With the Benefit of Hindsight [Lady's Library, Morning 0]

[Akh Uur Hoon]

Misty eyes pored over pages of a dusty tome just as wisps of hair curtained it at the rims of its dust jacket, two undulating cascades the colour of ripe wheat in the library's illumination, if one ever saw such a thing as a harvest. Normally, they might have been risking dips in ink from the lectern's carved-in inkwell, for whatever notes scribbled on whatever the grimoire of interest to the long-haired reader. But while the notes were undoubtedly being made, in neat, economical lines of an uncommon language, both the inkwell and the quill stack stood empty rather than emptied. The script was apparently coming straight from the fingertip at the end of a very slender index finger, to the gentle swirls and slithers of subtle ink lines, extending onto just a tone too pale skin of a commensurately slender wrist, down from whatever origins of the dermal pattern a baggy sleeve obscured.

The lectern's occupant didn't strike an imposing figure in a robe of a faction that belonged among old, dead, dusty things. As such, she both seemed in an out of place, either noticeable or negligible, apparent yet innocuous, depending on one's attentiveness and sensitivity to detail, like an optical illusion which becomes obvious once one changes the angle or manner of seeing. Perhaps it was the silence of her pursuit, beaded with no sighs, harrumphs, shuffling, throat clearing, or other onomatopoeic manifestations of deep thought, which was a gaping hole in the seamless fabric of the library's politely soft undertones one's senses could stumble upon to regard the figure as odd.

[Dare Shah]

You don't talk in a library... is something only someone who isn't hitting the library often enough thinks. Libraries definitely have their silent spaces, where quietness is strongly enforced, to ensure the best conditions for studying, researching, reading.

They also have spaces that are far more chatty. Conference rooms, for serious scientists to hold cryptic speeches to an audience of similar scholars and for theatrical entertainers to recount unbelievable tales to a public of young and less young. Traditional classrooms, for children on certain days, for full grown adults on certain nights. More informal rooms, for people to discuss their late reads, help each other with writing related tasks, even, sometimes, play games traditionally associated with learning and intellect.

And, from time to time, places of silence and places of spoken words bleed into one another.

Somewhere in the library a door is opened. Voices become audible, a confusion of many small discussions from many people, a mix of talks about getting caffeinated beverages and debates about systems built on alternative geometrical postulates. The aftermath of a conference or class?

Then a door is closed and silence reigns supreme once again.

Soon after a young woman enters the room. A human, the very definition of prim and proper, hairstyle, clothes, ways of moving around, radiating someone raised bourgeois or noble.

She stops by one of the shelves and starts musing around, removing, checking, and putting back volumes one by one, likely searching for something in particular.

~~~

Morning, but EM, MM or LM?

[Akh Uur Hoon]

[Whichever you like, since we have just 3 pregame slots I thought it good to give a wide margin per time of the day to make it easier to accommodate.]

The reader's concentration breaking off at the distant commotion and not so distant persual was more wilful than involuntary. Unstartled, misty eyes were raised onto the elegant woman. A side-observer would notice perhaps that the attention was on the engraved titles of books returned and retrieved than on the finery and pose.

The reader was young in appearance, something the pale gaze belied. But whether the soul was old literally or metaphorically was a tough call even if for whatever reason the stark difference of social stratum between those two knowledge seekers would not preclude attention being drawn to the inferior one.

[Dare Shah]

It's math. Of the most abstract, pure, variety, pages and pages of theorems, equations, curves, proofs.

Sights are finally set on a particular treaty, Examples of analytic geometry in non-Euclidian spaces. Her prize in hands, she turns around, toward the main room, still inquisitive, maybe looking for a spot to sit and work.

Eyes meet eyes. In these ones, there's the spark of youth, the brightness of infinite energy and confidence.

~~~

LM then I would say, assuming the library isn't opened yet at EM, and everyone has been in for some time already.

[Akh Uur Hoon]

There was no incredulity, but neither was there a knowing nod, because for all the reader knew Hilbert or Minkowski could be some Outer Planes' infernal gnomish illuminati. For her, however, mathematics was a language to describe existence, one of many, certainly not the prime divine code to express ingenuity and creation. Gods spoke Supernal, not math.

But then, there were so many dogmas she needed to question to make sense of her own experience that she was happy to give weird geometry a chance should an opportunity provide itself. So she was giving some unobtrusive regard to the noble of complex numbers.

[Dare Shah]

Maybe a human. Maybe not. Maybe both previous statements at once.

Not that it really mattered. She was a fellow library patron, not some imported item she had to determine the appropriate category label for in an accounting book in the context of her daily job.

The casual usage of magic caught her eyes though. Nothing unusual in Sigil. Yet still a statement, at least as much as her own demeanor and style. A glance wandered on what the mysterious woman was working on.

[Akh Uur Hoon]

A dim halo of barely lit symbols seemed to be circling around the woman's head, easy to miss in the illumination. So both/and seemed a better answer than either/or about the nature of the woman's humanity and by extension also her magic. Her work seemed hard to determine from the distance, however, because the sole tome remained open, its title facing the lectern. By the thickness and ornamentation of the cover, however, it could be said that whoever had made it had held some esoteric preconceptions about its content.

At a more direct attention, a respectful acknowledgement followed. The small smile was kind, even bright in a way, an oddity among the Dusties, who have made a grim memento mori frown or lifelessly blase deadpan their call signs.

[Dare Shah]

A curtsey answered the smile.

"Lady Dare Shah. My apologies for interrupting your work."

~~~

Failed to find a way to keep on the "silent dialog" gimmick, sorry.

[Akh Uur Hoon]

[No worries.]

"This is something I can return to later, Lady Dare Shah. Not too pleasant a reading. It's an honour to meet you. I am Akh Uur Hoon." The woman replied with gentle warmth, closing the tome, carrying the title Reincarnation as a planar dispersion of spiritual essences ... written in a dialect of Infernal. She let some deference colour her voice, but no envy. She didn't miss being a lady. "Any new insights on planar topology, if I have inferred your field of inquiry correctly?"

[Dare Shah]

Dare recognized the nature of the script, but not its content, as she was far more familiar with the opposite side of the same coin.

"One new answer for two new questions, as is law in such matters. More in depth studies of alternative base axioms show great promise for improved probabilistic models of the middle term evolution of plans, but the equations have yet to be simplified enough to be solvable regularly before obsoleting themselves.

A fellow academic yourself I surmise?"