When muses mature, they take aspects, not names. There have been a hundred muses of joy and there will be a hundred more. There will only ever be one Library.
Librarian Yoon Ji Han, 1803 CE
THE LIBRARIAN’S LOG WAS a thorough bit of magic. To the plain eye it was a thick book with a battered cover, thick pages inside filled with entries from librarians over the ages of the Unwritten Wing’s existence. Brevity could tell the difference in the handwriting. Each script in wildly different yet legible scrawl, no matter the librarian’s origin, literacy, or native language. Brevity was glad that whatever magics fueled the logbook didn’t smooth away those differences, at least. It gave a delightful bit of insight and personality to the logbook. You could tell a lot about a librarian by their handwriting. There were Yoon Ji Han’s utilitarian notes in blocky lines, straight and unforgiving as his instructions. And here were Ibukun’s warnings, letters like spears. And Fleur’s looping lush scribble, always taking over the lines above and below it. Uncontainable, full of life. Brevity always thought she would have liked Fleur.
She liked sitting there, studying the earliest entries by librarians long gone. Occasionally she got carried away and flipped toward the front. Her fingers skimmed over Claire’s entries, each loop and dot carefully placed. Not rigid, but narrower and more precise as the years went on. As if her hands had forgotten how to flow. It made Brevity’s heart clench, but not nearly as much as when the official entries abruptly stopped.
21st of June 2019. Book retrieval has led to a complication. I shall close the Library for safekeeping while we investigate this Codex Gigas with Arcanist Andras’s kind assistance.
The next time the Unwritten Wing was logged as open after that was in Brevity’s frazzled, scrawling hand. She didn’t read those. She already knew exactly what they said.
I shouldn’t be here. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair.
Hell isn’t about being fair. The rebuttal formed in her thoughts in Claire’s perfect posh voice. Still, Brevity had felt the Library was different, should have been different. The Library was not Hell. Books were supposed to be shelter from the demons of the world. The decision the books of the Library had made to cast Claire out wasn’t what a Library should have done.
A shiver brought her attention up, away from the logbook. A familiar breeze drifted through the Library stacks, queer and impossible in the best way, and that drove straight to Brevity’s heart. It smelled like the color thirteen; it felt warm as violet; it whispered cardamom binaries.
It had a homey tune to it that Brevity had thought she’d almost forgotten.
Every author hopes, prays, for the muses to visit them. Brevity was probably the first librarian in history to wish she could hide under the table.
Instead, she took a slow, centering breath—in four through nose, out five through mouth—and turned toward the figure that approached, not from the wing’s front doors, but from the gloom of the stacks.
Probity carried a small pot of balm in her hands like a peace offering. “Sis, how’s the arm?” She didn’t wait for an answer but did stop a pace sooner than she usually did. She gestured to the pot she held. “I brought this for you. It’s a mixture that helps with inspiration gilt burn.”
Probity surely meant it to be kind; the stab of guilt Brevity suffered was all her own. Of course she’d know Brevity was in pain. Muses carried inspiration, from the places they were born—called wells—to humanity. It was supposed to be a temporary transcendent state. Muses, gilded in the glow of possibilities, embracing their chosen artists and leaving something behind. Inspiration—and all the hard work of creation that could only come from humans, of course, but muses tended to gloss over that part.
The inspiration that a muse wore was supposed to be temporary. It wasn’t healthy for a muse to wear it for too long. When Brevity had stolen it for herself, she knew there would be repercussions.
She just never thought she’d lose it.
“What’s in it?” Brevity asked instead.
Probity rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “Your usual stuff. A little mugwort. Tatterdales. Dried fablesnare. Oil of idlesave. A pinch of ear of glint. And a healthy slap of gin.”
Brevity tilted her head. “You were never interested in alchemy before.”
“I had . . . questions. After you left. And a lot of feelings.” Probity ducked her head, hiding her face behind a fall of lavender hair. “Studying something . . . anything. It seemed the best way to settle them.”
“You’ve grown up so much,” Brevity murmured, mostly to herself, but Probity’s ears still tipped pink.
“Ideas never die.” Probity mumbled it under her breath, suddenly shy. The phrase landed with ripples in Brev’s memory. It’d been something they’d told each other often, as awe-addled young muses. Half-drunk at the power of humans and with the vague appetite to change the world that all new souls had. Ideas never die. It wasn’t a catchphrase, precisely; it was a promise.
Probity motioned, and Brevity slowly held out her bare arm. There was only a pale line where the gilded tattoo had been, but it felt like the raw furrows of a wound. The balm smelled like limes when she opened the lid, and Brevity did her best not to wince when Probity began to gently slather it on. She couldn’t help a sharp intake of air as she began to rub it in, though. “Why does it hurt so much? It never hurt when I pulled it off before.”
“Because you never truly gave it up before. Not just momentarily releasing it, but actually removing its place on your arm. I made you give it up.” Probity’s fingers were precise and featherlight.
