A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Seventeen - Lady Lessons

One evening a wandering thought came back to me while Bofur, Baldur, Dori and I were at dinner. I dropped my spoon and asked, “Are there any books in the library in this language?” Surely there were. The dwarves seemed to primarily speak in this language, even when those who didn’t know their language weren’t around.

“’Course there are,” said Baldur. “We’ve got books in most of the known languages.”

I grinned. “Any in Elvish?”

Bofur snorted. “As if. Why should anyone here want to know that language?”

“How do I check out books?”

It was Dori who answered me this time. “You simply have to ask, if you can’t find what you’re looking for. Take it to the desk and they’ll take your name and the name of the books you choose. Then return them when you’re finished. If you’ve got them out too long they’ll ask for them back so other people can read them.”

“And I can do this?”

“Of course. Well you might need a note from Bofur since you’re—where are you going?”

I had jumped up and immediately trotted toward the door, wondering if I’d be able to find the library again since it had been over a year since I’d last seen it. “I wanna go to the library.”

“Mabyn, at least wait until you’ve finished eating!” Bofur implored, while Dori shook his head into his hands and Baldur chuckled.

I paused, back to the door. “But I’m not hungry anymore!”

He twitched his fingers. “Come on, you’re still too skinny for my peace of mind. The books aren’t going anywhere.”

I heaved a dramatic sigh and slumped back to the table.

Baldur patted me heartily on the shoulder. “This way you’ll have the energy to stay up all night and read.”

“I suppose that’s true. I wouldn’t want to collapse under all the taxing effort of moving my eyeballs across a page.” I nodded and picked another roll.

After supper though I darted right off for the library though, embarking on several wrong turns in the process but everyone who met me was glad to turn me back around.

The library was in far better condition than it had been when last I’d visited. The shelves that had overturned had been righted, all of the books returned to the shelves, and everything gleamed with newness. As was intended for libraries, it was full of people too. They laughed as they perused the monument-sized shelves and slid along wheeled ladders attached in useful places. My first instinct besides grabbing the few books I could reach was to climb a ladder and slide back and forth on it, but I was pretty sure the librarians could choose to ignore my permissive note from Bofur if I did that, so I restrained myself.

“Excuse me,” I said scampering up to the desk. “But could you show me for the books written in this language?”

The woman looked up from her sorting with a chortle. “That half, honey.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Oh.” That was at least nine shelves, all of which were absurdly tall and long. “Could you help me find something just for pleasure reading?”

“Fiction or non-fiction?”

“Both?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Think you can help me narrow it down, lass? There’s a lot to choose from.”

“History books? And children’s stories, maybe?” I figured those would be good places to start: history and culture.

As we walked along and she pointed or pulled out books she thought would best please my vague requests, and if I saw an intriguing title I whisked that off the shelf too. Her eyes widened when she saw me staggering along behind her with a stack of books clutched in my arms. I grinned at her from just above my stack. “Is there a limit to how many I can take?”