Lufuna stuffed the last book into the gap on the third floor of the bookshelf, and pressed his fingers lightly on the spine to make sure it wouldn't fall out.
This is a very old book. The cover is made of some kind of dark brown leather, and the edges are worn and whitened. The gilded title on the spine has been blurred until only a few letters remain.
She spent a whole morning sorting out this batch of old books shipped from outside the city. Some were donated by nobles, some were found at flea markets, and some were "windfalls" whose origins were unclear.
Most of it is waste paper, with moth-eaten, mildewy, and faded handwriting. I don't even have the courage to open it. A few of them are still readable, and she has arranged them in categories...
Lufuna took a step back, tilted his head and looked at the order of the entire row of books - the titles of the books were from largest to smallest, and the publication years were from early to late.
She nodded, took out a piece of gray cotton cloth from her pocket, and wiped the sweat from her forehead. She took off her glasses again and wiped the lenses with the cloth. After wiping them, she put them on again, and the world changed from blurry to clear.
She was wearing a red scholar's uniform. It was a darker red. The top was high-collared, waisted, and hemlined above the knees. The cuffs and collar were trimmed with black.
A black belt is tied around the waist, and a palm-sized leather bag hangs on the belt. The lower body is a pair of dark gray trousers, and the trouser legs are stuffed into black short boots. The laces of the boots are tied very tightly, so that they will not make any unnecessary noise when walking.
Her hair was dark brown and cut very short, exposing her ears and a clean section of the back of her neck. A dark red scholar's hat lay quietly side by side on the table. A black ribbon hung from the top of the hat, and the end of the ribbon was decorated with a small, dark gold tassel.
"Thank you, Lufuna. Take a rest."
The director of the library came over with a bottle of water and handed the bottle to her. His voice had an old-fashioned, reassuring gentleness.
His hair was completely white, not gray, but pure snow-white without a trace of color.
Her hair was combed neatly, pulled back from the forehead, and tied into a short ponytail at the back of the head, revealing an angular, well-maintained face. There was a pair of gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of her nose, and the eyes behind the lenses were dark amber with vertical pupils.
There are two horns on his head. They look like some kind of ancient blue sheep. The color of the horns is dark gray, and there are fine rings on the surface, going around and around, extending from the root to the tip.
He wore a well-tailored dark gray robe, with dark silver edges on the collar and cuffs, and a black leather belt around his waist, with a bunch of keys hanging on the belt.
Lufuna took the water bottle, unscrewed the cap, and said thank you first without drinking. The curator nodded slightly and did not say "you're welcome."
The conversation between them has always been like this, thank you when you should, nod when you should nod, no need for extra politeness.
Lufuna took a sip of water, screwed the cap back, and placed the water bottle on the table.
"Director." Lufuna looked at the director, "Have you found that book?"
The curator's expression did not change, it was still that kind of gentle, reassuring calm. But his fingers flicked on the key chain at his waist, and the key made a subtle, metal-colliding sound.
"Sorry." said the curator, "I asked those old friends, but they all said they have never seen it... or even heard of it. Maybe there is no such book here. Maybe it has been lost."
Lufuna was silent for a moment, his voice was very soft, and his eyes fell on the pile of unfinished books on the table.
At the top of the stack is a thin booklet with a peeled off cover. A name is written in faded ink on the title page, which cannot be read clearly.
"Well, thank you very much."
She didn't ask. The director said no, so that meant there wasn't. The director had been a librarian here for decades. He knew many more people than she did and had read many more books than she did. She couldn't find the things he said she couldn't find even if she searched through the entire library.
She knows when to persist and when to let go. Now is not the time to persist, because she wants to find that book, not to prove anything, but because she needs it to complete her thesis.
But she knew that if she couldn't find it, she couldn't find it. Instead of wasting her time here, it was better to focus on the things she could still find. Fortunately, she had already found a lot of useful information. Although the paper was still a little short of work, the skeleton had been built. The rest was to be taken step by step.
Lufuna did not dwell on this topic anymore, turned around, walked back to the desk, and sat down on the chair.
She took out a charcoal pen from the leather bag at her waist and opened the thick diary on the table, the cover of which was so worn that the original color could not be seen.
This is not a diary she started writing after she came to Vagrian. This diary started from the first day she left home.
She writes every day, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes just one or two sentences - "It rained today." "I ate something delicious today."
The handwriting on each page is different. Sometimes it is as neat as copying scriptures, and sometimes it is so sloppy that it looks like it was scratched casually while jolting on horseback.
She never looked back at what she had written. After she finished writing, she would turn over it and never turn it back again. This diary is not for memories, but for storing things that would make people panic if they were not spoken out at the time.
This is her second year in this country.
There were birds chirping outside the window. It was not the crisp, cheerful chirping, but a very noisy chirping sound, like a quarrel.
A few gray-brown birds jumped around on the windowsill, their wings flapped sharply, and their feathers and dust danced in the sunlight. Lufuna glanced at them, lowered his head, and opened a new page in the diary. The charcoal pen scratched across the paper, making a subtle rustling sound.
She is probably used to the life here. When she first came here, she was a little surprised by the people with animal-like features on the street. It's not that she has never seen them before - Karelia Empire and other countries have similar races, but there are not many.
In the imperial capital, most of the aliens with ears and tails live in the old town in the west of the city, doing some low-level jobs and rarely appearing at gatherings of upper class society.
Lufuna When I was a child, I saw a little girl with a cat tail on the streets of the imperial capital. She was surrounded by several children of the same age and pulled her tail.
There were many adults onlookers, but no one came forward. She was not sure whether the adults onlookers didn't want to take care of it, didn't dare to take care of it, or felt that this kind of thing didn't need to be taken care of. She didn't step forward either, because she was also being watched at that time.
She was the eldest daughter of a noble family. She wore an exquisite lace dress and was accompanied by two uniformed servants. She was not supposed to talk to little girls on the street. Those were the rules. It took her many years to figure out that those rules were not to protect her, but to trap her.
But now. In Vagrian, people with horns, tails, scales, and feathered faces are everywhere walking past you, and no one takes a second look, and no one cares.
Because everyone is like this, no one is more normal than anyone else, and no one is more weird than anyone else.
If the little girl with the cat's tail was born here, her tail would not be pulled curiously, because everyone is pulling other people's tails - just kidding, no one is pulling their tails.
Lufuna put down the charcoal and turned to look out the window. Outside the window was the backyard of the library. There was a large sycamore tree in the yard. The trunk was so thick that two people could not hug it. The tree crown covered half of the yard.
Under the tree, there were several young students wearing Vagrian National Academy uniforms reading and chatting. A girl with antlers was sitting against the tree trunk, holding a thick big book in her hand, and a dog was lying next to her.
The dog was very big and had thick fur. It was lying in the shadow of the tree roots, sticking out its tongue and panting.
As for why she left her hometown and traveled thousands of miles from the other end of the continent to this country ruled by dragons - she is a scholar of ancient history and legends.
Although she is still writing a thesis and has not yet obtained the formal qualification of a scholar, she has already issued the certificate to herself in her heart.
What she studies is so unpopular that in the national college of the Karelia Empire, there is only one old professor teaching this course, and that old professor has not recruited new students in three years.
He was the best teacher she had ever encountered. He never thought she had too many questions or that she was annoying. Every time she went to the office and knocked on the door, he would put down the book in his hand, take off his glasses, listen carefully to what she said, and then answer seriously.
She learned from him how to read those half-eaten ancient books, how to distinguish myths and legends from different eras, and how to deduce the rise and fall of the entire Civilization from a broken pottery shard.
It was in the old professor's study that she heard for the first time that in a distant place, in Vagrian, a country ruled by dragons, there were many ancient documents and cultural relics that had been lost in Karelia.
When the old professor told this story, his tone was very calm, as if he was talking about a very common thing. He said, "If you really want to study this, you should go there and have a look." It is not a suggestion, not a recommendation, but a statement of a fact.
Just like in the field of studying ancient history and legends, there are some things that cannot be found in the empire. You have to go to Vagrian to find them.
This was not a matter of whether she thought about it or not, but a matter of necessity. So she decided to go there to have a look and prepare to complete her thesis.
Speaking of which, when she told her parents that she was going to become an ancient scholar, their reaction was huge. Not the kind that made a big fuss, but the kind that fell silent after being extremely shocked.
Her father sat behind the desk and was silent for a long time after listening to her words, so long that she thought he fell asleep.
Then he said, "Are you serious?" She said, "Seriously." He was silent for a while, and then said, "Let me think about it." He thought about it for a full month.
During that month, every morning when he saw her in the restaurant, he would stop talking, stop and stop, and finally say nothing.
The mother's reaction was much more intense than that of the father. She cried, not the kind of silent tears, but the kind of crying that covered her mouth, tears couldn't stop falling, and her shoulders shook. She said, "You are the eldest daughter." She said, "You are our daughter." She said, "Whatever you want, just ask the people below to do it."
She said a lot, Lufuna remembers it, but none of it could make her change her mind. Because earlier, before she told anyone about it, she had already gone through this decision countless times in her mind.
She didn't start hesitating after her parents objected. She started to confirm that she really wanted to do this after her parents objected.
Later, with the help of her younger brother, she climbed over the wall at night and ran away. The younger brother was only fourteen years old at the time and was half a head shorter than her. He stacked two chairs under the wall, and they were so shaky that the legs of the chairs kept shaking when she stepped on them.
She climbed over the wall and twisted her foot when she jumped. It hurt for half a month. Her younger brother whispered on the other side of the wall, "Sister, are you okay?"
She said, "It's okay."
She endured the pain in her ankle and limped all night. At dawn, she reached the city gate and caught the first carriage out of the city.