Chapter 44 - Paragon’s Cup with Marissa

Wherein the dust settles, and Rose prepares for the trials ahead.

Although Rose was curious to see how Marissa lived, she also felt like going home and introspecting some more. Thus they agreed to have a cup of joe at Paragon’s Cup, hoping it might have opened by now.

The cafe was close to deserted. The usual barista had been replaced by an older man of little words, with a mean glint in his eyes, yet he offered them complimentary cookies – on the house – and brought their drinks over.

Rose chose a lounge nook in the back, where they were out of the potential draft. The curtain by the door, that should work as a buffer between customers and the freezing cold outside, didn’t do much.

Rose kicked off her boots so she could curl up in her seat. She stared ahead, still processing the morning’s events.

"So what did you think?" Marissa asked when she couldn’t hold back her curiosity any more. 

"It was very different from worship back home." Rosa Rose smiled into her cup and took a sip of frothy milk with undertones of dark roast and a hint of cocoa.

Marissa made a frustrated noise. "That’s it?"

"Hmm… no." Rose straightened a little. She took a bigger sip before setting her cup down on the armrest and crossing gazes with Marissa. "How did you find that place?"

"I was looking up places out of curiosity, in one of my earlier years at UoUA." Marissa stirred the drink in her cup, willing the foam to stay frothy with just a touch of magic. "The priest invited me to stay for a longer conversation on the divine and I did. He had something none of the other priests I’d met until then had had. Compassion so deep that I felt instantly welcome. I only go to worship on holidays, but sometimes, when I’m stuck in my head, or working on a difficult spellworking, I go back for the tranquility."

"I wouldn’t mind going back either." Rose could easily see how the feeling of connection to something greater would uplift one’s spirit when turmoil threatened to upend one’s sanity.

"Do you always see the magic there?"

"Never as strongly as on new year’s day, but yes." There were more places throughout the city, and the wold, where that happened. As a wizard, Marissa had trained her senses to more clearly perceive thaumatic flows.

Since church and the thunderclap that had heralded the stranger's vision, Rose had seemed a less lively silhouette of her usual self; the magic inside had dimmed as it churned. Now it was settling, Marissa suspected, and the natural magic the other woman held started projecting again. 

"Will you be by the library this week?" the wizard found herself asking the bard-to-be.

"Possibly. I have some plans. Did you ask your friend about restoring my violin?" 

"Yep, but he wants you to know instruments are fickle and he can't promise it'll sound good afterwards."

"That's okay." Rose was starting to get used to its replacements. Once mended, the violin could have a place of honour on the wall. She knew the perfect spot for it in the music room, until she could take it home to the farm come Summer.

"Then come by on Lawday, he'll be there, too. Ask for Jonah."

"I will do that." Rosa Rose smiled sweetly over the rim of her cup and Marissa's heart skipped a beat. She knew she would be at the library from dawn until dusk on Lawday. 

They sat around and chatted for a while longer, about Marissa's lessons and what Rose had been doing over the holidays, before going their own way.

Rose had kept the bits and pieces of her violin in a wooden box. A box she now took to university campus with her. Well before noon, she walked into the grand library. For a moment, she stood and took in the towering shelves filled with books. Feelings of hope and light coursed through her; not unlike the church, yet completely different. 

Not knowing which robed wizard was Jonah, Rose went over to the check-out counter, where a wizened old cat-man with puffy fur and stubby whiskers was making neat piles of the returned books. 

"Hello, I'm looking for Jonah."

"Who wants him?" the cat-man meowed in a croaky voice. 

"Rose Cerdos. Marissa said to ask for him if I want something mended."

"Sit at a desk. I'll get Jonah." The cat-man walked off. A hole had been sewn into the back of his robes, for his bushy tail to protrude through.

Rose wandered over to the desk she had used before and saw that it had been cleaned up and taken by a new student. She chose another desk to sit at with her box of bits in a bag, grinning over the alliteration.  

Looking around, she noticed new details in the decoration. A few columns had palm leaves at the top that housed birds in the relief. Unwittingly, she started tapping her foot in a simple rhythm and hummed a tune that went with it. No words yet. 

"Please," the cat-man meowed when he returned on padded feet. "No making magic."

Rose stopped humming, looking at him strangely. "I wasn't."

"You were," he insisted. 

Rose frowned. "No. I was just... inspired."

"Inspired to make magic." 

She felt herself becoming instantly extremely annoyed. She would know what she had been doing. "When can I expect Jonah?"

"Soon. He's coming. No magic." With that warning, the old cat left. 

Rose made a face to his back. 

Jonah was a young man, tall and lanky. His looking down at her was a matter of fact. "Hey, are you Rosa?"

She stood. "I am."

"I'm Jonah. You were told I can't promise you it'll sound anywhere decent again, weren't you?" 

Rose nodded. "Yeah."

"Come to the side office with me. There's a few rooms we use to restore old or abused books."

"Books can be abused?"

"Oh yes." 

Rose saw what he meant when they entered the little work space. Some books were falling apart, and not even looking that old or weathered. Some had stains of undetermined nature. Water damage threatened to undo a bunch of them.

Jonah emptied the workbench top with ease that came from routine, revealing a gold inlay ritual circle. Sigils and symbols marked the rim, leaving a big open space in the middle.

"Do you have your instrument for me?" 

She handed him the box of bits. He turned it over and spilled them onto the table, sweeping everything carefully into the circle. Assessing the work to be done, he told Rose: "You can wait in the library if you want. Or come back tomorrow. This is going to take hours. It's a precarious process."

Rose nodded. "I'll... wait outside. If I get bored, I'll be back tomorrow."

He nodded in acceptance and promptly forgot she existed. 

Rose drifted out of the room. She observed the world around her as she moved, but she wasn’t a part of it. She was a ghost, untethered by physical bindings. She didn’t know which way to go to get back to the hall of books. The route had seemed easy to trace back when she had followed Jonah, but now the hallway looked endlessly uniform.

"Rosa Rose," a familiar female voice exclaimed. "Here you are. Did you find Jonah?" 

Rose turned, bumping into Marissa.

"You look like you need a drink. Tea, rum, or both?"

"Both?" Rose asked, unsure. Instantly she was led along by the arm into a staff room that was conveniently deserted.

"Sit." Marissa pushed her into a stained armchair that was very comfortable. Soon, a chipped cup of lukewarm tea spiked with spiced rum was pushed into her hands. Rose drank a few sips. 

"Thank you."

"Are you nervous?" Marissa asked, taking a seat close by. 

"No. No... it's not that. It's..." Rose's eyes blanked for a moment. 

Marissa patted her arm, bumped knees. There was nothing to say. 

"I still can't believe it, you know. That my violin is shredded. That anyone can be so brutal, and starting Luminsday, I’ll be back at college and Brittany will continue her bullying."

Marissa knew that too. "I would say it stems from not having good close relationships. Having too much entitlement. But that doesn’t change anything for you, does it?"

Rose shrugged, giving into apathy for a rare moment. 

"Why can't I sing in the library?" she asked. 

"The books get restless."

"The books get restless?" 

"Put too many books on magic together and they'll start making magic of their own." 

"Oh, I didn't know. Cat-man was really salty about me humming."

"He's a grumpy old coot. He's usually in the hermetic section, but it's the holidays and we're short on staff."

"A section on hermits?" That sounded peculiar, even for this place.  

Marissa grinned. "A closed section. You need to get permission to see the books. You cannot look at other books than those you requested. Unless you're a librarian, but even then it's frowned upon to stay there longer than needed."

"Are the books dangerous?"

"The books themselves? No. There's only a few bad books in the bunch, and those are kept in the vaults. What's in them is not... kosher."

Rose frowned. "Why would you keep them? Why not destroy them?"

"Because knowledge is power. And we cannot be certain this knowledge isn't being kept or used elsewhere. The same tomes evildoers use to rise to power, others may use to tear them down again."

"That makes sense." Rose sipped her tea some more. She suddenly noticed the lack of food in her system. "Do you have a cookie or something as well for me?"

"The rum hitting you hard?" 

After devouring a stack of sandwiches that looked worse than they tasted and cookies in three different flavours, Rose felt vaguely human again. Marissa offered to show Rose all her favourite details around the library, of which there were many, some very subtle. Because her curiosity was piqued by Marissa’s enthusiasm, she agreed.

Among these details was a relief on the capitol of a pillar depicting the aptly named Procession of Rats. It was an allegory of humanoids coming to learn and worship at the altar of knowledge, but it looked so capricious Rose had to giggle.

It was there that Jonah found them and returned Rose's violin to her. "Best I could do," he said apologetically. 

The instrument was a familiar weight in her hands. Her mind was struggling to accept the reality of this moment, possibly more than she had struggled to accept that it was gone. She hugged it to herself, suppressed emotion clogging her throat.

"What do I owe you?" Rose asked, sniffing back tears.

Jonah shuffled, offering her a crusty handkerchief. "Um…."

Rose wiped her nose on her sleeve. Jonah put his handkerchief away.

"I have little money to pay you with, but I can play for you sometime, or something." She had an viola and lute to use, even if her fiddle made no acceptable sound ever again.

"I’ll ah… get back to you on that."