“Let me go in the back and check.” Standing, Janice made her way around the Librarian’s desk with a scrawled note pinched between her fingers. Winding through the crowd was the easy bit. Slipping through the door marked ‘Staff Only’ was perfectly fine. Making her way to the elevator hidden in the wall behind a wire shelf of old newspapers and periodicals was a little more difficult, but not too hard.
The combination written on the back of her note was the tricky bit. She hesitated in the staff elevator, finger hovering over the buttons as she looked over the combination again. This was only her fourth week working with the specialized staff downstairs, and while the combination wasn’t overly difficult, she wanted to make sure to get it right.
The numbers glowed green once she punched in the right combination. She smiled and did a little gleeful dance as the elevator began to slide down beyond the basement level. Hands clasped in front of her, she rocked back and forth while biting her lip, watching the numbers go down, down, down...There it was.
The doors slid open with a swoosh to reveal what looked like a regular floor of the library. She stepped out onto the carpet and fidgeted with her ‘pass’, a little green jewel set into her name-tag. Two extra turns between empty shelves led to the main hoard, a large pile of History books set squarely in the center of the clearing. Curled around the pile, keeping it from creeping into a sloppy mess, was the green scaly mass of a dragon.
Smoke curled from her nostrils as she sat, staring at the book held down between her claws. Her tail flicked back and forth as she read, tongue clicking as she tut-tutted and shook her long neck, spines flapping with each movement. Her slitted eyes glanced up at Janice’s approach, her long snout curling into a smile.
“Hello dear!” she called out, using a single claw to shut the book and placing her paws gently over the cover. “Janice, is it?” Janice nodded, holding her name-tag tightly between her fingers. The dragon looked her over, wide glasses settled across her snout jostling as she moved her head. “You know,” she said in the awkward silence, “I was just reading over our newest collection, and I have to say I’m surprised at what they put into history books these days. Don’t they know fairies are responsible for the Lost Colony?”
When Janice still said and did nothing but stare, the dragon let out a soft sigh and held out a claw. Coughing in the smoke, Janice handed over the note with a wide grin and waited. The dragon looked it over for a second, holding it at various distances while trying to find the right focal point for her reading glasses. After finding it, she read the note over and glanced at her pile.
Her wings shuffled, the edge shifting through the pile as she searched for the particular edition Janice needed. Her head slid to one side side, then the other, then the other until finally the book was revealed. The edge of her wing flicked it out of the pile, the book landing neatly at Janice’s feet with a thud.
Holding back a small dance, Janice reached for the prized book as the dragon carefully opened up her own book. “Oh.” Janice froze mid-turn. “Please make sure they understand this is a rare copy. The dragon over in Philosophy got the works of Socrates back with scribbles on the inside and gum on the back cover.”
Janice nodded and hurried away. Going downstairs to the dragon-piles was the best part of her job, bar-none. She always got so excited she could barely utter two words, and the History Hoard was her favorite. The dragon was just so polite!!
Janice danced a giddy, choppy, awkward dance the rest of the way up the elevator, and handed over the history book with the biggest smile. Deciding to become a librarian was the best decision of her life, and she knew it.