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The capital is boring.
Why is the capital boring? It's the capital! It should have interesting people in it! But noo, everyone she's met so far has been an idiot. Mostly not even an entertaining idiot, just a boring idiot who thinks she should be impressed by their whatever, like, no, in order to impress her you can start by not being an idiot.
On the plus side, the party has free booze, so that's nice.
Irikaino picks up a book and goes to sit with it in one of the comfy chairs on the top floor.
The library contains... books. The bottom floor is all in Ansati, and most of the one above that; the top floor is modern; time runs vertically between them. Sections on each floor are neatly organized according to a system that was clearly designed with thought, attention, and careful planning; but the labeling can be a little opaque sometimes. It's a library for a very select audience, with no thought given to how an outsider might use it.
Well. Given the givens, that's not unreasonable.
He meanders upwards, trying to see if he can decipher any of the system as he goes.
Some of it is perfectly understandable. The section labeled 'Nathuremi literature, 1000-1250' contains two hundred and fifty years of early Nathuremi literature. The section labeled 'Verse' contains poetry and songs. But then there's the section labeled 'Blue' (mostly poetry), and the section labeled 'Feathers' (mostly nonfiction books describing practical skills, cookbooks and books about weaving and metalworking), and sections labeled in Ansati whose themes are harder to discern...
It's good poetry. There is no obvious surface-level similarity in era or subject or style that ties it all together. Many, but not all, of the poems are primarily about the natural world in some way, descriptions of mountains or forests or sunrises or waterfalls or deer.
Not exactly, no.
The secret is harder to find than that. But if he keeps reading... there's a particular mood that keeps cropping up. A sense of peace, of... stillness. Sometimes slightly melancholy, sometimes hopeful, sometimes steady and calm. Every book in the section has at least one part that evokes that feeling.
There are so many books.
And a filing system that continues to be idiosyncratic.
Eventually he reaches the top floor.
There's some good stuff on this floor.
Nice.
He picks a promising-looking volume and keeps half an eye on it and half an eye on Irikaino until she looks more interruptible.
"It's very charming. Possibly I would be in trouble if I were interested in finding anything more specific than 'good poetry', but finding that hasn't been difficult."
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