Vhalar 19 722 [Morning]
Eternity sat straight up from her sleeping position with her eyes wide open. She’d just been in the worst nightmare she’d ever had. She’d been in Scalvoris but the whole place was on fire. She’d felt like she’d been the reason it had all gone to shit. Though the details quickly faded from her memory she couldn’t shake the feeling of fear she’d felt when she’d gotten a glimpse of herself in a mirror. She’d had red hair, horns, and wielded a flaming sword. Towards the end of the nightmare she’d let out a scream that made its way to the waking world. Eternity tried so very hard to remember what had happened and then she recalled with dread that her body had exploded into a combination of ash and coal. That was the exact moment that she’d woken up.
Heavy breaths coincided with whimpers as Eternity looked at her trembling hands. “It’s just a dream, just a dream,” she told herself. It was far too early in the morning for there to be any semblance of sunlight outside but there was enough moonlight for her to see that her hair was still black. Mere minutes later and she’d forgotten all the details of her nightmare save for the face she’d seen in the mirror and the feeling that there was something important she ought to remember. It was a single word, perhaps a name, or a place. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Snap out of it,” she commanded herself when the trembling refused to stop, not that it helped at all. She rushed to douse her head with water and eat some fruit while she collected her thoughts. This was the second dream that she’d had since she’d gotten obsessed with the idea of becoming a mage. Just a few nights ago she’d dreamt of lifting an incredibly heavy boulder only for her strength to wane and she was crushed to death. She couldn’t tell if this was fate telling her to stop wanting to become a mage or if she was just too scared to go down that path.
“Even if I wanted to be a mage it’s not like I know how to become one or who to even talk to,” she said aloud, “I’ve never even met one for gosh sake. Dare I even think about going down this path? It’ll surely ruin every other life plan I have. What’s was the point in learning how to pick locks for all those years if I’ll never need the skill again? And what about all the hours I spent crawling around in the mud to avoid getting caught? It’ll make my whole life up until this point seem like a joke. And if I do become one what’s to say I don’t get myself killed?” She groaned and splashed more water on her face. Then, an idea came to mind.
“I wonder if the library has any helpful information. No doubt the university probably has the resources to answer my questions but there’s no way they give me the time of day with my level of education. Alright, library it is.” She had a plan but there were still a handful of hours before the library would open, if her memory served her correctly. She had to do something, other than sleep to pass the time.
As she thought on what to do, she caught herself humming absent mindedly. She’d discovered how much music helped her calm down just a few trials ago and now she was semi-obsessed with it. She recalled how the tunes from the bar went and she hummed them over and over again. She couldn’t recall all the lyrics, but one had been about kissing a mug of beer and another was about some kind of flower. She tried to work on singing it just as she remembered, though trying to pinpoint the notes was impossible for someone of her level. She could only remember that the notes went high pitch to low pitch then high again and every time she tried she got different results.
“La, la, la~~~” she sang as loud as she could without caring if neighbors heard her. It was about time for most of them to start waking up anyway. She noticed how it was easy to reproduce the exact same tone as long as she didn’t try to change. She also noticed that just the tiniest adjustment caused the sound to change drastically.
“Singing is a lot harder than it seems,” she thought while thinking of how amazing professional singers must be in order to perform perfectly all night, every night. “Perhaps I ought to go get some lessons. Do they even teach that sort of thing? I don’t think I’ve gotten any better over the past few days so maybe it’s not the kind of thing to improve on. Maybe I’d be better off learning an instrument. Oooh, maybe I should check out if the library has anything on music.” She smiled to herself and silently hoped that she could get good at something musical in the future. She imagined herself singing in front of a crowd and even getting paid to do it. Then she imagined how many fancy parties she would get invited to if she ever got famous. It was enough to put her nightmares entirely out of mind.
Before she knew it she’d stopped shaking and the sun had risen which meant that the library was probably already open. She pocketed some coins and patted her pants to make sure her lockpicking tools were still in her pockets. Turns out she’d need them because when she got to the library it was still not open. She saw the opening time posted on the wall and saw that she was going to have to wait another hour at least. Eternity examined the lock on the door and took a quick glance behind her before picking it as fast as she could. She made quick work of the lock and then went inside.
Eternity was surprised to see that there were people inside, though the library was closed. She recognized the junior librarian from before and she saw someone with a pink hat for the first time. She stared daggers at Eternity and asked from afar, “what are you doing in here? The library is closed.”
Eternity froze and stuttered, “Uh, the door was already open?” Eternity lied with a questioning tone. She put her hand in her pocket so she could be sure that none of her tools were sticking out. Had she known that someone was in here she would have never tried to pull this stunt.
“Heavens, I could have sworn I locked it,” the lady in the pink hat said as she walked briskly to the door she escorted Eternity back outside and continued, “I’m sorry to do this to you but if we let people in early then people will think they can just come whenever they like. I do hope to see you again in about an hour. Next time, consult our hours before coming in!” She closed the door and locked the door. She even gave the door a good shake to make sure that it was locked this time.
“Well so much for that plan,” Eternity thought but she thought it was somewhat deserved because she had gone right in through the front. She gave a rude gesture to the door and sat down at the entrance. It took great restraint for her to not unlock the door again just to play a prank on them. She wondered what in the world they were even doing in there that they couldn’t do if she were in there. She tried humming again to pass the time but she stopped when she realized she could hardly make out her own voice with all the sounds of the city filling her ears.
Eventually, after what seemed like an eon of waiting Eternity heard the door lock click open and she was allowed inside. She went around looking for books on magic and found a handful of them but she couldn’t tell whether they were just stories or not. Even the ones that seemed to be serious seemed to contradict one another or were very vague. She realized very quickly that magic was not something that could be learned from a book because there simply were not books that taught one how to do magic. At least, not in this building. The one thing that she did learn was that magicians created other magicians. So she now figured her best bet was to find another magician and ask them for specifics. That, or break into the university and try to find if they had any better books on the subject. Both seemed like impossible tasks so she’d think on them and figure all that out another day.
In the meantime Eternity occupied herself with a book on music. It didn’t specifically have anything to do with singing but it went over the basic layout of sheet music. She felt like she was reading a foreign language because the notes were assigned to letters and they seemed to repeat. She did her best to try to understand it all but it just made her head hurt. All she could really gather from this book was that music was “written” onto what they called “sheet music” and that one had to somehow decipher it and turn it into song. Feeling she had learned enough to know that she ought to just get lessons, Eternity left the library and went off to find a teacher.
[Template credit to Pyrre]
