The Librarian entered the familiar rooms of his own library in Unseen University. He quickly chased off a solitary student. Still distressed, he did not want anybody around. Hastily he gulped down a banana to relax his nerves, then sat down and reflected.
Being chased by a wizard was not something to which he was used. It was also pretty low on the list of things he ever wanted to get used to. In his world,wizards only moved fast when approaching a buffet. Except Rincewind, who could run away quite quickly. But being chased by Rincewind was like... Though he really tried, he could not come up with a good analogy: it was simply unimaginable.
Being chased by a wizard through L-Space was worse. In the future he would be even more careful than before. For the first time in many years he regretted having lost his human voice. The university wizards usually understood the few things he had to say; some well accentuated ooks and a bit of finger pointing were sufficient. (1) Of course they knew him well and the other wizard did not. Nor did the wizard take much time trying to get acquainted.
Well, to be fair, he seemed to have lost his courtesy as well. The body of an ape was a good excuse for being rude and in his opinion the wizards here did not deserve much courtesy. Most of them treated the library as a kind of adornment, something that existed only because a university was supposed to have one. He knew nothing about the other wizard, but he had found him in a library after all. Playing with his hat had not been the best idea.
Possibly nothing would have worked anyway. Although he did not understand what the wizard was talking about, it seemed like he had interrupted him at something very important. He remembered words like "last hope". Bad luck? Certainly not. Narrativium is strong within L-Space. Probably nothing he could have done would have changed much: finding a new friend was not in the script.
In the end narrativium had saved him too. His instinct had told him that the story of this wizard was in a book not too far ahead and as he had expected, passing this book had distracted the wizard for long enough. (3)
The Librarian looked at the small booklet he had taken with him on the way home. When narrativium showed you a book, you read it, unless you liked to miss a good story. He did not want to miss a good story and at the moment he really appreciated something to lighten up his mood.
After a weird introduction about mental faculties the story turned out to be a classic roundworld detective tale: Some highly intelligent person solved the mystery behind a murder the police could not sort out. He was almost through and wondering why he noticed this particular book, when he read the word "Ourang-Outang". It turned out that a sailor with a whip had chased an orang-utan, which he apparently owned, through the streets. The poor ape had escaped into a house, where he had killed two innocent women.
Owning an orang-utan? That was outrageous! He would have strangled the sailor with his own whip, yes, that is what he would have done. He also felt an urge to strangle this Poe for depicting an orang-utan in such an unfavourable way.
Now his mood was even worse. And he still had not found what he was searching for.
(1) Parents know well how much toddlers can express in a similar way. (2)
(2) The Librarian would strongly disapprove of the comparison.
(3) A casual reader may have realised that Gandalf did not notice the LotR, but the Silmarillion, in which he is hardly mentioned. Narrativium however is the author's best friend: When you have a good story, it works the way you want it to.
A/N: The wizards claim that there is no narrativium in our world. The fact that I read The murders in Rue Morgue while I was working on A glimpse into the future almost felt like narrativium at work though. Many thanks to charli800 and Virtuella for betareading!