One Day More - a Sartorias-deles fanfic

Chapter 1

Author's Note: WELL, it only took two years, but I FINALLY finished One Day More. So time for some updates for the friends who waited...//

Iris Theren adjusted her position on the window seat, folding the book in her lap closed on her finger. She rubbed behind her neck, attempting to massage out the soreness that had developed over the hours she had been sitting by the window. Her body ached, but she tried to ignore it as best she could. This library was her safe space, and Iris did not want to leave it just yet. Leaving it meant walking home, back into obscurity. Back to the routine. Although her parents gave her everything she wanted in life, Iris still felt a bit...dissatisfied.

Something was missing.

"Well, maybe a lot is missing," she murmured, moving the hand at her neck to her face. She rubbed at her eyes for a couple minutes before dropping her blue gaze to the novel in her lap. "At least I'll always have you to take me away." Iris rubbed her hand over the leather surface and sighed.

Footsteps ascending the stairs drew her attention from her lap, and she raised her head. A smile broke across her face. The man now standing before her, hand on the banister, was little older than her father, but his hair and beard were already speckled with gray. His kind gray eyes had creases at their edges. It could not only be from smiling, which he did frequently. What sort of adventures had he experienced? He would not speak of them, although Iris did not know why.

She had her suspicions, though. Iris had never left her town, which sat on the western side of the Niam River. Totally inconsequential. Nondescript. She had studied maps of Remalna countless times—multiple maps, created by multiple individuals—and the town was so small, it appeared on no map. Somehow, that did not surprise Iris. Tobias probably felt bad for her and her perfunctory life, and he did not want to make her sad by telling her his tales...although Iris desperately wished he would.

He walked up to her and squatted before her, patting her knee with a wrinkled hand. "How are you today, child?"

"Well," Iris said with a smile. She rubbed her fingers across the book's cover once more. "Thank you for letting me stay here."

"You know you are always welcome, Iris," he replied, squeezing her knee under her skirt.

"I know." She paused. "I am so relieved that this town at least has a library."

"Every town should have a library," he said.

Iris nodded. "It lets readers travel to new places. I wish I could go, though, not only read about them."

"Maybe you will some day." The librarian moved his hand and stood up, putting a hand against the small of his back. He groaned dramatically. "I'm getting too old for this."

"Tobias," she said his name with a light laugh.

He winked at her and went to a far shelf. She heard him pulling books out and replacing them. "Do you know what I wish?"

"What's that?"

"I wish we were more frequently included in the library system's yearly rotation. I have read all of these books probably two or three times by this point, if not more." He poked his head around the corner of a shelf. "I know the same can be said for you."

"Some stories perhaps even more frequently than others." Iris looked down at the book.

Called One Day More, it was a simple story—an adventurous recounting of a fictional character's journey to far-off places unexplored. She fought creatures she had never heard of, described clearly enough that on her very first reading, Iris had seen the animals in her dreams. Galloping horses. Dramatic sword battles, on which numerous lives depended. What she loved most, though, about the story was that the main character was a woman. A confident, strong woman who rescued herself from the massive predators and the nefarious villains. She was intelligent, yet humble. Humorous but not critical.