The Librarian

It is quiet. Dorothy's backpack slumps against the leg of an old wooden table, as she slumps in a chair equally as old. Surrounding her are shelves of books, each with a little white sticker and hand-written dewey decimal numbers. It's quiet, except for the steady pitter patter of rain outside. It's quiet because this is the library that Dorothy works at, and it's quiet because nobody else is around.

The pale fluorescent light of the burnt out ceiling bulbs clings to life from one of the remaining rods, but the room is lit by a small yellow lamp. The room has a homey quality, and the salty smell of old books always made Dorothy feel comfortable. You could always count on books, they never changed their pages.

Suddenly the silence is interrupted by a gentle tapping on the window beside her, and Dorothy jumps, startled for a moment, turning to look. She relaxes only a bit when she sees that her visitor is the man from the club. She gestures for him to meet her at the side door, and she lets him in. The man folds up his umbrella, which is soaking wet.

"Thanks," he says, a little exasperated, "It's really coming down out there."

Thunder rolls in the distance as the door swings closed behind him. She looks at him without smiling, "Did you come to talk about the weather?"

He chuckles, and takes a few deep breaths to calm down, "No, no of course not. You know, sometimes though it's the polite thing to do. Do you know why people like to talk about the weather?"

She answers him matter-of-factly, "Because it's an experience we share, often in the moment."

He nods, and smiles.

"Except," she continues, "I'm not soaking wet from the rain."

"Now you're talking about the weather," he grins. Dorothy rolls her eyes, but smiles coyly, and leads this man back to the little study nook, and her table. The two sit down, and exchange some more pleasantries as they get situated. Dorothy offers the man some water or coffee, and he accepts the former.

"You said to call when I had time," she begins, "Well, I've got time. I'm free for the next two days. By the way, you never told me your name."

The man nods slowly, and reflects on this invitation for a moment, "The name's George Lewiston. Just George is fine. I suppose we never did have a formal introduction or nothin'. I suppose I'm operating under the assumption that you are in fact Dorothy Fairfield?"

Dorothy closes her eyes and winces over a smile, "Yeah..." She sighs, and then corrects him, "Dorothy Somerset."

"My boss never said you were married," he retorts.

She laughs a bit, "Oh no, I'm not. Somerset is my mother's name."

George nods, and pulls out the book from the other day from within his jacket pocket, this time secured in a plastic bag, perhaps to keep it dry. He gently sets it down on the table, and she picks it up with the same reverence she would give to any of the books that grace the library shelves.

Reaching into her backpack leaning up against the table, Dorothy pulls out a journal of her own, which apparently contains notes on how to read this language. She begins to flip through the book, silently, examining its finely crafted handwriting, each line a counter-clockwise spiral flowing in from the outer edges. Its strange letters rotating and curving in on themselves. As she does, she frowns slightly, and furrows her brow as she continues to read deeper. She finally speaks up, sounding a little offended, "Do you know what this is?" And looks up to see George's smirking face.

"Enlighten me."

She puts the book down gently, "It's a labor journal - some farmer's record of the seasons, the harvest, and sales of crops." George nods slowly. Dorothy looks confused. "Did you track me down just to read about cloudy days in Tartessos?"

Without saying anything, and without looking away from her disbelieving face, Lewiston reaches into this jacket pocket and produces that same white envelope. He flips it open, and pulls out the photographs of the pot shards, then produces one more image: a strange, black and white photograph of a cube, taken at such an angle to showcase three of its sides. Then he pulls out six polaroids, each one a close up of each of the cube's sides. Before handing them over, he responds to her question, "No Ms. Somerset, I asked to meet with you because I understand that you know the language." He takes a sip of his water and leans back a bit in the creaky wooden chair. "You didn't even glance at your notes when you were reading that book."

Dorothy stares at him for a moment, then looks back down to the photographs he has taken out of the envelope. Thunder crackles outside, and the dark countryside around them is lit for a moment.

Finally, she speaks up, sounding for the first time a bit nervous, "What is that?" She asks, gesturing to the photos. Each picture is old, and mounted under some kind of black mat inscribed with silver writing too messy to read from afar, but evidently numbered.

Lewiston leans toward her in his chair, and pushes the first photo over to her, showing three of the sides. "You tell me," he sounds a bit unsure himself, which scares Dorothy. He doesn't sound like he's playing games, and she can tell his heart is beating hard, and he's trying to conceal it. She can tell because she's feeling the same excitement, but hers is rooted in the fear of uncertainty, and his in the hopeful promise of knowing.

Reaching down, she scoops up the photo with her black nails, and brings it closer carefully, as if just by holding it too close it might lash out and cut her. She examines its sides, and looks at it as a whole for a couple of minutes, in total silence. She turns it over, trying to get a better angle on this thing. After a minute, she gestures to the other photos, and George passes them over to her to examine as well. She begins making sense out of each side, figuring out where it is likely to be on this cube in a spacial reconstruction of the thing in her mind. She thinks, and imagines, and dreams of what something like this might be. Eventually, she puts the photos down and leans back in her own chair, biting her lip.

"Well?" Lewiston asks, sincerely interested in her conclusions.

She shakes her head slowly, "I don't know. My best guess: It's some sort of jewelry box."

"The box doesn't open," he says matter-of-factly. "And there's no seams."

She raises her hand to her face, biting a knuckle of her index finger, a habit she picked up in school when she was thinking. One which Dr. Fulani almost certainly would have admonished, or at least rolled her eyes at. She didn't care. It helped comfort her, so she did it anyway.

"Oh, and there's one more thing," Lewiston continued, "Well, actually two. First, there's something inside the box."

Dorothy's eyes grew wide. The possibilities had been racing through her mind about what kind of mundane thing it could be. Hearing that it doesn't open made her think that it could be simply decorative, or perhaps some kind of utility weight. But hearing that there's something inside changes all of that completely. "W-what is it?" She asks, curious to know.

"Frankly, we have no idea what it could be. But it seemed to be of some significance to the people who had it."

"The Tartessians?" She asks jokingly, she knows that their culture has all but vanished, and all that remains of those people are some of their pottery; artifacts of their lives. Things like that book.

"No," George laughs, "Not the Tartessians. We found this in the belongings of some people here in America... Bad people." He slowly stops smiling, and gives a serious look. Dorothy is silent, and continues to think.

"You said there were two things," she asks eventually. "It has something inside it... and?"

Lewiston looked down at his hands, twiddling his thumbs slowly, a comfort habit he picked up long ago. Without meeting her eyes, he answers her, "It can talk."