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Dear Whisperfoot,

Holy macaroni! Your dominion was invaded? It must've been a dang rogue-enchanter, I know you're smart enough to put wards down. But, seriously... that's crazy. I'm sorry your house got trashed. Aside from that... your break sounds like it was a lot better than mine, actually. I would've loved to just hang out with one friend, rather than, like, my whole class! It was fun, but it was also kind-of a mess.

You took the Test by now, I'm sure. How do you think you did, if you don't mind me asking? I think it'd be cool to get an experience boost to skip a level. Trust me, grinding grades in Middle Realm is no fun!

I've actually gotta take these things called 'finals,' its terrible! They go over everything we learned since we got back from the holidays, and that's a lot! I'm sorry I'm not making the Middle Realm out to be that great... But I hear the High Realm is where it's at.

Anyway, sorry to keep this one short, but I've got a lot of studying to do. Maybe by the time I hear from you, it'll be just before summer. I'd offer to hang out, but my family is taking a trip, so it'll probably be the last you'll hear of me until a couple weeks before its over.

Hope you and your friends are doing well!

Sincerely, Treewatcher

* * *

Saturday.

One of the few days the name of which was_not_ taken from a Nordic deity.

After a difficult week at school, every kid kicked up their feet to watch the morning cartoons and eat a home-made breakfast. Then, they were free to do as they pleased for the entire day.

Homework be darned!

For one particular tiger, his weekend had started a day early. While his first day of recovery was spent inebriated on antihistamines and decongestants, today he felt much better. Unfortunately, the person whom he usually spent the weekends with was acting like he had The Plague.

But, he knew full well he didn't have anything contagious, and that his fever had been down since last night, thanks to the antibiotics. He felt that if his time wasn't going to be occupied by a person, then he would just have to fall into the pages of another world.

He would need to find one, for all the worlds in his home he had already traveled at least twice. Thankfully, there was a place very near that had hundreds--maybe_thousands_--of them. Since he had a few to return, it seemed like serendipity; a chance for him to do for leisure that which he had not been able to for quite a while.

The Mold Farm was refreshingly chilly compared to the outside sauna. The morning rains had brought with them a kind of mugginess that sapped the energy from anyone bold enough to venture beyond the reach of an air-conditioning unit.

He made his way to the check-in counter, dropping his backpack like an angry_Thwomp_.

"Jeeze!" The teen-aged girl at the desk said with a startle. "Hello?"

"Hi." The tiger said, leaning over and unzipping the backpack. "I'd like to return these." He pulled out a few books.

The girl-at-the-counter's brow raised as he set the books down one at a time. She picked the top one up. "The Time Machine?" She questioned. "Shouldn't you be reading, like, Goosebumps or something?" She began scanning the books in.

"I read all those a long time ago," he chuckled, setting his library card on the counter. "I think the ones about the masks are really creepy."

The teen rolled her eyes and scanned the card, then went back to scanning the books for a few moments. "Okay... Uh..."

"Ket," he said.

"Ket--you're all checked in." She handed his card back.

"Cool." He retrieved it and closed the backpack. "I'll be right back with some more."

As he walked away, the teen went back to her phone. "Weird kid." She muttered.

Ket walked his backpack over to the hand-in station. There was only one person ahead of him in line, and already almost leaving. By the time he arrived, the old man at the counter was ready to take his bag, handing him the lanyard he would use to retrieve it when he was through.

"Y'haven't read the whole dang lie'berry yet, kiddo?"

"Not yet," he replied. "Pretty soon, maybe."

"Hope y'find som'n, then." The gopher said with a creaky cackle.

"Thanks, Mr. Homing." The tiger said with a smile, wary of being roped into conversation. Not that he didn't like the old man, it's just that he wanted to get to the shelves.

Few went to the library on Saturday. Mostly high-schoolers with reports due, or college kids from the community campuses. He liked it that way. The atmosphere of a library was absolutely perfect. He felt at home amongst strangers who shared his desire for silence and solitude, to follow the trail of ink lain by another.

He made his way up to the second level, fighting the urge to charge up the stairs. The windows on the second floor glimpsed the overcast sky outside, dreary and gray. It was the ideal time to traipse about the aisles without worrying about wasting a ray of sunshine.

Sometimes, the aimless search for a book was just as fun as reading it. Sure, he felt a tad bit of embarrassment at the childish nature of scaling about the lower shelves, playing his little games. But, until the embarrassment outweighed the guilty fun, he was compelled to play.

He kept track of the patterns, some so familiar to him he just went over to see if they were still there. Three red books, second shelf from the top; three more second shelf from the bottom, three feet over. Down the aisle, three yellow books formed a rough triangle amongst the shelves. He used to pretend that touching them in a specific order led to a secret part of the library, where spell- and magick-books were kept.

On the other side of the aisle, a series of seven books in a row decreased in thickness--though, today, the thickest was missing. On the top shelf, several books alternated height like the crenels on a castle. He walked along the same aisle, looking for a row of books of which the first word in every title formed some kind of cohesive sentence. He found none there, so he want to the next one over.

This aisle was slightly wider, for a few tables were set in between. In his peripheral vision, he saw that the table at the other end was occupied. He tried to make his game seem more natural; he wasn't in the mood to be given odd looks at by a stranger. He squatted, looking at the books on the bottom shelf, and in his endeavor he found a title that caught his fancy.

Ender's Game.

He looked up, and realized he was in the Science-Fiction section. It wasn't his first pick of genre, but given he was on a bit of a kick with it, he was ready for another. He opened the book, and read the leaf-pages. He smiled. This was just a single entry in an entire_series_; and not just a straightforward series, but one with alternate perspectives and derivatives.

He could give this one a try, for sure.

"Uuuuugh..."

He looked over. The rabbit girl at the table seemed upset. Concerned, he started to walk over.

His hackles twitched.

"Hey..." He said, approaching from the side. "You okay?"

"Huh!?" She looked about, spotting the tiger. "Oh, yeah, I'm--"

Ket flinched as she suddenly balked, and then realized why. "Lyza?"

"What are_you_ doing here?" They questioned one another aloud in unison; then, followed with: "Sssh!"

There was a moment of stillness as their mutual shushing stifled the air. The tiger looked over the table, noticing a few thick and heavy books stacked before his friend. The one she currently had open was a little rectangle in size, and she was on the twenty-seventh page. He glanced back to her, and by her reaction she must have taken his quick glance at her progress as somehow accusatory.

"I--I was just..." She tried to speak, but faltered. "Thought you were sick," she mumbled.

"I'm feeling good enough," he shrugged. "You read fast," he joked with a grin, pulling out the chair adjacent to her.

"N--No, I haven't... Um..."

He slid the top book, large, broad, and heavy, off of the stack, and laid it in front of him. "The Count of Monte Cristo," he read aloud. He slipped a finger between middle pages, and peered into the book, as if expecting a hand to lash out at him from within. The font size was rather small, like the lower levels of a Snellen chart.

She bit her lip as she watched him look at the book. "Kval is running some errands," she impulsively explained.

"I'm here all the time," he replied, gently sliding his finger out to let the book close cleanly and quietly. "What are the odds, huh?"

She chuckled, swiveling her ears behind her head a bit nervously. "Y-Yeah... small world, or whatever." She tried to match his gaze.

His smile was genuine, but the situation made her feel exposed, like she had been caught sucking her thumb and cuddling with her stuffed animals.

His smile wilted a little as he tapped his fingers on the book. "I wonder how long it took to write this book," he commented. "And how many forests it took to print it."

The joke made her chuckle, lifting the tension a little.

"So what'd you pick to pass the time?" He asked her, peering toward the book.

"Um..." She closed the book to show the cover. "B--Bee-oh-woolf..." She stated the title with reluctance.

"You're reading_Beowulf_?" He repeated with a surprised inflection.

The corrected pronunciation of the title he gave made her throat tangle in humiliation.

"I thought that was a really hard-to-read one," he said, as if to himself. He noticed that she squinted her eyes strangely, and her hand went up to the far one that she had turned away. "You okay?"

She nodded, squinting the other eye to quell the welling water. "It's... hard to read," she admitted, and pushed it away.

"Kids' books get kinda boring." He stated, leaning back and folding his arms. "Hard to know what to look for, too."

She nodded again, letting out a defeated sigh. She glanced over as he stirred, turning his chair to stand.

"Be right back, okay?"

"Okay." She replied, and twisted about on her chair as he walked behind her down the aisle. When he disappeared behind the corner of the bookshelf, she turned back to the table and planted her forehead against her palms. Her elbows tingled when they hit the table just a little too forcefully.

Stupid.

She gritted her teeth, staring down at the book she had struggled through in vain. Calming down after several moments, she flipped the book over to bury its title that she had so humiliatingly botched. Several more moments passed and she leaned forward once more, resting her temple on a single palm. She stared at the wall of book spines to her left, counting them in a tally of how many she probably couldn't read beyond the third page.

Then, movement in her periphery caught her attention. She looked up to see him back in the chair he had left, and setting out three books. The first was titled_Fire Bringer_, the second Watership Down, and the third The Last Unicorn.

"These are probably more fun to read," he suggested, scooting forward. He pushed the second book closer to the first. "These two are kind of similar. They're about animals that go on pretty awesome journeys. The animals even have their own cultures, languages, and myths and stuff; it's pretty cool. They get pretty sad, though." He then lifted the third one up from underneath. "But, I think you'd really like this one. It's got all kinds of magic, and the main character is the unicorn. I think you liked horses, right?"

She giggled. "Yeah... sorta... I think I'm growing out of it."

"There's nothing wrong with liking horses."He shrugged, letting the book lay flat.

"You read all these?" She asked, picking up_Fire Bringer_ to look at the atmospheric picture of a deer standing in foggy, pre-dawn light.

He paused for just a few beats before replying. "I read them... kinda recently."

She smiled. "I figured. Emmy mentioned you were a good reader."

"And she told me you're a good flutist," he retorted.

"Yeah, well." She balanced the book on its spine, only to watch as it fell open with a light clap upon the table. "I wish I was half as good a reader." She muttered with contempt.

His ear twitched, and he sealed his muzzle with a bit of concern. He stared at_Beowulf_, noticing that it had been flipped over as if in scorn. He blinked a few times, his mind calmly pacing through a few thoughts. Then, he suddenly snapped from his reverie. "They've got audio-books, too."

"Audio-books?"

"Yeah!" He leaned forward, and dropped his fist to the table triumphantly. "That's it. You may wanna try audio-books. You can listen to the books that way. It's..." He glanced up with quick thought. "It's hit-or-miss cuz some readers sound really boring. But, you can listen along, and don't have to worry about how to pronounce complex words--they'll read it out for you."

She tensed, her breath audibly catching in her throat. She glanced to him with embarrassment, and he looked back with a bit of regret.

"I'm not trying to make you feel bad," he reassured. "...Emmy and I get just as upset when people laugh, too."

She stared at the overturned book for a few seconds, before letting out a sigh. "Thanks." She said, a feeble smile drawing on her muzzle.

He smiled in response. "Besides. At least everyone knows you're a kick-ass speller." And like that, the smile on her faltered just a little. "I gotta admit, though. We were really surprised you went through with it."

"I..." She took in a breath, contemplating her thought. "I didn't... actually sign up for it."

He nodded. "I know."

Her eyes pulsed. "You... do?" Then she chuckled. "I'm kinda... not surprised."

"Rini didn't really make it subtle." He replied, folding his arms. "But, you know..." He cocked his head with thought. "When we were watching you up on stage, it was really all the_others_ who were being mean. Rini wasn't paying attention to them at all."

"I guess... that's weird. Not really like her to miss a chance like that."

The tiger shrugged, gesturing to her. "I'd say reading_Beowulf_ isn't really like you. But, that doesn't mean you can't."

She leaned back with consideration. "...Fair," she acquiesced. Then, she glanced about, her ears righting up. "Wait... what time is it?"

He pointed to the face clock hanging behind her. "It's a few minutes after one."

"Shi--oot!" She muttered, standing up, "Kval's probably waiting for me downstairs."

"Let's go," he beckoned, getting to his feet. Then, he rethought. "Actually, I can't walk out," he realized, mindfully touching the lanyard about his neck.

"It's okay," she replied. "I'm a big girl. But... what do I do with these?" She touched one of the books. "I'll try out your idea, but I don't have time to check one out today."

"I'll take care of 'em," he assured.

"Thanks," she bid, pushing in her chair.

"No problem." He replied, gathering up the books in a stack. Before she took a few steps away, he looked over. "And hey," he said, a bit loudly.

She paused, glancing over her shoulder.

"Don't stand still too long in the woods, 'kay?"

She blinked a few times and her eyes flicked left. She smiled in understanding. "I'll try not to," she promised, and made her way toward the stairs.

* * *

Dear Treewatcher,

You're right. The Test is over. I'm not really thinking about it. Not for any real reason, I just... took it before, and now I took it twice again. It was exhausting, that's for sure.

My other friend is still caught in The Woods. I think she's starting to find her way, though. I remember it was very tough, and it hurts seeing a friend go through it.

I'm actually looking forward to the summer. I know that sounds weird (sarc.), but this will be the first summer in a couple of years that I'm not planning on reading and going to the park just by myself. After my Mentor passed away... well, you know. It'll be nice to hang out with friends, except now I know that too much time can be a bad thing, thanks to spring break.

Let me know how your trip goes. I'll send an update before the year is over, to let you know how things go. If you don't catch it before you embark, it'll be there when you get back.

Sincerely, Whisperfoot