ETTING   OME   O   LFANDRA

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Hespa's Story part 16 - Bizarre Books

He begins carefully looking through the books in a random sort of way.  Distracted for a moment he checks out a plastic clip board.  "Mmm, there's a new Guide entry for Alfandra, I'll have to check this out later."  He puts the translucent clip board back on the shelf and pulls out another small cloth bound volume.  Deftly turning pages with his claws and looking at diagrams he finds some mildly related info.  A lesson on reading the Phinehas and Flabbersham Space time coordinate form.  Which is a uniform way of writing out space time coordinates.  [it probably looks something like:
PF://sometime,anothertime,alpha,theta,range/you/are/here/don't/panic/
and the longer but more readable format of the same:
PF://currenttime,sametime,super,cluster,galaxy,sector,system,world/lat/long/elevation/

Emma pauses to listen to Cira, but gives up when the words start going over her head instead of through it, turning back to the books she is studying.

(ok cira is being a very silly dragon)  ];8P

"Not really..."  (looks at book)  "This might help us pinpoint the starting and ending locations of Emma's journey back.  We might need this...."  Pyros tucks the book under his wing and starts browsing the shelves.  "Let's see, thick air, thick air...."

**i dunno if that's the thing to be looking for....it's not really a well-documented phenomena, i think....perhaps better to look for ways to bypass it, as emma suggested**

"All right...we can try the method I use, or we can keep searching the stacks..."

The dragons continue searching...

He goes to pick up another book after putting the first away.  A sickly orange color, the new book bursts into flame the moment his claw touches it.

"Ah, not that one."  he mutters and puffs some liquid nitrogen on the burning book.

Pyros looks over a few books, then takes an unlabled, leather-bound book off the shelf.  The book squawks in fear.  Startled, he drops the book, which emits a yelp of pain as it hits the floor, then starts to whimper.  "No, dragon, I can't take it, your claws hurt as they dig into my spine, no matter how careful you are, your kind can't stop hurting me, I can't take it anymore, don't hurt me..."  The blubbering book trails off.  Slightly bemused, Pyros shrugs to the other dragons and then starts to shrink.  His scales run together and form flesh, his snout shortens, his tail is absorbed into his body.  Within a few seconds there stands a young adult human male in the exact place Pyros was, who picks up the book carefully, flips through it, and puts it back on the shelf.  "No help there."  You aren't sure, but you might have heard a dissatisfied "Hmph" coming from the shelf in response...

Noticing quite a chill from Awellyth's presence, Pyros quickly reassumes his draconic form and continues browsing.

Normally Emma would be interested in such bizarre antics, but this is a library and, while her form may have changed, her bookworm nature has not.  Her snout is soon buried in a book which may or may not be relevant to their reason for being there...

A section on Quantum Strings catches Cira's eye and he gets absorbed reading arcane equations full of odd symbols.  He nods and mumbles to himself over them but doesn't read them out loud as he doesn't think anyone else would understand them.