A yawn escaped Lara’s lips as she rested on the charred granite of the circulation desk.

“Jeez, stop it,” Sammi complained, stifling a yawn of her own, “You’re making me tired now, too. That’s, like, your millionth yawn.”

Sammi spun slowly in her beaten office chair, one leg perched for her knee to serve as a chin rest. Lara sighed and slumped to the ground, the splintered desk wood scratching at her back.

“I haven’t been sleeping well,” she pulled her knees to her chest. The mention of sleep triggered another bodily cry for rest, prompting Sammi to follow suit.

Efforts, regardless of their minority, had been made to decrease the amount of time spent alone by the advice of her caretaker, Auras, although he had then proceeded to disappear for the rest of the week. This left her in the precarious predicament of furthering her relationship with the Sammi.

Left without a means for sustenance, nor the skill for cooking, she had spent the first two days holding out on the idea of sourcing any meals from Samantha and Pavlov. However, the latter half of the week was spent occupying one of the three seats of a kitchen table whose excessive length and battered appearance was nearly comical for the two people – now three, with the temporary addition of Lara – it accommodated, while a tomato red wallpaper threatened to peel around them, yet sufficed in its duty of feigning familial coziness.

It had been made apparent quite soon during her first dinner that some of the library’s missing books were, in fact, simply clustering in every corner of their eccentric home. In fact, Pavlov, the sluggish old director of the library, made a point to choose and discuss a different book with their twice daily meals. Samantha, opposite Lara, was quite content to interject with her own opinions of every piece, much to the satisfaction of her grandfather who didn’t seem to mind that she’d often cut him off at the pinnacle of each recitation.

The entire scene, although uncommon to her, urged a sense of familiarity somewhere within her being. The sensation would pull at Lara, calling her to a brink of something she never could quite comprehend, though it felt like it was herself who purposefully forfeited each and every mentally independent rendition of hide-and-seek.

“There’s never anything to do around this stupid town.”

Drawn back to the cold floor of the library, she watched as Sammi continued drawing circles on a dirty scrap of paper, stinking of ink that had piled so thick it may never dry. “May as well just off myself.”

Lara stared at the ceiling with its painting faintly present. The details were only to be seen by the hardest of looks. Though she couldn’t control Sammi’s decisions, she certainly wouldn’t be pleased with the notion of having even one less person to interact with -- even if social interaction was a constant crossroads of chore and necessity. “Your grandfather would be awfully lonely without you to keep him company during meal times.”

“Pah!” She scoffed, “He’d probably talk to the walls. I imagine it’s what he does now, anyway, when he’s MIA. Accidentally found him in the library for once in my life: walked in on him -- in the old service room down on the second floor where the ceilings are so low it was probably an evolutionary stabilizer for human growth; totally talking to himself.”

Lara relieved a half-smile, “He could’ve been talking to a patron?”

“Mm, thought about it. Felt more realistic to go with crazy… or ghost.” There was a brief pause for suspense hidden between her latter option, as she spun around in her worn-torn office chair to peer down at Lara with a profile consisting of a mischievous eyebrow and smirk.

“You and your ghost stories,” Lara averted eye-contact, simply out of dismay of sustaining any kind of emotional connection, though some part of her did yearn for it, somewhere, in the embedded neurons of her being, she supposed.

Sammi’s shoulder flicked with the attitude of assurance, “With so many dead bodies around here, it’d only make sense to assume they’d love the library. Academics, y’know?”

“That’s mildly stereotypical, isn’t it?”

“I’d like to think of it as reasonably statistical. Not to mention, if we have to find a point in living we’re probably much less pressed to find a point in dying.” She rolled her eyes as if she’d come to terms with thoughts that had once been the warden of her sleeplessness, yet paused and furrowed her brows, glancing quizzically to the upper-right hand corner of her eyes in retract. “Or, find a point after death?

Which one is it?”

Lara glanced at the wood beside her, eyes slightly ajar, unsure as to what Sammi was on about.

The discomforting and unrequited depth of the discussion was quipped by a rumbling beneath them.

“Oh my g-,” Sammi hopped off her chair and rushed to the doorway in anticipation, “What the f-“.

Lara peered at the ceiling, suddenly anxious at the thought of its collapse. What is this? An earthquake? In Illinois?

She was drawn back to Sammi’s building hyperventilation, “A… a bomb?”

Sammi and the occasional library patron had been Lara’s main source of the war fables and the since unwritten history of the place she currently called home. “No, that doesn’t make any sense, unless it was one that hadn’t gone off, yet – which also doesn’t make any sense and we just need to stop because there is obviously a very reasonable explanation.” She responded quickly. Her matter-of-fact tone seemed directed at calming herself down rather than her coworker. “You’re wishing for excitement.”

Just as rapidly as it had encroached, the stirring of the earth subsided.

Lara had only just noticed her own shallow breathing when she heard the familiarity of clacking shoes. She rose to her feet.

“Hello, Samantha,” Auras greeted the shaken Sammi.

“Did you feel that?” She warbled, still ironically clutching the doorframe to the entrance of the main stacks.

He provided a slight nod, “Yes, I just felt it as I was passing through the area. Perhaps an earthquake.” With that, his sights turned to a confused Lara who was projecting an inquisition with the force of her furrowed brows. “I came to rescue this one, just in case.”

A scoff escaped her lips as Sammi laughed with palled enthusiasm, “Take me too, why dontcha.” Awkwardly dusting off her rust-colored tee, she made her way back to her throne behind the desk. “It’s times like these that I actually get concerned about my grandpa, wherever he is.”

Auras placed both hands in either pocket of his long, gray trench. “Well, if you’d like to see him, I actually bumped into him in the basement by the loading dock. He appears to have been attempting to fix the doors.”

“Typical grandpa,” She mused with a hint of sadness, “Trying to please the non-existent people who care.”

She got back up, grabbing her keys and went to lock the doors to the stacks. “Look, I’m almost positive Pav won’t mind you leaving early today, so I’ll see ya later. I’m going to go see if he needs some help,” She concluded with the tinge of tightened nerves.

Lara felt some remorse in leaving, but made her way to the path Auras had begun walking towards the main entrance. She half-waved back to Samantha who was locking up the rest of the doors for what seemed to be no real reason at all. Passing by the chandelier, more sparkling pieces twinkled from the ground with new light, having fallen off during the disturbance, and winked at the faded paintings above them.

She could barely keep up, with neither her thoughts nor steps as they descended the abandonments of stairwells she’d never bothered to explore, let alone stumble down. “Where did you go? Where have you been? Why did you leave for so long?”

The rhythmic accompaniments of her imbalance and sweeping hands against the wall helped to dilute the silence of the encroaching darkness that seemed to be swallowing them whole as they went further into the library. She had never known so many levels aside from the stacks, and also struggled to understand how or why Auras seemed to be leading them with such ease through uncleared rubble and the quickly darkening pitch.

He did little to respond to her inquiries regarding the spontaneous quake, his whereabouts, nor how on earth he, of all people, had managed to find Pavlov.

“Auras!” In frustration and lack of breath she stopped moving, a vwariness of the increasing darkness strengthening her resolve.

“We’re leaving.”

“What? Leaving to go where?”

He turned to face her, holding his ground where he waited, “I think you’ve spent enough time here.”

“‘Spent enough time here’?” Blinking was the best she did to help herself comprehend the situation, not quite following Auras’ train of thought, “I, what do you mean? We can’t go anywhere, never go to the outskirts, everyone here says that.”

“We’re traveling underground. But we need to go, now.”

“What do you mean ‘underground’?? Traveling where, Auras? Can you just,” Her eyes darted around, trying to make sense of his words. “This is annoying and frustrating and you’ve come out of nowhere. You’ve been gone for days and now you’re telling me we’re just leaving--“

Her voice had begun to rise when he took a few long strides toward her and grabbed her wrist, “We’re going to a city-state.”

“’No one has ever said anything about a ‘city-state’, but everyone does say it’s not safe to leave – let go of me, I want to go back to work and go home. Let’s talk about this at home.”

As she finished, Lara felt the beginnings of a burning sensation underneath the place where Auras had wrapped his palm around her wrist.

A small admission of pain had barely escaped her lips when he released her. She felt the dampness of the forgotten stairwell caress her skin; extra pale where his skin had pressed against hers. Lara glanced up, brows furrowed when her eyes caught his in the impartial darkness, which was fought only by a single remaining lamp caged within furling metal behind him.

“Did I injure you?” He asked, faltering momentarily with concern.

“No,” She answered angrily, unable to confront the truth that it almost seemed to have come from her. “It felt like my skin was burning. Do you have a fever? Because that would explain a lot.” Lara couldn’t remember any time she and Auras had ever come into physical contact. In actuality, she realized, the only physical contact she could remember with anyone was when she’d bumped into Sammi the day prior.

Auras exhaled through his nose, returning to his rigid demeanor, “You can’t continue to be left alone. You have to come with me, now, for your own safety.” The sternness of his eyes commanded her attention, “You will have an explanation when we’ve reached our destination. But for now, there is a singular option in and out of this town, and we are on a very limited timeline to utilize it.”

She held his eyes for a moment before he turned and continued on his path, no longer waiting. Trepidation overwhelmed her as his figure slipped further out of sight, compressing her will to turn back until it forced her to follow.