after all.

After skipping through what felt like the entire iPod, Levi gave up and turned the thing off before putting it back in his pocket. It had proven enough of a distraction to be tapping along to the beat and the other patrons of the library were certain to think there was some sort of music-loving beast in the corner of the library if he continued to make noise. He looked down again at the world’s most boring (and possibly largest) book, and sighed. “I really don’t like you,” he told it plainly, as if it was going to reply ‘no, I don’t like you either’ but the hardback remained silent. He looked up again, and noticed that there was someone at the end of the row, watching him – he could imagine why. The creepy kid in the corner had spoken to nothing; he was a pretty odd sight right now. Mildly curious about what they could have come to this section for, he glanced up and noticed an array of books that didn’t seem to belong to any particular section, as one; he surmised that this was the place people hid books that they were going to read later or sometimes got too lazy to return to the correct shelf. He turned his head back to the stranger.

“Look, some people talk to books, okay?” he said slowly, not particular stand-offish, but more like questioning them- as if seeing someone talk to books was a completely normal occurrence.

"Oh I'm sure~ it's when the books talk back that you have a problem on your hands"

Amarilis smiled and gave a wink. She turned back to pick out her own books, light brown ponytail swishing. The person had come off as being understandably defensive; Amarilis still remembered the days when she would play pretend with her soft toys. Once she had gotten what she wanted, Amarilis approached the stranger’s table. There was little other choice for company, really. Saturday afternoons were one of the more busy periods for any library, and this man was a much better alternative than whining kids or snoring old men. Or worse still, the snogging couples that had taken up the other more secluded areas of the library.

Gently placing a book on thermodynamics, two detective novels and one little black tome titled “An Occultist’s Introduction to Thelema” onto the table away from the man’s feet, and Amarilis sat down diagonally across him. She flipped open her clamshell mobile and set a vibration alarm to go off after half an hour, planning to do a bit of light reading first, before she returned to the world of engineering. Picking up the book about the Thelema, Amarilis’ grey-green eyes were unconsciously drawn to the rather…impressive-looking tome the stranger was reading.

“If the book’s being difficult, you can try talking to one of the study forums instead. I know of a site where people put up past literature reviews and summaries of reference books. It’s mostly engineering, but I think there ought to be some stuff about other modules too.”

The site was actually a hidden treasure trove; not many American students knew about it. Created by immigrants and overseas scholars who had decided to help one another out, Amarilis had found out about it after befriending a group of Asian students two semesters ago. They had made her promise to keep the site a secret, and she had kept to the promise till now. It was mostly because those who would benefit the most from the knowledge were not even trying to help themselves. To someone who was spending a lovely Saturday afternoon cooped up with a gigantic old tome on other hand, Amarilis was compelled to speak out.

When the stranger – and Levi did a quick mental scan and came up with ‘pretty blonde-or-maybe-brunnette, few years older, probably a student’ – finally spoke, Levi was glad that they seemed somewhat nice. Honestly, he doubted there was much someone could say that wasn’t nice to him right now, but his patience had been wearing a little thin on the ground for a while (understandable), and he probably would’ve taken any other response in completely the wrong way. But instead, he decided to drop it and merely gave what he hoped was a polite smile in response. “Yeah, that would be worrying,” he agreed, for lack of something to say, but not wanting to be entirely horrible to her. After all, she didn’t venture here on a Saturday to get hated on by some nineteen-year-old kid.

He tried to go back to the book in his lap, thinking that he could easily ignore a distraction like someone else hanging out there. Instead, he found himself glancing up – much to his own chagrin – to see what she chose, although her back blocked most of his view. Still, something that looked suspiciously like physics or whatever, and that was all he could make out. It really told him nothing except that Levi was taking any excuse to not work, and that was not okay with him, not right now. A second after she had sat down at his table, he realised that, yeah, his feet were just kind of on the table. He didn’t want to be too rude; for instance, every time he was at work and had the urge to tell someone where to stick their drink, he could imagine his mother proclaiming her disapproval of his actions and his father, despite being long-gone, shaking his head and giving him a look of haughty derision. It was probably a bad thing that he thought like that, but it wasn’t like he was seeing his parents in front of him, and figured it was okay. He moved his feet from the table and put them under the table, resting them on the chair opposite instead, the book now propped up on the table. He figured this was a pretty good set-up he had going here.

When the girl spoke again, he looked up quickly, taking a moment to wonder what she was on about, before he realised she was looking at the book he was battling his way through. “Well, I don’t think it’s the book being difficult,” he admitted as if he were telling her some dirty family secret. It was true – Levi couldn’t hate on the book for being difficult because, honestly, it was a book and it was written for people his age, so what more did he expect from it? “But then ...” He considered that. Of course his tutor would ask if he’d given the book a go, but if Levi could just get a boost so he knew what he was supposed to be taking from this, that wasn’t so bad, right? He’d read the book, for sure, just not for a very long time, that was all.

“You think they got anything on forensic science?” he wondered. Engineering wasn’t so bad, but definitely a world away from forensics, even if they were both science-based subjects. Still, he could hope. The girl had thrown him a bone here, and she didn’t even have to. “Don’t really mind if they don’t, but if they do... what a Godsend,” he explained.

The stranger was much more amiable when he was not defensive, Amarilis concluded. Though she did not comment on it, she did notice when he put down his feet from the table. She smiled when he hesitated upon hearing her offer; most students would have jumped for joy at the prospect of such a shortcut. This person had a commendable attitude towards his studies; Amarilis congratulated herself on assuming correctly that he was not a skiving ne'er-do-well.

"It is. The site's an amazing resource. And going by the number of users and contributors, I'm guessing that there's bound to be at least a handful of threads related to your course."

Putting down the slim tome in her hands, Amarilis reached over to her engineering reference book and riffled through it carelessly. Eventually she found the thin stack of papers that had left in there from two days back, and picked out a piece of paper that marginally little less cluttered with thermodynamic formulas than the rest. Producing a pen from the pocket of her skinny jeans, Amarilis started jotting the address of the study forum along with two strings of characters.

"The site URL, followed by my username and password. The forum requires users to have a certain post count before they can access stuff like the search function and you look like you don't have time to go and spam 50 posts, so yeah, feel free to use my account."

She said as she pushed the slip of paper towards the stranger with the tips of her index and middle finger. Amarilis would have liked to continue chatting, but given that this was a library and not the neighbourhood park, she refrained. Instead she picked up the book about Thelema again, her hand lightly gripping the spine.

Levi nodded, feeling like now that she had helped him and was even taking the time to explain the site properly, he ought to be polite and at least listen. They weren’t cut-off from the rest of the library by a long-shot, but unless someone had a sudden urge to walk to the end of the library and back, he doubted they would be interrupted. Plus, a library was for studying – which was exactly what they were doing. Sort of. Levi wasn’t too good at loopholes.

“Awesome,” he said, sounding, for a moment, like he was an actual teenager, though his tone of voice was in contrast to the fact that he barely moved. “Sounds like my kind of place,” he added, nodding at her. A little curious, he watched as she rifled through one of the books, and then wrote something down for it. He had to lean forward a little to accept it off her and looked at the URL before actually smirking.

“Don’t Be Stupid?” he repeated, looking up and raising an eyebrow at her. Not a bad site name at all, you see, but certainly a site name he’d never heard of before. At least it was upfront, he thought, you weren’t going to go wrong with a site like that. “But thanks ... yeah, I wouldn’t have time to make fifty posts,” he agreed, making a face. He had schoolwork and actual work and he barely found time for that, so how could he spend time making fifty legitimate forum posts? He felt instantly grateful for the kindness of a stranger, because God knows anyone else would’ve just not cared.

“Levi, by the way,” he added, after a moment’s pause. He was still debating where to put this slip of paper – he didn’t want to lose it, and he did have a tendency to not check the pockets of his jeans before he put them in his wash. Eventually, he decided on the pocket of his jacket, sure that he’d run across it later when he opened his front door. While doing so, he added, in a rather bored tone, “Yes, like the jeans.” He got that a lot – compared to his real namesake, the jeans were completely worthless. He looked back up a second later though. “In case you wondered who would be stealing your account,” he explained. He made sure he kept his voice low, at least, just in case an angry librarian happened to be going by.

Amarilis shrugged, smiling. She had the same reaction when she first heard of the site. The tongue-in-cheek URL certainly went against the dreary impression most people had of scholars. As she continued to listen to the rest of the stranger's response, Amarilis had to stifle a chuckle. Account theft had been the last thing on her mind, but Levi's comment only served to reassure her that her account was not going anywhere.

"Nice to meet you; and my name is Amarilis." She hesitated for a moment, and then decided to continue talking. It simply did not feel right to her to just stop the flow of words at that odd junction. "Nothing special about my name; regular flower name like every other Rose Daisy and Lily out there, just with more syllables."

Amarilis had picked up the Thelema book once again, playing it in her hands as she spoke. She was skimming through the pages, her focus not really on the words. Amarilis was at the library for more than just light reading and revision; someone had sent in a request to Missing Nothing about a lost book. The subject of the missing tome? Thelema Rites, allegedly authored by Aleister Crowley himself. The person writing in had stated that the book had been hidden in one of the shelves of this library, until it went missing two weeks ago.

Just as she finished speaking, her heart lurched. The feeling was not an unfamiliar one, the imaginary grip that held the organ was much stronger than before. It felt as though she was physically being pulled towards a certain direction. Amarilis clutched at her chest instinctively, wavering in her seat. Flashes of white filled her vision intermittently, and she thought she heard the sound of engines and a roar. The last thing she was aware of before she slumped onto the ground was the smell of popcorn.

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OOC: Sorry for the wait >.<

Levi wasn’t quite sure what name he had expected, but perhaps something he’d heard of before. Amarilis was original, to say the least, and would make someone else wonder whether her parents were gardening fanatics of some sort. “No, it’s – uh – a nice name. It’s original,” he said, feeling the need to pass comment on that. He wasn’t sure what she went by for short though (because surely, one did not call her Amarilis all the time, that would be time-consuming, or maybe Levi was just lazy) – probably Amy or Marie or something. He’d ask at some point, he was sure.

When she returned to the book, Levi got the hint that maybe he should actually work. Working would be a fine idea, really, as that was what he was here for, and he couldn’t use Amarilis as a distraction. That’d be – well, not wrong, but rather lackadaisical of him. He looked at the book in front of him, knowing that although he now had a website with the information for him, it wouldn’t be right to get up and log onto a computer immediately – not only because all the computers in the library were currently taken (by who? How many people needed to see old newspapers on microfiche?).

The sound of a thud bought his attention up seconds later, and he wondered what’d happened- perhaps she had dropped the book in her hand, and that was all. Well, yes, she’d dropped it, but she’d also swayed and she fell out of her seat in a way that got Levi panicking. He was, after all, just a teenager, and collapsed people wasn’t something he worked well with. He dropped the book in his hands and headed around the table (he could’ve gone over it, but that would have been reckless), and he knelt down next to her. She could be dead! he thought, but she was breathing, and he checked her pulse for good measure (although he had no idea where he had picked this skill up from).

“Hey – are you – what I mean is, can you hear me –” he asked her, certain that she would stare blankly at him, and say nothing. Shit, shit, shit – Levi, you need help, he coached himself, and he wondered if anyone had heard the thud and the sounds of a panicking teen, because he was terrified to go to the end of the aisle and check- what if she died by the time he came back?

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I should apologise more for the long wait I gave you. I hope this is okay. :)