A Head in the Clouds

[Maeve]

A girl sat in the corner of a library, secluded and hidden behind a stack of books, most of them at least five hundred pages in length. She had a method for choosing her books, plucking ones that seemed promising of the shelves, then leafing through the first few pages at the table. Already she had a stack of five or six books ready to check out.

The girl was dressed in little more than a set of pajamas, with a too-big t-shirt bearing the words I didn't lose my mind, I sold it on e-bay! across the front. She wore a pair of paint-stained sweatpants that were clearly too big for her, and she had a pair of rectangular glasses perched on her round nose, making her large blue eyes seem wider.

Her hair was black and pulled back into a loose ponytail with a white scrunchy. Her face was round and childish, even though she looked like she may have been about fifteen or sixteen years old. This girl's appearance had the distinct 'nerd' appearance about it, and many people would steer away into a different section if their eyes fell upon the pale, freckled girl behind the stack of books.

Felicity leafed through another book, setting it aside and standing with a sigh. She grabbed an armful of books and returned them to their shelves, taking three off her pile after a brief moment of consideration. Wandering among the shelves, she didn't know exactly what she was looking for. She scanned the titles on the shelf for fantasy and sci-fi books, plucking one of them off the shelf to look at the cover. The book had caught her eye first because of its size, but it had no title and the black leather cover was coated with dust.

Puzzled, she brought the book to the table. The town library had only been built a few years ago, and this book looked like it had been sitting untouched on that shelf for fifty years. When she opened the cover, a puff of dust caught her in the face and she started coughing, waving her hand around until the dust settled and she could breathe right.

Even more confused, Felicity flipped through the pages. They were yellowed, stained, and crinkled, but that wasn't the strangest part. There were no words on the pages.

"Felicity." The girl looked up at the sound of a voice, then cheered.

"Oh, hi," she replied. "What are you doing here?"

OOC: Anyone can join as her friend^^

[Astraea]

Gwin walked up and down, past the bookshelves, not really paying much attention to the books on them. She was lost in her own daydreams as usual, oblivious to the outside world. She didn't usually come here, to the library. She spent most of her time locked away in her room, music turned all the way up, eyes closed, and mind in another universe.Maybe that's why Gwin acted the way she did in public, like she just stepped out of some wormhole on another planet

She didn't seem to care much about the way she looked. Her mousy-brown hair was a rat's nest pulled back into a pony tail. She was wearing a tye-dye t-shirt, three or four strands of Mardi-gras beads twisted around so they fit on her wists,and black pajama bottoms. She was a short girl, only 4'11 at age 15, Her eyes were almost strange in the way they looked. they had some spaced out, far off, glazed over, look in them. They were large, dreamy, pale blue eyes that made most people stay as far from Gwin as possible. She wore no makeup, her skin was pale,almost sickly looking and she was built like a stick.

She walked past a few people, almost bumping right into them, muttering "sorry" uselessly as she thought back to that morning. Her mother sent her out with her little sister, Bianca, Gwin's mother said that she needed to get out more and to take Bianca to story hour. Gwen didn't say anything, but made it clear that she thought her mother was making her do this because she wanted a break from her youngest, rowdiest daughter.

And so she was here, wandering aimlessly down these shelves, silently brooding over having to leave her room and her dreams. She went over o a table after a while, it wasn't her bed, and it was a bit quiet for her tastes, but it was something. she let her mind wander off for a while, when she saw someone she knew from school, Felicity. Gwin considered the girl something of a friend. She wasn't the sort to really get close to someone, merely because she mostly kept to her own private universe, but it was nice to have someone to talk to sometimes.

"Felicity" Gwin said, her voice nothing more than a whisper for not having used it much.

The girl looked up,"Oh, hi," she replied. "What are you doing here?"

"Mom thought it'd be best for me to 'get out of my room and connect with the real world for once' as she put it. And so she had me bring my sister here for story time." Gwin sighed, noticing the book her friend was looking at she said, "Hey, looks a little old to belong to this library, where'd it come from?"

This post has been edited by Astraea on Feb 23 2008, 05:37 PM

[Maeve]

Felicity chuckled. "Good thing I'm an only child," she said. Looking back down at the book, she turned it so Gwin could see.

"I don't know where it came from," she confessed. "I agree, it's too old to have been here since it was built, unless someone donated it or something. And look. I don't think there are words on any of the pages."

Flipping through the dusty, stained pages, Felicity became more confused. What use would a library have for an ancient book that didn't even have any words in it? It's not like it would have any historical value. It wasn't like the book was bound in gold.

She shrugged. "I don't know," she said. She was about to close the book when she thought she glimpsed neat handwriting printed onto a page. She turned back, but couldn't find it again. "Hey Gwin," she said. "Did you see that, or was it just my imagination?" She began to flip through the pages once more.

[Astraea]

"Yeah..." Gwin starred at the book for a few moments. "Weird...like something from a book, like the diary in Harry Potter" She started flipping though the pages of the book, hoping to get whatever spirit or creature that was doing this to start again.

Nothing...

Maybe she was just going crazy...but then, Felicity had seen it too...Maybe Felicity was the one who was going crazy, and the mere fact that she'd told Gwin she'd seen something made Gwin think she saw it too. The power of suggestion.

Gwin sighed. "Probably shadows or something" she said after a few moments. She traced her finger along the bottom edge of the book, wishing that something, anything, would make it come alive. normal explanations bored her, she wanted something fantastic to happen in her life.

She wanted to ride dragons, and meet a werewolf. She wanted to explore the darker regions of fairy-tale forests. She wanted a magic book to talk to her at least! Couldn't anything cool happen to her? Something better than being forced to take her loud, obnoxious sister off her mother's hands.

She waited a few more moments in silence, looking hopefully at the book, when she finally gave up she said" Shouldn't expect anything to happen anyway..." She started to close it. What was that? words? Yeah! she could see them perfectly! She practically yanked the book open. they were gone. Great now she really was going crazy!

Something else...a picture? Gone again? "See that?" Gwin asked "What was it? Dragon...wait I think it looked furry..."

[Maeve]

"A dragon?" Felicity began flipping madly through the pages once more as images of every dragon she'd read about slipped through her mind. There was one book she'd read when she was 11 years old, something about a dragon hatchling, rainbow dragons hatching from golden eggs... There was that book Dragon's Keep, where a princess was born with a dragon's claw... And there was Eragon - the dragons Saphira, Glaedr, Thorn...

"Wait!" Felicity cried, even though she was the one in control of the book. "I saw it again!" She flipped back, images of deeds done by dragons slipping through her mind, one by one...

Felicity was so immersed in her search that she didn't even realize it when the lights in the room flickered and dimmed. She was still looking for the dragon - a perfect image of Saphira sitting on the page, looking up at her with bright, intelligent eyes. "This is crazy," Felicity groaned, leaning back in her chair.

As if on cue, the world trembled and all the lights went out. Felicity fell off her chair and onto the floor. "What the..." she stood up, groping around her, but her chair wasn't there. "Hey, Gwin," she called. "Are you there?"

[Astraea]

"Yeah..." Gwin muttered pushing herself off the ground. Something happened...why did her chair suddenly disappear? What was going on? It was so dark...Gwin hated the dark. Things lived in the dark. she went to the ground, and started franticly groping around for her backpack and the flashlight inside. She couldn't find it though! This wasn't just darkness..this was like between in the Dragon Riders of Pern books. This was nothingness...

Pull yourself together! A voice in her head suddenly said. This is not like that at all! For one thing, there's a ground here! And second of all, you can hear things, like Felicity's voice. and thirdly, this place smells like hay...why does it smell like hay in here? Gwin blinked. so...they weren't in the library, but they weren't no where either...just somewhere else? Like they'd traveled though a wormhole? Was this even possible? Then again a book with disappearing words and pictures wasn't supposed to be possible either...

A streak of silver-blue light passed by Gwin's eyes...it looked oddly familiar... oh no it couldn't be... the light passed by Gwin again, but now it stopped, right in front of her, and where she assumed Felicity to be. the odd thing about the light was that it only showed itself. It didn't illuminate anything around it... It started materializing into a more recognizable form.

I've been waiting for you... the White and Blue dragon said. It was a large creature, different than most Dragon's Gwin had ever heard of, but somehow, like all of them combined. Fur covered, like it lived somewhere really cold. It's eyes were completely blank, and four curled horns sprouted from it's head. The white parts of it's body didn't exactly look white, but seemed to show all of the colors at once, and though all these things made the dragon seem powerful and impressive, they were overshadowed by the huge chunks of fur that were missing, and the gashes in the skin underneath. The dragon was covered with scars, and one of it's wings looked broken.

"Felicity..." Gwin said, "Are you seeing this?"

This post has been edited by Astraea on Mar 1 2008, 06:21 PM

[Maeve]

OOC: Ach, sorry for the really delayed reply, I've been behind on everything lately.

Felicity blinked several times, then closed her eyes and rubbed them vigorously. She opened them again and swore, too shocked to completely figure out what had just happened.

"Did you just talk?" Felicity blurted, her head spinning. The dragon was all she could see in the darkness, and it filled her vision. It was almost frightening to gaze upon so many scars, symbols of battles survived... But if she looked away, she was scared that she would face blackness and never be able to find her way out of this place.

"What are you talking about, you've been 'waiting for us?'" Felicity snapped, fear pushing her to the verge of hysterics. "How do you know who we are - and where are we?"

[Astraea]

"Felicity" Gwin hissed. No one talked to a dragon like that! Especialy one who showed so well just how tough it was. Anyone who had that many wounds was someone you did not want to mess with.

The Dragon seemed to ignore Gwin though. instead it fixed it's blank gaze on Felicity. Gwin would hate for that to happen to her, just a glance towards the dragon's face gave her a sick feeling. You found the book, did you not? he said. If you found it you were meant to. My people need you...

It felt like the dragon was going to continue, but it disappeared suddenly. Gwin could hear a voice from the outside too...

A thin ray of light shown in as a door opened. It looked like they were in a barn? What was going on!

This post has been edited by Astraea on Mar 24 2008, 04:19 PM