I found myself in a library. If you would call it that. It was more like an endless room filled with books, but more of them seemed to be in towering stacks on the floor rather than organized on shelves. Standing on ground level, there was nothing but a sea of paper stacks as far as I could see. I was interested - being raised by a professor, and generally not bothering with socializing at school, books were a hobby of mine. This could easily be a gold mine of adventure and entertainment. I began to wade my way through the piles, only finding small sections of bare floor underneath my sock feet. I stumbled around, finding myself knocking knees with some of the heavier books. I was surprised I didn't send anything falling over.
A surprising noise broke the silence. I hadn't even realised how silent the room was until I heard the noise. A jingle - like small bells or spare change in someone's pocket. A high pitched jingle followed by a heavy thud. Then another jingle, then another thud. Then another. Jingle; thud. Jingle; thud. It was rhythmic and smooth. Like footsteps. Footsteps that grew more potent as they grew closer. Someone else was in the library. I was curious to find out who else had taken an interest in all these books. I began stumbling through the mess again, trying to make my way toward the sound of the footsteps.
I tripped, caught somewhere between my own feet and the massive piles of paper, and tumbled over. Several hard covers were sticking into my fallen form at odd angles, and though the pain was dull, it was still annoying. The footsteps were loud enough that they should've been on top of me by now, and I craned my neck up to look and saw a pair of legs. Legs dawned with royal blue stockings. As the legs got closer, I noticed the books... clearing a path. The books were floating up and flying around to place themselves on other stacks, purposefully clearing a path for whoever was coming. When they got close enough to me, the clear floor space allowed me to see the person's shoes. A pair of heavy, black boots covered in many, many straps with little bits of gold fastened on each one. Easily the culprit of the footsteps I'd heard.
I was still lying on the pile of books, and the person bent at the waist, offering a hand to me. A pretty, feminine hand sporting two different flowery rings and sparkly blue nail polish.
"You look like you could use a hand," she noted, waving her extended hand in front of me for emphasis. I nodded, as much as I could from my position, and took her hand in both of mine, pulling myself up with some help. Her skin had a clammy kind of chill to it, but that didn't bother me.
"Thank you," I mumbled in reply, looking down to adjust my night shorts before finally looking at her face.
The first thing that really struck me about her was her hair. It was a stunning bright blue, a few shades lighter than her tights, and cascaded to her collar bones with a care-free, not curly, not quite straight quality. It was beautiful like ocean waves and part of me wanted nothing more than to touch it. But I knew that would be creepy. It was the kind of hair I always dreamed of having, instead of my boring dull brown.
She had on thick rimmed glasses, and had decorated her whole body with flowers and bright colours and small details of trinkets. I even noticed the small, shining stud of a piercing in her nose. She reminded me of the decor in my bedroom, even if I myself spent most of my days dressed in jeans and sweatshirts. Her look could have easily been off-putting to some people, but to me, she looked amazing.
Past all that, I could see that she was older than me - I should've been able to tell just by the height difference - but her features had the maturity that could've marked her to be in her late teens or early twenties. It was hard to pinpoint, but I wasn't that great at estimating things like distance or age.
I wanted to ask her who she was. I wanted to place a name to this fabulously over-dressed woman, but in a situation like this that felt... rude. So I went with a different question.
"What are you doing here?" I inquired gently, trying to sound friendly.
"An interesting question." She remarked, giving me a smirk. The same kind of all-knowing smirk that my mother gave me before, and likes to give often. "A library..." she trailed off, starting away from me again, the noise of her boots seeming quieter. The books continued to float and move around her, stacking themselves up into neater piles. Almost as if she was the one willing them to do so. I followed behind her, eager to hear what else she had to say, walking on the now cleared space of floor. "Books, books," she mumbled gently, snatching one of the floating titles out of the air. "There is no better weapon in the world than books."
So she was here... looking for something. A powerful piece of knowledge. I guess that's what libraries really are for (looking things up), but I had hoped that most of these were fictional, not factual. Those kind of books usually bored me with how they were written, or what they were written about.
She stopped walking, causing me to smack into her back, then take a few hasty steps away to give us both our personal space. "I think the better question is: what are you doing here, little one?"
Little one; no one had called me anything like that since I was, well, little. I didn't mind it, though. I always found comfort in pet names from my parents, or nicknames from my friends. And this lady, whoever she was, gave me that same kind of comfort as well.
"I don't know." I answered honestly. I thought there really wasn't a greater purpose of me being here, other than to read. She shook her head, very slightly, and then handed me the large brown book she was holding. A Powerful Mind was the title, embossed in gold letters, with no author listing.
"Think about it," she instructed, and then the book took on movement of its own, releasing from my hands and flying off to be stacked. When I looked up she was walking away again.
"I guess I'm here to read." I hollered out at her as I picked up my pace to catch up.
"Guessing is for people who lack understanding of the facts." She said very... powerfully. Was she some kind of spirit guide person that was supposed to direct me to the answers without directly telling me? Cause that could very easily get annoying.
"So what?" I replied, still following her as she went much deeper into the higher stacks. There was clear paths here; like she had already been down here and cleaned things up.
"What is your understanding of the facts?" She peered over her shoulder at me, bending down to pick up a few books that had been forgotten.
"I'm here. You're here. In a library." I spoke it as it went through my mind. "Well, not exactly. This doesn't really look like a library. Just a ton of books."
"Good." She reached up and put the books on top of the stacks, that looked more like walls on the winding path. "What else?"
"I don't know." I breathed, slightly annoyed.
"You don't?" She quirked an eyebrow at me before continuing on her footpath. I huffed, following again. "What do you think all these books are for?"
"Reading." That was an obvious answer.
"And what do you think you would get out of reading all these books?" She posed.
This time I decided to skip the 'I don't know', and go straight to thinking aloud. "Stories?" I said unsurely, and she didn't acknowledge me. "Thoughts? Theories? Instructions?"
"Close," she turned back to me again, cutting off my rambling. "Answers. Books provide answers." She picked up one more book in each hand from off the floor, and turned to face me. "Anytime you have a question, a book will always hold the answer."
"So what? When in doubt... go to the library?" I questioned, and she smiled at me.
"Basically." She nodded. "But it's not just about reading - it's about thinking. All the great minds in the world, the Gandhis, the Ravenclaws, the DaVincis of the world, they all have one thing in common."
I only knew who half of those people were, but I guessed that wasn't the point.
"They read?" I almost knew where she was going with this by now.
"Yes, and they think. All the questions they ever had were answered by thinking. Great minds know that answers will never be plainly laid out for them. But the answers can be retrieved by reading, and thinking." She explained, sounding very cheerful about these facts.
That was nice and all, but I had no clue what it had to do with me. She obviously saw my thoughts on my face, so she handed me one of the books she was holding, and I looked down to see a very old version of Lewis Carroll's novel Alice's Adventures In Wonderland. A favourite book of mine - though I'd only ready modern versions without the traditional illustrations. This one looked like the real deal.
I raised an eyebrow at her, confused.
"You've read this one. How can you relate?" she inquired gently.
"A girl lost in a world where she doesn't belong." I mumbled, more to myself, tracing my fingers over the cover.
"Exactly." She affirmed, brushing my hair over my shoulder. I didn't mind her touching me as much as I thought I might. "And that feeling's only going to grow once you get into all the bipity-bopity-boo stuff."
"You mean magic?" I had almost forgotten about what happened last night. The discussion - the realization that I'm a witch. It was still a strange thought, even when I had just been thinking about a rabbit telling time and a disappearing cat.
"Bingo." She confirmed. "Even now you have so many questions. But the answers are all in here." She gestured around to all the books.
I nodded, and she placed the other book - one with a much smaller cover, but still thick - on top of Alice. The title read The Tales Of Beedle The Bard in dark blue lettering, in contrast to the pale blue cover. She reached over and flipped the book open, seemingly to a very specific page. The page had a bold, black title; The Tale Of The Three Brothers, with a small illustration of a gravestone below it. The gravestone held no name, no words; nothing but a strange symbol etched on it. A triangle with a circle inside it, and a straight line struck through the whole thing.
I looked back up at her, about to speak again, when my eyes caught on her necklace. It was a round black pendant with a shiny, silvery version of the same symbol inside. It was pretty, but I didn't understand what it meant.
"Your necklace," I stuttered out, but she cut me off.
"But remember, the most important thing isn't the answer." She brushed her fingers over the spines of the books closest to her, gazing over at them fondly. "It's really more about the question you're asking." She told me, then gently touched my nose. She smiled down at me once more before she turned and begun walking in the other direction. She turned a corner and then she was gone, as soon as she had come, the jingle of her boots fading along with her.
That sound still stuck with me, even when I woke from that very strange dream.