The last time Tegan was in the library it had, quite literally, been falling about around her ears. The TARDIS had been in its death-throes. The stakes where high, and the situation was grim. Now, after a longer than usual journey through the TARDIS corridors, she stepped into a shifting scene.
The first thing she noticed was that there were no books. The bare walls had repaired themselves, and row upon row of half-formed bookcases appeared to be materializing, much as the TARDIS did when it landed in a new location.
The empty white shelves seemed to be assuming the shape of a single spiral, like the inside of a conch-shell. Uncertain if it was safe to cross the threshold, she stepped into the room, stamping on the floor to make sure it was solid.
Crossing over to the nearest shelf, Tegan put her arm into the cavity and waved it about. Definitely no books. Typical.
As she huffed and cussed, Tegan noticed a change. She got goose bumps as the air seemed to charge itself, and her hair stood on end. Before her eyes the white, ghostly outlines of a shelf full of books started to appear.
As she watched, the washed-out images solidified, their spines filled with colour and their embossed titles became legible. She reached up randomly, pulling out a book and hefting it about. It was a big volume of maybe a thousand pages, but it was as light as a slice of polystyrene. Was being the operative word.
As she held the book its mass increased, forcing her to grip it with two hands before slumping to rest it against her chest.
'Rabbits,' she cursed, struggling to ease the book back up into the right shelf-space. 'Transdi-bloody-mensional physics. Gah!'
With the book back in place, Tegan looked to where the spiralling shelves turned a corner. They were all now crammed full of books, meticulously ordered in a way that only the TARDIS databank might manage. Moments later she could smell them. Not dust – the library was spotless – but the different smells of paper and string and ink and glue. Fresh smells.
'Right,' she started to walk down the curving aisle, picking out the nearest titles, all began with Zz-. 'F,' she muttered. She had a fair walk ahead of her.