Eldritch Yvette and Tiro
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Yvette often goes to the library; she reads voraciously, and as long as she doesn't incur any overdue fines, it's a very cheap (and fulfilling) hobby. And there's something very soothing, about being in a library. The environment is still and quiet, and sometimes, when she wanders through the shelves of books, she can just feel separate from the rest of humanity. It can just be her, and these carefully organized books. She's not looking for anything in particular, but this isn't particularly noteworthy. Sometimes she'll have an idea of what kind of book she wants to read, but not all the time. It's okay if she takes a little while to find something, and often, she'll find something she never would have expected to like.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something shift, on a shelf to her left. She turns to look, curious, and spots the offending book. It's predominantly blue, with gold leafed edging on its pages, and has a shimmery cover that shifts and changes when the viewer moves. Weird. Yvette thinks she would have remembered this book, so it must be new. She'll probably end up scoffing at whatever gimmick incited the weird cover, but for now, she's just curious. As she reaches to pull it from its shelf, she notices its lack of standard labeling. Did someone just take a book and hide it on a shelf? What an odd thing to do.

Her finger brushes the book's spine for perhaps half a second, and then passes through and into, as if plunging into some kind of sticky substance. Alarmed, she tries to flinch back, but finds her hand unable to separate from the book. The book fades from shimmery blue to a black void, lit with stars of all things, and as she opens her mouth to scream everything else fades to the starry expanse, too. She thinks, inanely, of how strange it is that space is supposed to be devoid of anything, but that this feels like being plunged into a deep, warm ocean.

Something reaches and then twists at her heart, pulling it and something else in an unnatural direction. It doesn't hurt, and this feels incorrect, wrong. Like someone has casually bent her arm until it neatly snaps, but there's no rush of pain. Just the alien discomfort of her arm going in a direction that it wasn't meant to.

The void fades, and she feels gravity start asserting itself on her body, but she finds that she doesn't care, because she's far too busy screaming. She stops with a whimper when she impacts the dusty ground, and lies there for a few seconds, shivering.

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Someone emerges from a door in the side of that hill over there and hurries toward her.

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She pushes herself up to a sitting position, breathing shallowly and looking around with growing alarm.

She spots the someone, and calls, "Excuse me, can you, call 911 or something, or, or tell me where I am?"

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He looks apologetic and shakes his head.

All around them, the dry cracked earth stretches out flat and largely unvarying, except for that hill, an improbably vibrant lump covered in healthy grass and strange plants. Beyond the hill there's a dip in the ground that might suggest a river or lake not visible from her current position.

The stranger asks her a question in an unfamiliar language. His clothes are also unfamiliar.

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"I - I'm sorry, I don't speak that. Only English."

She looks at the scenery with growing discomfort. Where is she?

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"I - don't speak English," says the stranger, with a wry expression that suggests he might be trying to convey a message that's beyond the power of his limited vocabulary.

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"You speak more English than I speak - uh. Whatever language you speak," she says, sort of wryly back. "I don't recognize it, sorry."

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"Haelahar. I speak Haelahar, I speak Sanash. I—" he frowns slightly, looking down a little, with a distant expression as though trying to figure out a hard puzzle. Then he says:

"'Excuse me, can you call 911 or something, or tell me where I am?' 'I'm sorry, I don't speak that, only English.' 'You speak more English than I speak whatever language you speak. I don't recognize it, sorry.'"

And after a moment for her to absorb that, "You speak, I - recognize? You speak more English, I speak more English."

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What the hell.

".... Okay," she says, after a pause. "Do you need me to use the language in context or will just the words by themselves work? Uh, yes, no, maybe, sort of, good, bad - I'm trying to get you a quick workable vocabulary so you can reply, if that didn't work I'll have to think of some other way to get you those words."

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"Yes, good," he says. "The words by themselves work."

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"Okay, good, then - ground, air, sky, water, person, people, place, who, what, where, why, when, day, night, hour, minute, second, he, she, it, they - do you get various forms of the words, or should I start saying 'he his him' and so on?"

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"I don't get various forms. I just get - words."

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"Oh, that's inconvenient. I'm going to have trouble getting you everything - he his him, she hers her, they their them, you your - you? Wow, it's easy to start seeing how weird English is when I start trying to explain it, we might benefit from trying to make some kind of lesson plan? Or would you prefer I just keep babbling and getting you as many words as quickly as possible even if it's not a very efficient format."

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"...Yes, we might benefit from a lesson plan," he says.

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"Right. Okay. I'm maybe panicking a little too much to properly think of lesson plans - do nouns and verbs sound a decent place to start?"

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"Uh - yes - "

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"Awesome - human man woman girl boy child adult father mother son daughter, rock water - I already did that didn't I -" she starts glancing at scenery to get an idea of what vocabulary to say, "place hill plants life grass trees door shelter house home, dust dirt desert - empty? Thing nothing something everything light dark fire shadow clouds, uh, wind bird animal animals dog deer cat, this is no longer a useful line of nouns for you, word words concept concepts talk speak communicate communication information knowledge writing b-book," she stops, sucks in a breath, and scrunches her eyes shut so she can focus and continue. "Truth lie goal hope confusion location oh I completely forgot about I my me mine, we our us, lesson teacher learn mind thought think suspect believe - we seem to be heading in the verb direction might as well own it - act help teach speak do don't run walk travel jump -"

She cuts off her impromptu verb explanation with a strangled yelp, as behind her eyelids the book appears as if it were in front of her. As if she were looking at it in darkness, and it were the only thing giving off light in the room. Instead of the only thing giving off light from behind closed eyelids. She flinches back, snapping her eyes open, looking around with more than a little alarm for it.

It's nowhere to be seen.

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"...um?" he says.

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"I," she begins, and she stops with a sound that threatens to be the beginning of a sob. "I found a book in the library and touched it and it brought me to a weird space void place and did - something - and then dropped me here, or, maybe it brought me here and that was its something? But. But I closed my eyes and saw it very clearly and it's either in my head or hiding behind my eyelids and I am very alarmed."

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"...that's very alarming," he agrees. "Um. I don't - um. Can I help...?"

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"I don't know, do you have something for creepy magic teleporting books that stalk innocent teenagers from behind their eyelids, because I really think that sort of thing is beyond just about everyone's usual ability to help, except perhaps with copious application of drugs which I don't think would actually help because I'm pretty sure I'm not crazy, what the hell is going on."

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"I think creepy magic is going on!" he says. "I don't think I can - do anything about the book - but - I don't know."

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"I think I agree with you on the creepy magic front," she says, hint of wry. "And. Yeah. I don't know either. I'm kind of scared and probably going to start crying soon if you don't need more vocabulary to be understandable, I can focus on doing things if you give me things to do."

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"...if you prefer to start crying you can do that," he says. "If you prefer to have things to do, I have not-creepy magic you can learn?"

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"I don't really know what I prefer right now because I'm kind of a bundle of, of, panic and emotion, if I cry I'll calm down eventually, if I don't then I'll either cry when I stop having things to do or calm down by doing - something else, I'm at a loss for what those things could be, I, should, probably just cry, that sounds like the most efficient thing to do here so I can actually be coherent and also I'm having trouble not now, excuse me."

And then she begins sobbing.

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He goes into the hill and comes out with a large pile of soft fabric, which he sets down beside her.

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