❅ Alana Istal ❅
Movement caught Alana’s eye as she quickly turned her head to see who was approaching. Ikar and a small group were approaching the stairs and he gave a bow of greeting to her. Gripping the edge of her cloak, she offered a curtsey in response. The god had started to address the man Alana now knew was called ‘Damien’. At the tiger’s instruction, she looked at the small group of two cats and a human. Granted, one of the ‘cats’ was a tiger god, but the other was significantly smaller, a housecat. The feline and man seemed to be together though the cat seemed to hold more confidence and knowledge than the man did. Looking back at Ikar, she folded her hands. “Holding a post-meeting meeting,” she questioned, smiling a little. “Do you mind if I join? Perhaps I could be of some service,” she offered. A red blur soon approached that, as she slowed, was identified as Frida. Alana was rather neutral on the creature. While she was kind in her actions, Frida also was the source of many humans entering the world of Faowind. While the humans from the other world never bothered Alana, they did produce an unneeded hazard.
At Frida’s words, the woman looked up at the ceiling again. By the time she went to return her attention to the fox, Frida had gone. Wandering a few steps up, she looked at Ikar for him to travel beside her. Her eyes briefly flashed to Damien questioningly before returning to the tiger. “It seems problems just keep arising,” she stated, not seeming too upset by this, but just stating a fact. She looked to the ceiling before continuing to scale the stairs when Ikar joined her side. “Curious as to why the spiders have decided to be on the move now. None of the houses have truly extended their territory to the woods in quite some time. The Green Clovers have the most territory in the woods, but we’ve done nothing to hurt it,” she reasoned, staring forward as she thought through the possibilities of when they upset the spiders. Reaching the top of the stairs, she led the way to Hatter’s office. The room already open for them to enter, Alana waltzed in and took a seat on one of the many chairs available to her in a seating arrangement previously set. There were more chairs than the amount of people but she failed to try and calculate why. After all, trying to understand Hatter was like explaining to a blind person what the color blue is: utterly impossible. “I hope you don’t mind my intrusion on this meeting, Hatter,” she said, sitting up straight and folding her hands in her lap as she smiled fully at Hatter. In her opinion, Ikar truly had more power than the madman, but this opinion might have been influenced by the fact that she had seen Hatter as a child. If she had seen Ikar as a cub, it would have had the same effect. However, this was Hatter’s domain so she acknowledged he had more power here than Ikar did.
☕Hatter Maddigan ☕
At the joking question, Hatter shrugged. He had a fairly good memory especially when it came to puzzles, but if he couldn’t figure it out the object with a password would probably be found in pieces within minutes. While Hatter was a good problem solver, he wasn’t one for patience, especially with inanimate objects. Sipping his tea, he looked at Nikolai from over the rim of the cup as he had continued to joke about how the women all flocked to a gay man. Bringing his cup down, Hatter’s face contorted in a bit of confusion. ”They always flock to the gays but bisexual never seems to cut it for ‘em,” he sighed in fake annoyance. Hatter said nothing to the comment that the districts were the safest places from the gangs. His smile had fell at the comment and he looked away. ‘Here was safe,’ he thought. Granted, the Library was pretty filled to the brim with people and animals alike. Disease and war were the only reasons why the Library wasn’t overflowing.
At Nikolai’s question, Hatter looked to the door then back to him. ”Not sure, exactly. He said he wanted to meet with me. What about, I’m not sure.” The sound of paws on the floor brought Hatter’s attention to Frida coming in and she was soon followed by the rest of the crew including, to Hatter’s surprise and delight, Alana. Smiling widely at her, his eyebrows scrunched up. ”And who invited you, then?” Alana smiled back at the jokingly defensive Hatter. It was like they were kids again and she broke into the boy’s clubhouse. ”I invited myself. That all right?” The madman just laughed a little and hopped off the desk. Sitting in a chair a few away from Alana, he looked to Tuck. ”Mind closing the door behind you, Tuck?” He then looked to Ikar then to Frida, who seemed a bit panicked. ”One of you want to tell me what’s going on?”
°Tasi & Finnian °
The two spiders continued their path into the Library when Peter granted them access. They could have easily snuck in without an invitation as everyone else in their family had, but that wasn’t their preferred method of going about things as Tasi was a stickler for rules and Finnian was too scared to disobey the slightest order given to him. Weaving through the people and animals that may step on them, they began to scale the endless towers of books. Tasi waited at the top of one of them for Finn to catch up, looking out over the people in this Great Library. Peter was being treated for his wounds, the smaller human had discovered a secret passage, and the spider killer was playing an instrument. Finnian, now caught up, took in the same sight his friend had. ”The people of the man who ends our suffering,” Finnian recalled as he looked over those that Hatter led. ”An excellent sight, indeed,” Tasi replied quietly. Her eyes soon turned upwards at the sound of her relatives and friends joining in their mighty phrase,”Soon we shall be free. For the love of Acromantulas!” They were overwhelmingly quiet, nothing more than a breath in the air in their phrase that the two small spiders soon joined in. Shooting webs to the ceiling, the two soon joined the mob in the ceiling.
✷Peter Pan ✷
Now with a bandaged leg and arm, Peter wandered through the Library, much against what was recommended to him. Noticing an opened secret passage, he tilted his head. Which one was this? Peter had his fair share of encounters with secret passages for this place. They were quite common, actually, and usually used for getting to the forest from the Great Library. Peter had been advised against taking humans through those passages because of human spies or potential threats. Secret rooms could also be hidden in these walls and, upon entering the small passageway, a room and the youngest human in their group was in view. Peter had ventured into this room once and, upon only seeing a book and a table, decided to leave it. Quietly, he watched the girl read from the book and snow began to fall from nowhere. ‘A spell book?’ Peter thought, his eyes fixing back on the girl’s back as she looked at the book.
When the snow finally stopped, Peter entered the room. ”There are spell books everywhere in the Library,” he said, almost a boasting comment as if he had written the first spell book. ”I like storybooks better, myself, but I could show you some spell books if you want,"Peter finished, folding his arms across his puffed up chest in his usual ‘I know things’ gesture. Peter had quite a following of his own in the Great Library. Many of the children followed him like he was a superhero which, to many of them, he was. The way he was able to fight off pirates and guards and whatever came to mind definitely impressed the young ones. Not to mention Peter was a fantastic storyteller. Seeing as the girl in front of him was older than him physically by several years, Peter figured she probably wouldn’t want to journey into the storybook section with him and satisfy her curiosity with the spell books he offered. Hopping out of the secret passage, harming his leg a little in the process, Peter gestured for her to follow if she wanted. If she went with him, he would bring her to a tower of books towards the middle of the Library and show her his way of entering, a hole likely just big enough for her to enter. The books lining the inside were all spell books while the outside was boring geography books.
