Tablet Trouble Part 2

-Silver Wolf Guild Hall, in the guild Library-

Wearing her green-and-gold outfit with Argent Gloves and carrying the stone tablet in her left arm, Leona entered the guild library to look for a book that could help her decipher the writing on the tablet. She was doing this in an effort to avoid having to travel to Desierto and visiting her mother. Visiting Sophia Jarnefeldt was something the blonde wanted to avoid if it could be avoided. However, Leona was not feeling very optimistic about her chances because the books here were old and described magic and magic lore, not languages. Still, the collection might have something that could at least point her in the right direction.

Leona walked into the library and greeted the person behind the old wooden circulation desk, who was an older female staff member wearing brown-rimmed glasses and grey robes. She was reading a book on a subject she did not recognize... it must have been a personal book because she quickly hid it under the desk. She stood up straight and returned the greeting to Leona.

"Welcome, Guild Mistress. What brings you here so late at night?" The woman asked Leona.
Leona motioned to the stone tablet cradled in her left arm.

"I'm here to see if the library has a book that can help me translate the writing on this tablet. The writing's old and I don't recognize it." Leona explained the purpose behind her visit to the guild library. The older woman leaned closer to look at the object and Leona obligingly held it out to the woman. Her eyes narrowed while looking at the glowing silver letters.

"I'm sorry to say this, but I don't recognize it either, Guild Mistress." The woman informed Leona. The librarian held a finger up and had an idea.

"Let me check in the back. We don't have many books on languages, but we have a hodgepodge collection of books older than the both of us. Let me see what I can find. It'll take awhile, so please be patient." The woman said before disappearing behind the circulation desk and into a fairly large back room with shelves crammed full of musty old tomes. Leona shifted the stone tablet back to being cradled in her left arm and she waited patiently for the woman's return. If the guild library did not have what she needed, maybe she should pay a visit to Jobaasa's Rare Tomes in Capital Crocus. If Jobaasa did not have it, Written Antiquities, which was also located in Capital Crocus, was always an option.

-One hour and thirty minutes later-

Leona waited patiently for an hour and a half and had been standing in place for so long that her legs threatened to go to sleep on her. She had leaned down to stretch her legs when she heard the woman emerge from the backroom with nothing in her hands and clumps of dust on her robes. Leona was upset, but the woman had tried her best to help and had spent almost two hours looking through the backroom, so Leona did not show her unhappiness. The librarian coughed.

"I'm sorry, Guild Mistress. I couldn't find anything on languages." The librarian apologized to Leona.

"It's fine. You did everything you could and then some. I'll take it from here." Leona assured the older woman.

"Try the shelves and see what you can find there. That's all I can tell you." The librarian suggested apologetically.

"I will. Thanks." Leona said to the woman before venturing to the right side of the library and claiming the only empty wooden table for herself next to a series of shelves that were in the process of being reorganized and restocked. Stacks of books twenty books high lined the floor and smaller stacks of ten books each were piled onto all the tables save the one Leona occupied, giving a small glimpse into just how much magic lore Silver Wolf possessed. Almost all of the books were older than Leona herself... some of them were older than her by at least one hundred years, if not more.

Leona set the stone tablet on the empty table and began to search through the books for something that could save her a lengthy and taxing trip to Desierto.

[Word Count: 735]
[Total Word Count: 735/1,500]

Leona looked at the wall-to-wall bookshelves filled with books and sighed. Searching through them all would take awhile because there were so many of them that she lost count at around one hundred and sixty. It was a good thing that she did not have anything pressing to do because this task would be an arduous one. Leona picked a half-empty bookshelf all the way to the left and began to carefully search it for any books on languages that she could find. Brushing aside the dust bunnies perched protectively on their shelves, the blonde Guild Mistress began to slowly comb through the entire right side of the library in search of what she needed.

-One hour later-

Leona gently shoved the book on the arcane lore of Iceberg back onto a dusty shelf and sighed. She had combed through only a quarter of the right side of the library and had come up with nothing to show for her effort except dust bunnies. Leona shifted focus and turned towards the stacks of books cluttering the tables. She looked towards the stacks of books lining the floor. Leona's work was certainly cut out for her, but no one said that becoming a scholar was an easy task. She owed Silver Wolf a lot of work in advancing its goals and learning about the tablet she had recovered all those months ago was a good place to start.

Leona turned towards a pile of books on the table to her immediate right. She decided to look through them first before returning to the shelves or perusing the stacks on the floor in front of the bookshelves. With stacks of books that averaged ten books high, she would have a lot of ground to cover. Leona picked up a book on the plant life of Joya, thumbed through it, and quickly set it back down because it was not even close to what she needed. That was one book down and only ninety more to go, and this was all on one table.

She had eight more tables with approximately one hundred books apiece to search through. Leona felt like she had bitten off far more than she could chew when she opted to take this task on. She took a deep breath and resumed the search.

-One hour and twenty minutes later-

Leona closed the last of the books and set it back into the neat stack from which it had originated. She had skimmed through books on the magic lore of Midi, the medicinal plants of Joya, the lore of vampires in Haunted Castle, the geography of Sin, the medicinal plants of Minstrel, and many other topics, but none of them pertained to what she was interested in. None of them had anything to do with languages and languages was what she needed to learn about the most.

Leona closed her eyes, massaged her temples, and frowned. A journey to Nebdoui was looking more and more likely by the second. She really did not want to go there and get into conflict with her mother about her lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, her mother was a scholar with a deep knowledge of desert lore and Leona might have to seek her help regardless of how she felt about Sophia's interest in grandchildren. The blonde glanced at the stacks of books on the floor and felt a headache coming on. She pushed it aside and began to dutifully dig through the stacks to see if her luck would change for the better.

[Word Count: 594]
[Total Word Count: 1,329/1,500]

-Two hours later-

Leona had dug through every last stack of books on the floor and had come up with nothing but the beginnings of a backache. She had learned fragments of magic lore about Oak Town, Clover Town, Rose Garden, Bellum, and Fiore, but nothing on the languages of each region. This was going nowhere fast. Her energy and her patience were waning and she was not up to searching through the last three quarters of the library, but Leona would search anyway. If she could explore long-lost desert temples and survive the Three Trials of the Great Bird of Prophecy, then perusing the shelves of the guild library should be a simple task.

Leona picked a bookshelf at random and began to carefully remove each book and peruse its contents. Leona frowned as she thumbed through the book she had picked up. It was a tome on the magic lore of Seven, which was fascinating to read but was not relevant to her interests. She carefully put it back and moved onto the next book.

-Three hours later-

Leona's eyes were hurting and her head was pounding. Leona had looked through every single book on her side of the library and had come up with nothing, nothing but a headache and a backache. She glanced at the left side of the library, which was every bit as cluttered as the right side. She groaned. This was the point where she was going to quit while she was ahead.

There was no way that the blonde could handle the challenge of combing through the left side of the library tonight. Her eyes were hurting and her head threatened to explode where she stood. Leona was also feeling the effects of exhaustion from spending over five hours in the library. She would continue the search tomorrow after sleeping for a few hours... if she was lucky enough to sleep.

Putting the very last book back on the shelf, Leona walked towards the tablet on the table and carefully picked it up with both hands, then cradled it in her left arm. She would put it back into the guild vault and go crash in her room for a few hours before she woke up and had to handle the day's administrative tasks in addition to pursuing her own quest for knowledge. Leona slowly walked past the day shift of librarians and support staff filing in and slowly made her way to the guild vault. She would be going to Desierto after all.

[Word Count: 425]
[Total Word Count: 1,754/1,500]