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Description
It was another one of those sunny afternoons, with the wind blowing strongly in such a way that it was sheer torture to be inside. Naturally, it would be another hour or so before school got out. Woe betides those poor unfortunates who had math classes at this hour.
Clara Maplewood was one of those lucky few that had study hall in the library. Normally a gladiator’s arena of paper airplanes, yelling, and the blank stares of glazed-over eyes, study hall was not what most people would consider “relaxing”. Fortunately, there had been a tremendous number of new students this year, and classrooms were in short supply.
Libraries, like churches, have a hallowed air about them; the moment you set foot inside them, you instinctively know that noise will not be tolerated. It is not the fear of being reprimanded, as the rowdier students never developed this phobia. It is the knowledge that This Place belongs to Quiet.
Clara did not have a great deal of close friends; she would go through the day with the same misty-eyed expression, obviously lost in that dreamlike world that materialized in front of her face when she was not being spoken to directly.
This didn’t bother her much. She had plenty of other friends. And at this particular moment, they were calling her.
Clara trotted down the hall happily, almost skipping, much to the bemusement of those who had just seen her in chemistry; blank, vacant expression, face propped up on one elbow while the other hand scribbled something vaguely feline on her notebook, which was full to bursting with names, words, and other aesthetically pleasing assortments of the alphabet that served no purpose other than to satisfy Clara’s need to surround herself with vowels and consonants.
Clara bounced through the door to the library and paused a moment to beam at the cavernous hall of history before her. For it was a hall of history; even the most up-to-date scientific journal would be out dated soon enough, and the rest of it was a glorious record of an ever-changing world, full of books packed with information that was true enough thirty years ago, or Classics, such as Sense and Sensibility or Moby Dick, windows into life at that time period (at least for the social classes portrayed), or best of all, the Myths and Legends.
These were what Clara had come for today. These stories, now dismissed as fairytales and nonsense for children’s bedtime stories, were still magical to Clara; times past, they were regarded as fact, and still are if you knew where to look. Never mind whether Pluto was a planet or a larger-than-usual hunk of spherical rock. Clara was far more interested in how many versions there were of his abduction of Persephone, or other versions of the creation of seasons.
Perhaps Clara loved language so much because although it’s original purpose was to communicate what was necessary to survival, quickly became popular in the use of communicating what was necessary to human sanity: why and how things came into being. And the reason that Clara liked the English language so much, aside from the fact that it was the only language she trusted herself with, was that she had easy access to creation stories from all over the world; wayward souls from around the globe have been traveling to America to recreate, rebuild or improve their lives (or whatever reason they might have) ever since boats were “safe” enough to do so, and for just as long they have been bringing their stories with them.
Clara had nothing against the Bible; she was a Methodist herself, but having been raised on Bible stories, she was a bit bored with them for two reasons: the first, she had heard them all her life so constantly that she could hardly get away from them, and second, they lacked interesting, colorful details with cause-and-effect reasoning. Clara did not find “God said so and that’s the end of it” to be as interesting “the cheetah has spots because he slept in and got to the fur-dye sale late, and was so sad that after smearing what paint was left over on his fur he drew two tears on his face with a piece of charcoal”.
Clara might have worried about being slain by a thunderbolt, but she figured that if scientists could support the theory of evolution and still believe that God created the world in six days, she could get away with bird watching for the raven that stole fire for the People by day and saying the Lord’s Prayer at night.
As she skimmed the bookshelves wondering whether to Norse or Native American mythology was calling her louder (Loki or Coyote? It’s so hard to choose between tricksters.), Clara mused that this was a very good thing, because had she been slain she couldn’t be sure whether it might have really been Zeus, let alone which afterlife she would have wound up in. Or, failing that, whether she would be reincarnated as rooster or a woodchuck. (She doubted she was priest material.)
However, it was an old friend that won out in the end; after pulling both Norse and Native American collections off the shelf and checking them out for later, Clara went back to the bookshelf and lovingly pulled down a rather cumbersome yellow book. It was titled, rather simply, “Greek and Roman Myths and Legends”.
This book had been her first love, repeatedly borrowed from the library all through elementary school, and which she later received for her birthday a few years later. (Too bad about the mess at home; she had tried sifting through the piles of books in the hallway on several occasions before giving up due to more dust than results.)
Clara sat down at her favorite spot, a worn table, in a corner, behind a staircase, and walled in by bookshelves. She opened the large volume, and smiled at the table of contents, which was covered with those familiar illustrations of centaurs, nymphs, fauns, and satyrs that danced upon every page not dedicated to a larger picture that had to do with whatever story.
And then, she drifted off to Mount Olympus and the countrysides of Greece. A half hour later, one of the personal sitting at the front desk frowned and wiped his glasses. He had sworn he had just seen a rather Gorgon-like shadow moving toward a particular staircase.
But no; it was just the lights acting up again.

Description
It was another one of those sunny afternoons, with the wind blowing strongly in such a way that it was sheer torture to be inside. Naturally, it would be another hour or so before school got out. Woe betides those poor unfortunates who had math classes at this hour.
Clara Maplewood was one of those lucky few that had study hall in the library. Normally a gladiator’s arena of paper airplanes, yelling, and the blank stares of glazed-over eyes, study hall was not what most people would consider “relaxing”. Fortunately, there had been a tremendous number of new students this year, and classrooms were in short supply.
Libraries, like churches, have a hallowed air about them; the moment you set foot inside them, you instinctively know that noise will not be tolerated. It is not the fear of being reprimanded, as the rowdier students never developed this phobia. It is the knowledge that This Place belongs to Quiet.
Clara did not have a great deal of close friends; she would go through the day with the same misty-eyed expression, obviously lost in that dreamlike world that materialized in front of her face when she was not being spoken to directly.
This didn’t bother her much. She had plenty of other friends. And at this particular moment, they were calling her.
Clara trotted down the hall happily, almost skipping, much to the bemusement of those who had just seen her in chemistry; blank, vacant expression, face propped up on one elbow while the other hand scribbled something vaguely feline on her notebook, which was full to bursting with names, words, and other aesthetically pleasing assortments of the alphabet that served no purpose other than to satisfy Clara’s need to surround herself with vowels and consonants.
Clara bounced through the door to the library and paused a moment to beam at the cavernous hall of history before her. For it was a hall of history; even the most up-to-date scientific journal would be out dated soon enough, and the rest of it was a glorious record of an ever-changing world, full of books packed with information that was true enough thirty years ago, or Classics, such as Sense and Sensibility or Moby Dick, windows into life at that time period (at least for the social classes portrayed), or best of all, the Myths and Legends.
These were what Clara had come for today. These stories, now dismissed as fairytales and nonsense for children’s bedtime stories, were still magical to Clara; times past, they were regarded as fact, and still are if you knew where to look. Never mind whether Pluto was a planet or a larger-than-usual hunk of spherical rock. Clara was far more interested in how many versions there were of his abduction of Persephone, or other versions of the creation of seasons.
Perhaps Clara loved language so much because although it’s original purpose was to communicate what was necessary to survival, quickly became popular in the use of communicating what was necessary to human sanity: why and how things came into being. And the reason that Clara liked the English language so much, aside from the fact that it was the only language she trusted herself with, was that she had easy access to creation stories from all over the world; wayward souls from around the globe have been traveling to America to recreate, rebuild or improve their lives (or whatever reason they might have) ever since boats were “safe” enough to do so, and for just as long they have been bringing their stories with them.
Clara had nothing against the Bible; she was a Methodist herself, but having been raised on Bible stories, she was a bit bored with them for two reasons: the first, she had heard them all her life so constantly that she could hardly get away from them, and second, they lacked interesting, colorful details with cause-and-effect reasoning. Clara did not find “God said so and that’s the end of it” to be as interesting “the cheetah has spots because he slept in and got to the fur-dye sale late, and was so sad that after smearing what paint was left over on his fur he drew two tears on his face with a piece of charcoal”.
Clara might have worried about being slain by a thunderbolt, but she figured that if scientists could support the theory of evolution and still believe that God created the world in six days, she could get away with bird watching for the raven that stole fire for the People by day and saying the Lord’s Prayer at night.
As she skimmed the bookshelves wondering whether to Norse or Native American mythology was calling her louder (Loki or Coyote? It’s so hard to choose between tricksters.), Clara mused that this was a very good thing, because had she been slain she couldn’t be sure whether it might have really been Zeus, let alone which afterlife she would have wound up in. Or, failing that, whether she would be reincarnated as rooster or a woodchuck. (She doubted she was priest material.)
However, it was an old friend that won out in the end; after pulling both Norse and Native American collections off the shelf and checking them out for later, Clara went back to the bookshelf and lovingly pulled down a rather cumbersome yellow book. It was titled, rather simply, “Greek and Roman Myths and Legends”.
This book had been her first love, repeatedly borrowed from the library all through elementary school, and which she later received for her birthday a few years later. (Too bad about the mess at home; she had tried sifting through the piles of books in the hallway on several occasions before giving up due to more dust than results.)
Clara sat down at her favorite spot, a worn table, in a corner, behind a staircase, and walled in by bookshelves. She opened the large volume, and smiled at the table of contents, which was covered with those familiar illustrations of centaurs, nymphs, fauns, and satyrs that danced upon every page not dedicated to a larger picture that had to do with whatever story.
And then, she drifted off to Mount Olympus and the countrysides of Greece. A half hour later, one of the personal sitting at the front desk frowned and wiped his glasses. He had sworn he had just seen a rather Gorgon-like shadow moving toward a particular staircase.
But no; it was just the lights acting up again.