Another bit of randomness written when I should be revising, so you'd better love it! And remember that due to the idea that "Knowledge = Power" you can perhaps imagine that Books = Knowledge = Power = (Force x Distance^2) ÷ Time, or at least if you read Discworld, you can ;-).
Merlin was again trying to find out about a magical animal in the castle library. Why, despite the ban on magic were there all these books on it still in the library, he didn't know, especially as Geoffrey the librarian knew a surprising amount about them. He had the sneaking suspicion that Geoffrey had told Uther that they were all gone and had staunchly defended his realm from the destructive forces of Uther.
As he went through the aisles of books he didn't notice that the further he went (in fact much further than the size of the library would suggest was possible) the stranger the books became. All he noticed was that this far back it was obvious that no attempt had been taken to censor the reading materials and get rid of those containing magical knowledge.
But he still couldn't find one on magical animals – how uncommon would such a book be? Surely one of the first topics people would decide to write about would be "Oh that's a strange animal, and it won't die of normal means, like if you stab it with a pitch fork, but Steve killed it sharp piece of rowan wood, better write that down in case another one comes sniffing around.1". But try as he might he couldn't find one. There were plenty of books about someone called Harry Potter, in fact there seemed to be an entire saga written about him and another massive group of books about a very yellow bear, with a very rude name2.
However after a while he started to get somewhere. First he came across "Dangerous Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Jellyfish, Insects, Spiders, Crustaceans, Grasses, Trees, Mosses, and Lichens of Terror Incognita", which while interesting (and terrifying) did little but make him determined never to go to somewhere called "XXXX", EVER. And while another book called "Diseases of the Dragon", did also make him wary of ever being around Kilgarrah ever again (especially if he ever got to the state, as described by the author, a Lady Sybil Ramkin, as "over excited"), it wasn't very useful for finding out about other animals.
However the biggest surprise came when as he took a book off a shelf and came face to face with a countenance which, while having almost adorable large brown eyes, to an extent looked as if it had been made from leather and a lot of orange hair.
Not knowing quite what to say when confronting such a very strange face, he asked "Err, I don't suppose you know where there's a book about lots of different magical creatures, would you?"
He was answered by an affirmative seeming "Ook", before the face disappeared back into the aisles, reappearing with a book entitled "Bestiary".
"Um, thank you, well I'd better be off then, nice meeting you." Before he scurried off back towards the front of the library, wondering if Geoffrey knew there was a large, orange, hairy creature living in the library.
1 Wasn't it lucky he was doing some fencing?
2 These two series tend to be the books that will most likely be included in a newly made children's area of a library, despite being really very different (despite the continued quests for things and the determination of the characters to show how good friends they are).