813 NAB (OPEN)

[Grig Rosenthal]

It's a mostly dead afternoon in the library, with the only patrons being a teenage Academy student in front of the front desk and Gregory Rosenthal behind it. "Do you have Pale Fire?", they ask. Greg glances up from the storyboard he was designing and mumbles, " I think so. I'll have to check the database." His hand glides over to the computer mouse, and his body swivels to face the screen, lights flashing on his face in blue and white. "Do you need it for anything in particular?", he queries. "Yeah, it's part of my American Literature class", they reply. "My professor is wanting us to write a thesis on the interwoven nature of the immigrant experience in literature from the political or economic standing of our choosing, and I decided on Pale Fire". Greg does not look away from the screen. " Okay, I found it. 813 NAB.If you like, I can get it for you, for a nominal fee." The student's stomach drops. "What is it?" Greg smiles at the desk. "I'll do it if you give me your firstborn son." They blink. "Um, what?" He sighs to himself. "Sorry, long day. Here." He stretches his left arm all the way to the American fiction and, after tracing the middle row with his fingers, grabs the 14th book on the shelf and retracts his arm. As soon as his hand is just 3 feet away from the desk, Greg's arm fall's out of its socket, the elbow banging against the edge of the desk. "Ow." The student grabs the book out his hand and hands it to him to scan. Blushing, gaze averted, Greg checks the book out and they leave, Pale Fire in hand. "Well, that was f***ing embarassing." With gritted teeth and teary grunting, Greg shoves his arm back into his socket, leaving fingerprint bruises to compliment the larger one by his elbow. He sighs, simultaneously watching the door and continuing to sketch the outline of a lady's foot.

[Lyra Blackwalde]

Lyra stepped in just in time to see Grig's arm unfortunately fall out of socket. Wincing at the image, her nurse side was already rising to the surface as she made her way over from the entrance. The fact that she'd just coming from the nurse's office probably helped. There was a certain mindset that came with working in there, and sometimes it took a few minutes among the large selection of books to get her out of it. Although the normal mindset she went back into could be argued better or worse.

Once the student checking out left, Lyra came up to the desk herself. She leaned against it with her elbows. Offering Grig a kind, if not concerned smile, she glanced from his arm to his face. Which she could see held some watery eyes from the undoubtedly painful resetting of his arm. "Do you need me to get you anything? Even I could tell from across the room that that had been painful." She didn't really care too much to dance around the subject at the moment. Even if Grig was embarrassed by the little incident, no doubt. Lyra couldn't claim to be his best friend or even a particularly close one, but considering he worked in the library as well she at least interacted with him enough to get a decent guesstimation on his personality. He was shy from what she could tell, but nice enough. And far more artistic than Lyra would ever hope to be.

[Grig Rosenthal]

 Greg's head jerked to Lyra's direction, then dropped his gaze immediately. She offered to help him. All he could choke out was this: "O-ok-kay. Sure, yeah, p-p-ple-please d-d-do." He was glad to have actually said something, but humiliated that not only did she hear him trip over simple words, she caught him looking more vulnerable than usual. Oh, god, I'm so pathetic. He shambled over to her, holding his limp arm more or less in place. He let it drop for a moment, just to wipe the tears out of his eyes and the steam off his glasses. Peering down at her shoes, he couldn't help but smile at the absurdity of the situation. He tried to make small talk as he handed her his arm. "H-how are,are,area-are you?" His smile became forced and awkward. Of course, now is the time to sound like Porky f***IMG Pig.

[Lyra Blackwalde]

Hearing this younger boy suddenly start stammering almost made Lyra wince again. She wanted to argue that she wasn't that intimidating. Then again her habit for teleporting annoying students away without warning probably didn't help. That or her reputation as the bitchier librarian. Still, Lyra could see with one glance that Grig was not having a fun time. As he walked towards her, she raised her hands. With a sharp double snap, she teleported an ice pack with wrap and a bottle of Advil over from the nurse's office and onto the desk. Then she gently took his arm.

Even if his words were coming out as what Grig might think was a stuttering mess, Lyra could at least admire the fact he was trying to make small talk. She offered him a nice smile as she started applying the ice pack to his arm. "I'm actually quite well darling, thank you for asking." She replied back. "I just got back from the nurse's office, so I'll help take some of the workload off for you in here." Once the I slack was firmly by comfortably wrapped into place, Lyra reached for the bottle instead. Two pills would be sufficient, so she offered them to Grig. "Take these and drink them down with water. It'll help your arm calm down and not hurt so much or so long." Then, with another snap the bottle was gone.

"What about you, Grig? Other than this little incident, how has your day been so far?" Lyra asked, deciding to continue their talk. Maybe it would help Grig relax, or maybe not. She didn't really have any way of knowing until she tried. "I see the library hasn't caught fire as far as I can tell, so I think you've done a good job in here so far."

[Grig Rosenthal]

Greg withdrew his newly bandaged arm, popped the pills into his pocket, and nodded. At the mention of the word "darling", his face turned beet red. He knew that it wasn't a special pet name or anything, but no one had ever called him that before, not even his mom. " I'm g-g-gl-glad I h-haven't inconvienced you. " Lyra then asked him about his day and somewhat complimented him. " W-well, I uh, I did try to, to burn the place down, but ars-arsony, i-it's not really my strong suit. " He closed his eyes and smiled a bit. " But yeah, it's uh, i--it's been pretty good. A little de-de-d-dead, but alright. " He looked down at her hands, unable to look her in the eye, at least not yet. She had beautiful hands. Greg scratched the back of his neck nervously, unsure of what to say or do.

[Lyra Blackwalde]

It wasn't every day she got to see a student go through such a drastic change in color. The corners of her mouth kind of tugged upwards as she wore a bit of an amused look now. Still a little concerned though, but not so much now that he had the ice on.

At first Lyra was only a little surprised when Grig actually made a joke. Somehow the idea of that hadn't really occurred to her as something that could or would happen. But almost instantly she chuckled and closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. With a glance around almost to make sure he hadn't succeeded, she looked back at Grig. "Thank goodness you failed to then, although I bet it wasn't for lack of trying." Smiling wryly, she moved her way back behind the desk. Because she only now realized both librarians were taking up the space in front of it.

"Well as long as no one's actually dead, then a little quiet is appreciated." Once Lyra swung around to the right side, she spotted Grig's storyboards sitting there. She couldn't help but be a little curious of what this shy boy might've been up to. Without touching it, she squinted her eyes and looked it over briefly. Lyra soon turned her head to Grig and pointed towards it. "Is this yours?"

[Grig Rosenthal]

Greg jumped a little at the sudden movement from in front to behind the desk alongside him, but settled as soon as she spoke again."Is this yours?" He nodded, and gestured to the picture in the right-hand corner, an axe stuck inside a bleeding tree. " This one is m-my favorite. Professor McNamara, he's having us start on our final project, you know the,the, the studoent films? I, um, I'm working on a 2D sh-short film, half The Bleeding Tree and half Queen of Sheba " He smiled, titanium braces glinting in the light. "I'm hoping that if,if,if it's good enough, I can use this to really start on my, um, Lilith's Cave series. I also made a flash cartoon music video for the song "Jenny", if you'd like to see it."  

[Lyra Blackwalde]

There was somewhat of a difference, Lyra noticed, when Grig started talking about his storyboard. At least she thought so. There weren't nearly as many stutters in his sentence, and she was genuinely interested in what he'd been doing. Having little artistic talent herself, she could appreciate it in someone else. "2D? Now that's a relief. Honestly I miss the days where drawn backgrounds were a thing and not everything was this puffed up 3D." Holding a hand up towards her face, she leaned near Grig to whisper "it reminds me of marshmallows frankly" before straightening again.

Stepping back to give Grig rom to return to his work, Lyra got a curious look on her face when her mentioned his own series. "Wait darling, did I hear you right? Do you have your own series planned already?" Again this was curiosity mostly stemmed from a lack of innate artistic talent herself. Certainly Grig appeared to have more then her, but that technically wasn't saying too much. "I would love to watch a video you've made, but I think I'm more curious about this 'Lilith's Cave' you've mentioned. Could you tell me more about that?" She asked with a hopefully persuasive smile.

[Grig Rosenthal]

Greg stiffened a bit when she got close, but nodded in agreement with her statement that 3D animation kind of looks like marshmallows. Lyra pulled away, letting him get back to work (and maybe unbeknownst to her, breathe). He rubbed the back of his neck a bit and said, "Well,uh, a-as much as I'd like to, I, I can't take full credit for it, as, as a series. Lilith's Cave is um, is a book about Jewish supernatural folktales by Howard Shwartz. Some of it is,is, Rabbinical sources and Chasidic text and some of it is from, um, Medeival folklore and oral tradition. I uh, I wanted to make short films from, from all of it, but I, I'd rather find out if two of the stories would make good shorts." He took the pills out of his pocket and popped them in his mouth, then walked over to the water fountain and drank, pushing the button down with the edge of his palm.