Nathaniel Mordue
December 20, 2019 2:01 PM
...Breathes there a man with a soul so dead? (tag: Librarian Fox-Reynolds) by Nathaniel Mordue
The first thing Nathaniel noticed, after a blink which seemed to have gone on too long, was the texture of the spine of a book beneath the tip of his finger. He blinked several more times, rapidly, before he could focus in on the title there. Not the right title, though. He shook his head slightly, irritated, and kept moving.Step. Slide finger. Focus eyes. Read. Not Photography as Art. Step. Slide finger. Focus eyes. Repeat.
Finally, he found the last of the books Dr. Greene thought he ought to read and yanked it off the shelf, irritated again, but not with himself this time. His therapist almost always managed to make him more annoyed with her than he was with himself, especially when it came to his photography, even if he did secretly hope that the books, at least, might help him. Right now, he couldn't remember the last time he had enjoyed taking a picture, or remember exactly what it felt like to enjoy it, or what it was he had once done which had produced photographs which he had thought were beautiful. He missed it. He wanted it back, or at least to know if it had ever been real at all....
That, he thought, was the thing that irked him most: not the reduction of his body to a drifting prison, not even the fear that he was going mad. It was the fear that he was instead actually going sane. That he was now seeing things how they really were. When he lost control, or became exhausted just with the effort of not ripping things off the walls and smashing them, he could think: this is crazy. I'm acting crazy. He could lump that in with the incorrectness of his brain; it had nothing to do with him, no more than having chills when he was in a fever had anything to do with him. When he looked through his lenses or his albums, though, and everything was drab and meaningless...that felt more real than anything he could remember about the time before, and he felt as though he were suffocating, sometimes, on all that reality. How could anyone live like this forever?
Maybe he would see something in this book - maybe it wasn't that everything was meaningless, only that his work wasn't really that good. That was certainly how he had felt the day that Dr. Greene had somehow gotten hands on his most recent album and had insisted on sitting and showing it to him in session, asking questions about different images, trying, he thought, to get him to analyze the pictures himself. And all he had been able to see was nothingness.
It didn't really matter, though, if the book was useful. He had to read it anyway. And so he might as well get that over with.
He moved toward the circulation desk, shuffling his feet only slightly (had they replaced the carpeting? He didn't remember it seeming to cling to his shoes so insistently before) and found the librarian's post empty. He allowed his eyes to wander around, where they stopped on a student reading a newspaper.
Nathaniel stared at his parents in horror, his nine-year-old brain struggling to process the story he had just heard them discussing from the morning paper. "How could anyone do that?" he blurted out, drawing their attention.
His mother hurried to reassure him, in between fussing about how he shouldn't have heard that anyway. Behind her, though, his father looked strangely far away before he remarked, "You never know what people are capable of until they're pushed to their edge, Nathaniel."
Six months later, he supposed, his father must have found his edge, because he'd shown them what he was capable of. He'd run. Just like the person in that story, now that Nathaniel thought about it, though that person had at least had a better reason, being a fugitive from the law and all...
He bit his lip and shook his head slightly. Then he caught sight of the librarian. "Hi - three books," he said, indicating the three books in a neat stack in front of him. There was nothing wrong with them, he told himself. Nothing out of the ordinary in his reading material. Nothing to suggest he was a mental case who was doing recommended reading. "Also - does the library carry any newspapers?" he asked, quickly, before he could lose his nerve. "Or - more specifically - any foreign language ones?"
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Nathaniel Mordue
...Breathes there a man with a soul so dead? (tag: Librarian Fox-Reynolds)
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Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
January 02, 2020 5:44 AM
Depends who's asking by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
Nathaniel Mordue. Tarquin was aware of the student in front of him because he had been called to the front of the room at the opening feast and named prefect. Or rather, that was why he was aware that this particular, slightly tired looking face, belonged to the student of that name. The name had come up before. Specifically in the prefect discussions. That was not atypical. Essentially, that was a meeting where every fourth year was mentioned by name and Tarquin didn’t say anything about them unless they had somehow vandalised the library or been particularly diligent users of it. Heinrich had got several approving nods for being the latter sort of person, but there hadn’t seemed much debate over whether to appoint him, so Tarquin had stopped short of any sort of verbal contribution. Nathaniel had not come to his personal attention for any particular reason, having - like virtually all students, thankfully - not earnt the former descriptor. Apparently, Tarquin’s non-opinion of him was about as much as he had going for him.That was perhaps unfair. The boy’s own head of house had commented that he had been a perfectly good student and reasonable all round human (as much as any teenager fit that description) until some sort of family drama and subsequent mental health crisis that had unfolded last year.
So. Tarquin knew who this was, and rather more about his personal life than was typical for the librarian. Tarquin was no stranger to depression, and hoped the kid was fine, but nonetheless had felt far from qualified to have had any kind of opinion on him then, or to have one now. The badge on Nathaniel’s robes attested to the fact that the staff had deemed him sufficiently healthy to cope with being prefect/not so unhealthy that he was worse than no one. Tarquin thought those might be two different things, but here was Mr. Mordue, demonstrating an ability to count to three and string a sentence together. Two of them, in fact. That was not much to go by as an indicator of his overall wellbeing, but was honestly more than one expected of the ‘aristocracy’ sometimes. His request was also rather interesting.
“I believe there are some Spanish editions of local papers, but not so many international publications. The students who speak additional languages were more interested in having literature and poetry supplied,” he had ascertained this by having a library suggestion box and making the effort to have an occasional conversation with Dorian. He thought he might have asked Heinrich once because he was a regular visitor, and was fairly sure he’d got a decisive ‘no’ about needing German newspapers. He could, he supposed, have tried harder, but he had done his best to get some stock in, and a lot of those students brought lots of books from home, or wanted to expand their knowledge of English. He should probably ask again, just to be sure... “or I suppose can subscribe to their own papers from home the way others get their papers delivered. Is there anything in particular you were looking for? I might be able to help point you to the most relevant resource, or look at ordering it in for you.”
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Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
Depends who's asking
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Nathaniel Mordue
January 02, 2020 11:16 AM
If such there be, GO, mark him well. by Nathaniel Mordue
Nathaniel listened to the information given to him, not sure if he should feel disappointment or relief at hearing that his freak moment of temporary insanity would most likely go no further. He made the effort to focus his eyes at least in the vicinity of the librarian's face when he was - understandably - asked questions."No," he said. "No, thank you - I'm afraid I don't know exactly..." he lost track of his thought for a moment and closed his eyes for a second before resuming. "I couldn't be more specific about what I was looking for," he said. "My guess would be French, but - it's not an uncommon language, is it?" he said, attempting to sound mildly humorous and mostly failing.
It was a reasonable statement, though. French was a common language. At one time, the French had ruled a massive empire. Their language had spread around the world with them. This was one reason why his father had been fluent in French - for business. Or so the story went. Who knew what had been true about his father? Wherever his father had gone, though, Nathaniel assumed they most likely spoke French there...though Australia and New Zealand, they spoke English there, and it was sunny and far away from Nathaniel and his mother and brother. Plus, there was also the issue of whether the man was dead or in prison. If either of those things had happened, in former French colonies or in the southeastern hemisphere, then it might have appeared in a paper somewhere, sure, but years ago....
"Whole thing didn't make sense," he muttered, seeing more flaws and mustering some vague irritation for Alexander Mason for putting the notion of tracking people down in his head during the Opening Feast. "Not least because I don't think I could remember enough French grammar to read it," he added, managing the false humor a bit better this time. "My apologies," he added to the librarian.
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Nathaniel Mordue
If such there be, GO, mark him well.
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Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
January 02, 2020 4:23 PM
I mostly check books out to people by Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
Tarquin wondered whether he’d have noticed anything odd about Nathaniel’s behaviour had he not been tipped for it. He was rambling a little, seemed sort of unfocused, and had had some random caprice which on deeper inspection made no sense. Again, plenty of those behaviours were just… teenagers. ‘Do you have French newspapers?’ ‘No, why?’ ‘Oh, I just wanted to read one, maybe, even though I can’t....’ Sadly, this passed for perfectly logical dialogue with many of them. Even a few adults too.Or rather, it sounded like Nathaniel was seeking some specific piece of information, but the notion that it might have been in a foreign newspaper, and specifically a French one, might have been a guess. Tarquin was not sure whether this was indicative of continuing difficulties, poor study skills, or Teppenpawish whimsy. Still, the idea having now been dismissed, it was no longer really his concern. There was nothing in Nathaniel’s behaviour that read as enough of a danger signal that he needed to report it back.
“Well, if you were looking for French-language papers in general, or a chance to work on your grammar, you could ask your neighbour. I’m also happy to order things in for you or help you work out where to find specific information about a subject if you change your mind on that,” he advised. He was not sure that informing Nathaniel that his neighbour was Francophone or explaining the role of a librarian was new information, but without any more specific information to go off, he was at a loss how to further help.
“Just these for now, then?” he nodded to the stack of books, running his wand over them to check them out to Nathaniel.
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Tarquin Fox-Reynolds
I mostly check books out to people
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Nathaniel Mordue
January 02, 2020 7:32 PM
The wretch, all centred in himself, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down by Nathaniel Mordue
His neighbor spoke French, true, but somehow, Nathaniel was sure that Nicholas Mordue was not in Quebec. One of the odder things he remembered about his father was that he had always had an intense distaste for winter. Canada was not much further north than Oregon, but it was, and if Nathaniel was going to abandon his whole family, he thought he would go somewhere he would actually want to be...More to the point, though, did the librarian think he didn't know that his neighbor spoke French? What did the man think of him?
"I'm not stupid," he said in response to the question about whether these books would be all for today, and realized he probably sounded too harsh. "I mean - as stupid as I might have just sounded. Studying, you know. Dust in...books. Allergies and reading too long." He realized he probably was not helping his case and looked away, ostensibly to pick up the books. "I remembered I...knew someone, once, who left the country suddenly, and I'm sure he's landed himself in the papers one way or another since then," he added, contempt seeping through at the end. "So it was a thought. Sorry. Thank you."
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Nathaniel Mordue
The wretch, all centred in himself, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down
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