Ebony Wings

9

~Ali~

Although I have nothing to be guilty of, I walk like a culpable person, nervous and flushing with heat as the books seem to gain weight with each step I take. I cut across the recently clipped lawn, bypassing the winding, serpentine pathways that I am convinced were created for the sole purpose of delaying people. A grainy shadow flashes in the corner of my eye, like a matador with a black flag, taunting me. I flick my gaze to the side as a bead of sweat slips down the dip of my lower back, gathering at the top of my belt line. But of course there is no one there, much less someone waving a cloth in my direction, only the paranoid fantastical illusions my brain is summoning in a time of great stress. Yet despite myself I cannot shake the bristling feeling of being watched until our door is locked behind us and the curtains are roughly drawn. Realistically these security measures will achieve little when faced with the threat of the Fallen, but the appearances of privacy count for something at this moment.

I place the books on the coffee table, gently laying them down like easing a newborn baby into its crib, completely unsure about how this bundle of unforeseeable potential will unfurl with time. I lower myself onto the sofa, looking fondly upon the small collection of timeworn but scarcely handled books. Jaz takes a seat beside me and I shuffle to the side, making room as she takes a seat, nervous about what I have barged out of the library so suddenly for. Jack and Ethan kneel on the floor opposite us, leaning over the stout table expectantly.

"Before I start, I just want to say that I know it was careless of me, but I took a calculated risk -" sort of "- and I asked Ms. Penny, the librarian, if she had any books about Elders."

"That was extremely -"

"- Dangerous, I know," I finish, gently silencing Ethan's interjection. "But I yielded results so, for now, I think it was worth it. There is a special storage room locked away from the library where the librarian keeps a collection of restricted books. It was here where she gave me these three, one of which should hopefully aid our search." I trail my finger tip over the coarse parchment, unsure about what books lay in front of me with their unmarked covers.

Jack takes the book on the top of the pile and Ethan snatches the next one, both flipping through the contents, quickly scanning down the pages to get a sense for their general content, nodding in approval.

"These seem promising," Ethan smiles into the pages, pleased at the resources in front of us, even if the means of obtaining them were disregardful. "We might find something really helpful." Jack makes an agreeing noise in his throat from the shoulder of the couch, gently closing the book in his lap, satisfied with what he has briefly seen.

Ethan flips excitedly through the fragile pages a moment longer and the slanting afternoon light gathers in his irises, glowing from within. Clashing shades of blue are flecked through his oculus, a random combination of congruous shades that I might have thought would either disagree or blend into a dull blur of colour. Neither of my speculations are correct, however. With this particular angle of light, his eyes appear to be two orbs of blue fire, ringed in a sharp, tarnished silver like a steel fire pit. And then he blinks and lifts his head to us, closing the book and moving away from the shaft of light. 

"Okay, Jaz and Ali, why don't you guys start looking through this," Jack instructs, handing us the tattered book in his grasp. Breathless, I take the book from him. "Ethan, you look through the book you have now and I'll start on this one," he announces waving the last book in the air. "See if you can find any information related to the Elders - past or present. And I was thinking -"

"- That's dangerous," Jaz jibes, smirking to herself, but Jack continues talking as if he didn't hear her over the noise of his thoughts.