The library was Evi’s home away from home. If she wasn’t relating people with some story or engaged in general chit chat with another human being, she could often as not be found in the library. She loved it here - the atmosphere, the sounds of people working away or whispering across tables, the smell of books old and new. All of it. She loved hallucinating thoughts and ideas as she read the black text on white paper, her ideas running away with her and imagining the most amazing things. She was a reader at heart, fiction, non-fiction, it did not matter to her, she loved all books equally.

Except this one. She was reading about… well she wasn’t sure what. The title of the book led her to believe that it was some fantastical tome about legendary beasts. It wasn’t. There was nothing folklore-y about it. She slammed the book shut, and whispered a quiet ‘sorry’ to the people nearby whom she had disturbed. She was rested in a rather cushty chair, one with plush arms, with her back rested against one of the arms and her feet dangling over the other one.

Her position had gained her a few disapproving looks from other students passing her by, but she paid them no heed. She had been coming here for years, since she was old enough to know what books were. First with her father or mother, then on her own as the years passed by. Often her sister Marietta would accompany her, but not today. Today she was content just to read in silence.

The girl swung her legs around off the chair’s arm and onto the floor. With a sigh, Evi pushed herself out of the chair, book in one hand, and she made her was through the stacks of books to return it to its proper place. She then spent a few minutes looking at the books for another, a better, tome to read. Something more to her tastes. She ran her fingertips along the spines of the books as she sought out an old favourite of hers. Right now she wanted a comfort read - something nice and easy to see her through the afternoon.

Book found, she pulled it from its place on the shelf and turned to exit the stacks of shelves. It was then, as she was walking down the aisle, that she happened to glance up. The sight before her made her stop in her tracks, her mouth rounding into an ‘O’. There, climbing the shelves, was a young man, though she couldn’t really tell his age as his face was turned away from her. She stood and watched him, climb. Then she watched him stop. Then she watched him fall. Books fell with him, one hit his head on its descent and landed next to him on the floor.

Evi rushed over to where the man lay. As she approached, she could smell a strangely sweet smell lingering around him… it smelled a bit like cooked pork. She wrinkled her nose - whilst not a completely unpleasant smell, she couldn’t say that she actually liked it. “Are you alright?” Evi asked, breathing through her mouth. “Can you get up? Or maybe you should stay down, you might have hurt something pretty badly, that fall…” she swallowed and looked around, no one else was in the vicinity, though they were like as not to have heard the boy falling to the floor. There had been a series of ‘thunks’ as his body and the books collided with the ground. Maybe she should call for help. “Does anything hurt?”