Library Escapades

It was another boring, ugly, unremarkable night in the valley surrounding Streitstadt. There was just enough fog to make things damp, but not enough to be properly eerie. There was just enough moonlight to see by, but not enough to cast ominous shadows through the pine needles. And there was just enough wind to blow stray leaves unexpectedly into one’s face, but not enough to billow a coat dramatically. All in all, it was mediocre at best.

Therefore, Titus decided to only moderately dislike the evening. It wasn’t even worth properly hating, he reasoned as he made his way through the woods and back home to the Villa. It could still be salvaged, truthfully, if he tried. For instance, he could always rearrange the paintings in his room and display them by color instead of in chronological order. Or by frame color? But most of those were brown or gold. And some were circular instead of squared off. No, it couldn’t be by frame color. It would have to be by overall hue of the painting. Hadn’t he done this before? How had he decided before?
Titus was so distracted wondering how to spend the second half of his evening that he almost didn’t notice the figure standing off to the side of the path until he was right next to him. With a harsh yelp of surprise, Titus stepped back a pace in alarm….until he recognized the silhouette on the darkened path and relaxed in relief.

“My friend, you’d startle anyone with that scowl, even in the best of light!” he said. “Why on earth are you skulking about out here in the shadows?”

"<The library?>" Titus replied, swapping languages easily to match the other man's French. He fussed with his coat, busying himself with smoothing the already-smooth lapels.
"<Oh! The library! Well of course! Absolutely, I said I would, and here we are, and there's no time like the present, is there, hrm?>"

The reply was a bit too quick and too forced to sound genuinely friendly. Titus was irritated that the gardener had surprised him and irritated at the implication that he might have forgotten an engagement. He conceded that Rémi might have mentioned something in passing about being let into the Villa’s expansive library to borrow books at some point, but that surely had to have been years ago! How was Titus supposed to recall that when he had so much on his mind? And when sometimes an afternoon nap turned into five weeks? Or when an evening’s stroll through an unused gallery turned into three years?? Still, he would hate to alienate one of the few individuals in the area who was smart enough to stay out of trouble and who knew how to keep a low profile.

Therefore, Titus pivoted before Rémi's scowl could deepen further (and Titus had no doubt it was possible to do so).

"<Alright, my fellow exile, let's find us something to read...myself, so I don't have to stand out in this damp any longer, and you, so you aren't left alone with your empty garden all winter. Shall we?>"

Titus managed not to bunch his shoulders defensively against the glare he knew was coming. Somehow, irritating Rémi always felt like irritating one's grandfather...or at least, what Titus assumed it would feel like to irritate one's grandfather. And, after all, what did Titus have to be defensive about? He was doing Rémi a favor. As long as the other man wasn't swearing up a storm, Titus reasoned the two of them were still on good enough terms. Probably, he added mentally.

Titus led the way, skirting along the outside of the Villa where the shadows were longer and the grasses more untamed. His shoes were already wearing spots of dirt and damp from walking along the unused path; he'd have to have someone clean them sharply when he was done for the night. The trail was leading the pair away from the main entrance of the grand house.

"We'll have to sneak you in, of course..." Titus eventually admitted as a way of explanation for the route.

He paused, studied the great house in front of them, and considered the options.

"The most obvious solution would be to cause a terrible distraction at the front gate and whisk you in a side door while the rest of the House was focused on that," Titus began. "But that would require quite a lot of time and planning, possibly some dangerous pyrotechnics, and you wouldn’t want me to have to go to all that trouble, would you?" He didn't even turn to look at Remi for confirmation of this question, but barreled forward with the conversation, having already assumed the answer.

"Oh! Or! You could disguise yourself, look like some local human, and then we could act like I've brought you back here as a Thrall." Titus smoothed his beard, pleased with himself and the idea.
"Hiding in plain sight....as long as you dont speak....that is, not many of the residents would even recognize you, correct?"

He spun to gauge the other vampire's opinion of the plan, and realized he might be asking too much of his companion.

"Ah. Mmm....sorry, you know how I get ahead of myself. Does that sound agreeable to you?"

Ah.

The gardener was right.

Someone would surely form an opinion if he came back with Rémi in tow and claimed he was a thrall....only to have him disappear the next day. Many someones would form many opinions. Before his mind could get carried away with the myriad, awful speculations, he waved the idea and the thoughts aside.
"No, no no no. Too right, a track record to consider. Besides," he continued with a short chuckle, "What sort of thrall would you make anyway, eh grandfather?"

A useful but thoroughly uncolorful plan came to mind.

"You could just change into a bat and I could keep you in my coat pocket until we arrived to the library." Titus held up a hand to stall any objections from the other man. "And thank you, yes, my coat IS clean. I might not be Parisian but I can at least keep my garments in good condition....as best as anyone can in this mud heap," he grumbled.


((omg i love slang accent normal language Remi, thank you for him))

Titus couldn't resist a grin when a smaller, fuzzier version of dour old Rémi landed on his shoulder. "Just to inform you, if you were wondering at all, surprisingly, you're actually less hairy like th- oh never mind, don't give me that look. Yeeesss good sir, right this way, right this way, your carriage awaits." Titus pulled aside a lapel of his outer coat to let the bat nestle securely into the inner pocket.
"And my word, no, I wouldn't squish you," he replied, still with a hint of humor in his voice. "You know how much I enjoy our little chats."

* * *

Stowaway now safely concealed, Titus simply had to make his way inside and to the library. An easy task. Most of the thralls and other residents were accustomed to his particular preferences when it came to buttons and thought nothing of the large vampire walking through the house with all his coats still fully done up.

The library was a handsome, symmetrical room with a high ceiling and dark bookcases. The heavy velvet curtains on the mullioned windows had been pulled back to allow in what little of the moonlight could filter through the clouds, but the room was otherwise well lit by two fireplaces.
Titus didn't use the descriptor "hodge-podge" lightly, but that's what the book selection was. To call it a “collection” implied an intentional selection or curation. The books in the Villa's library were the flotsam and jetsam that had been begged, borrowed, and stolen over the centuries. Given the circumstances, Titus concluded, a mess of literature was still better than no literature at all. One had to make do.

He slid the wooden doors shut behind him and addressed the bat in his coat.
"Feel free to take a look. At one point the books were organized by author, and correctly so, but someone's been through and rearranged them and sorted them out by language. Ugh." He grumbled under his breath in a third language on the idiocy of such an obviously inferior cataloging technique.

((the thought of lil bat remi poking his head out of titus’ coat is really stinking cute okay
REMI IF U WANT TO TRANSFORM INTO A HUMAN IN TITUS’ BIG STRONG BAMPIRE ARMS U W U THATS OKAY TOO U W U ))


Titus waved a hand and led the way across the room to one of the large bookcases. It was stuffed with an eclectic jumble of material: leather-bound academic volumes and paper catalogs, political prints and irrelevant white-papers, magazines, poems, anthologies; all kept in reasonably clean order by the Thralls and the occasional over-attentive vampire.

"It's almost impossible to keep these in any sort of consistent order," he huffed, and returned a heavy greying volume from a higher shelf down one row and over thirteen-fourteen-fifteen-sixteen books back to its matching collection.

"What are you looking for? Would you like me to recommend something?" Titus asked, hovering at Rémi's shoulder, anxious to know what sort of reader Rémi was. The other man had always struck Titus as being such a curiously rustic sort of vampire that he was honestly still surprised at the enthusiasm to make the trek to the library in the first place.


((also we’re getting to a dangerous point where I have no idea what would be published in french in the hundred-so years preceding 1925 hahah so if you’re looking for specifics I’m just gonna be like ?? books ?))

"Remigius Methuselah Senex Iratus d'Aubigné."

Titus stuck an arm out sideways between Rémi and the bookcases, blocking the other man from the books. He clucked his tongue.
"I did not bring you here in secret so that you could read. a manual. on gardening."
Titus' theatrical frown of disapproval went all the way from his furrowed forehead down to the tips of his mustaches. "No, we are going to find something suitable and engaging for you to put between your ears. Something to stave off the doldrums. We'd hate for you to end up like...hmm...how did you say….?" He never broke eye contact with Rémi, but it was clear he was trying not to crack a smile. "Like th' half 've y'all."

His impression of Rémi's accent was dangerously accurate.

The noise and motion caught Titus off-guard. At first, he thought it was some sort of irritated, nasal garble, the sort Rémi was accustomed to making and that drove everyone up the wall. But no, no, he was laughing. Rémi was laughing.

Something was wrong.

"Are you-"

Titus' arm and posture sagged slightly.

"What's the matter, what's so amusing?"

The gardener was fully occupied trying not to laugh, now. Was he laughing? At him??

"I certainly hope you're amused because you've realized just how ridiculous you sound," he said, more defensive than he needed to be for such a petty thing. "After all these years of listening to you complain, and you think I can't do your accent justice? Good sir, my impression was flawless."

"Yes, well, laughter sounds wrong coming out of yours," Titus pointed out, still somehow slightly offended. "Unnatural. I can't even imagine you laughing as a child. Hell, I can't even imagine you AS a child. I just assume you've always been a miserable old French man with a penchant for reading boring books." And he moved his hand away from the shelves to permit Rémi to browse the stacks again for whatever boring literature caught his myopic eye.

Titus busied himself with scanning the volumes on a neighboring bookcase, occasionally re-shelving a book or three according to an arrangement only he understood. He wasn't hovering, but he did want to remain nearby in case Remi desired advice on more suitable reading material.


((how to be friends: insult your friend. Wait for friend to find insult vastly amusing. Insult them again. End the conversation but make it clear you’re willing to continue talking but you’re equally as comfortable with silence.))

"Well! Since you asked, I-"

Titus cut himself off as he registered the entirety of what the other man had said to him. Had he heard correctly? Rémi had only learned to read after he turned?

He cocked his head at Rémi in interest and slight confusion, his hand paused halfway between re-shelving another book.
"Beg pardon, did you say you truly didn't read anything until after...? But....you're from France!" he exclaimed. "Everyone reads in France! Have you told me this before?"

Titus had always enjoyed Paris, especially during the rainy season, and everyone he knew....had known....there could read. And while he HAD been aware that in life Rémi had been a…a sort of grangier but this wasn't the Dark Ages! Despite appearances, Rémi wasn't that old. Granted, Titus hadn't seen much of the countryside when he'd been there and certainly hadn't made a habit of visiting farmlands to check on the literary of the locals, but it still seemed like a far-fetched fantasy....not knowing how to read in the 19th century.



((sorry gladys and claud, wherever you are, cause yall cant read))

"The....'south', oh, yes. I see, I see." Titus nodded as if that meant something to him or as if that cleared everything up. It didn't. "No, hmm, I don't believe I ever made it down that way," he elaborated. "Too close to the Spaniards, you understand. You may be right."

He wrinkled his nose. Titus clearly hadn't missed out on much by not venturing down towards Iberia. Perhaps in "the south" no one read and everyone talked like they had mud and expletives in their mouths at all times....how else to describe Rémi's accent? Titus would put money down that Rémi kept up his peculiar accent out of sheer spite instead of giving in and acclimating after all these years and pronouncing words like any civilized person.

Determined not to waste any more energy speculating on Rémi's dialect of choice, Titus plucked a small blue-bound book from the stacks (ninth from the left and fifth shelf down) with a large hand.

"Do you care for plays?" he asked.

"Ah-HA! Yes! Ballet!!" Titus agreed with no small amount of enthusiasm. He knew he hadn't formed the wrong opinion about Rémi, and thumped the other man's chest with the book in his hand to show his appreciation. "Don't have to read for those, no? Just watch! And listen! Yes yes yes, the ballet's the thing for you."

Pleased with his decision, he placed the book back in its rightful place amongst its peers and immediately began searching the shelves with a renewed energy.
"We should have a few periodicals in here, if I remember correctly! They're outdated by a few years, you understand, but one of them had quite the series of opinions on a ballet that opened in Paris. Seemed it was more of a scandalous affair than anythin- eureka! Here it is!"

He plucked a thin magazine from one of the lower shelves and started thumbing through it without waiting for Rémi to respond.

"Now now, yes, here it is! You'll get a thrill out of this, I'm sure. I won't say any more, lest I ruin the enjoyment of reading it yourself. Incredible, can you just imagine...." He scanned the review again even as he stood there promising to pass it along to his companion, and his face grew wistful. But the moment passed quickly, and Titus snapped the magazine shut abruptly with a flick of his wrist and held it out to Rémi with a grin.

"When we get out of this place, naše sreći nigde kraja, you and I will go see A Ballet," he promised.

Pleased to have made a successful recommendation, Titus proudly returned to searching through the bookcases. He clucked his tongue again at the other man.

"Well, don't sound too enthusiastic on my account, you old frog," he said, as much to the books as to Rémi. "It'll be splendid, you'll see. We'll find you something proper to wear, go out in style on opening night, and give all the ladies in the house fits." He plucked another book off the shelf, a well-thumbed piece of mindless but enjoyable fiction, and held it out to Rémi over his shoulder as he continued to look. "We'll have a dozen bouquets of lilies and chrysanthemums for the principals and the soloists and for any one else that catches our eye, and at the end of the performance we'll bring half the audience home with us, and we'll have music and conversation and company for the entire evening, so much that we won't even know what to do with ourselves." Another book, larger, older, an intriguing work of some philosophical nonfiction. "But of course you won't have eyes for them! Your arm will be employed all night escorting your charming patroness, who has missed you dearly all these years!"

Titus turned to look down at Rémi, yet another book in hand.

"Dear Matron Madeleine! Her prodigal son, returned!"