WHAT: Edwin finds an intruder eating his books and is unimpressed WHERE: Sutton Cottage library WHEN: Before the Darkness plot WARNINGS: Nah STATUS: Complete
Edwin tried not to think too much of the dragon that had come to live in Sutton Cottage. He didn’t think he would have thought of it very much in general – Temeraire was a delight, who enjoyed reading books and would never consider eating them – except that Chime seemed to be a pest.
Briar had, so far, managed to keep the dragon in his room, and as the weeks went by without any harm coming to his books, Edwin had stopped thinking of it so much. And so, Chime was the furthest thing from his mind when he walked into the library that morning, and reading old tome on the thaumaturgical properties of trees in the Middle Ages as he walked.
It was he was just about to get settled at his usual perch in the window when he first heard it: the sound of paper tearing, followed by the sound of chewing and Edwin, not quite realizing what he was hearing yet, carefully set his book down at his seat and went to investigate.
When he found Chime, happily chewing away at a book on The Genealogy of Magical Families in Great Britain 1302 - 1542 he let out a wordless cry.
“Stop it!” Edwin cried, stomping on the floor. The floor boards under the small dragon tilted up, sharply, in an attempt to distract the dragon from its feast. Even as he stomped, he was carefully cradling, one-handed, and a moment later the poker from the cool fireplace flew into his hand. Even that small spell had drained him, but he wasn’t expecting to need to cast much more.
“Briar!” he called over his shoulder. Edwin’s voice wouldn’t carry throughout the entire house, but his intent would; if Briar was home, Sutton Cottage would let Briar know, one way or another – through flickering lights or lifting floorboards, or through the language of flowers – that Edwin needed him.
Briar had dozed off with a book - borrowed, perhaps ironically, from the same library - open on his lap, a lapse in his usually quite vigilant routine which now included keeping an eye on the wanton glass dragon in case of mischief. For the most part she was sated; in fact he had been wondering if he was overfeeding her in his attempts to keep her still and quiet. She’d always been Tris’s responsibility before, and he was really making up his dragon-keeping methods as he went along.
It was the shakkan that woke him from its pride of place on the wide windowsill. His miniature tree, which was over a century old but had been his to shape and tend for the last eight or nine years, had already become quite attuned to whatever magic fed the place. He realised right away what must have happened, and ran cursing out of his room and in the direction of all the commotion.
“Chime!” he exclaimed through his teeth, on entering the library and seeing the situation; he hurried quickly to put himself between the dragon and Edwin’s poker. “Don’t,” he said quickly, breathlessly, and then, to make it clear it was Edwin’s safety he was concerned for and not the sentient lump of glass that was trying to ruin his life, added, “she can get real nasty when people try to break her - let me.” He dug in his pocket for the emergency stash of antimony he’d been carrying in there. “You don’t even like paper, you stupid beast,” he muttered, “come here, have this, c’mon.”
She let out a dissatisfied tinkling noise and scratched at what remained of the book; apparently there was some gold or something inlaid into the spine which she found quite delectable, and if Briar thought he could bribe her with boring old antimony he was wrong.
“I wasn’t going to break her,” Edwin said, a little indignant. He’d only meant to shove her away without actually getting close enough that she could nip at his fingers. He looked at the poker again though, and realized, belatedly, how it must have looked, and set it aside.
“I cannot express strongly enough, Briar, how unacceptable this is,” he said, crossing his arms. Edwin rarely got angry, or at least, rarely expressed it, but that changed when it was his books that were in danger. He cringed as she clawed more at the book, somehow, barely, restraining the urge to leap forward and pull it from her claws. “Can’t you, I don’t know, leash her or something?”
“You seen her teeth?” Briar asked incredulously, his childhood street accent slipping out with his irritation. “She eats metal, you think she can’t snap through a leash?” He’d grabbed his mage kit on the way out of his room, out of habit more than anything else, but he was glad of it now. He pulled out a yellow cloth ball and tossed it threateningly from side to side, glaring at the dragon. “Don’t make me do it, Chime,” he said, in a voice he hoped was something like the one Tris used when she was being terrifying. He could intimidate people, when they knew who he was and what he could do, but the stupid glass dragon was something else entirely. He didn’t want to use magic on her, mainly because she would be extremely annoyed when he eventually had to let her out of it. He liked his face, he didn’t need it stabbed all over with glass needles.
Chime seemed to decide that it wasn’t worth trying her luck against Briar’s entangling vines; she’d seen enough of his magic by this point to know how it worked. She gave an irritated chirrip and pecked once more at the poor book before taking off and coming to land on his shoulder. Briar begrudgingly gave her a piece of the antimony; he didn’t know if it was a good idea to reward her for not coming away immediately, but he wasn’t exactly an expert on normal animals, let alone magical ones. She gulped it down and burped up a flame with silver and gold flecked throughout, some of which was surely a product of whatever she’d found to nibble on in the library. He caught it with his quick hands before it could smash on the floor and make even more of a mess. “Sorry,” he said, catching his breath and grimacing back at Edwin. “She must have got bored.”
“I’m quite sure making a magical leash wouldn’t be too difficult,” Edwin huffed – he could likely manage it, if he tried. But he’d not press the matter. Once the small dragon was lured away from the book, he dashed to it, turning what remained of the pages with a critical eye though he could have said with relative confidence from where he’d been standing that the book was unsalvageable.
At least, he thought wryly, it was of no great importance here in Vallo. It was of extremely limited use back home, too. It was, on the other hand, extraordinarily rare, gold gilt and all – it would be impossible to replace here, might have even been impossible back home.
“Fuck,” he sighed, closed it, and stroked the cover in apology. He tried to swallow his anger; Briar hadn’t wanted the dragon any more than Edwin did. He couldn’t very well blame him, when it had been the whims of Vallo. “Does she need more stimulation?” he asked after a moment. “Some sort of… dragon toy, or something?”
If a cat clawed your furniture or climbed your curtains when you failed to provide it with anything more suitable, then it was your own fault. Edwin tried to remind himself of that.
Briar had never heard Edwin swear before. He hoped he wasn’t going to lose his job; he quite liked it, after all. “I wish I knew,” He muttered, glaring around at the little creature. “I lived with her for a few months - before I came here - but that doesn’t mean much. She’s not my dragon.” Chime nipped his ear, as if to say, bloody right. He peered over at the book Chime had so cheerfully torn up. “Can I have a look?” he asked. “I mean, no promises, but if she didn’t eat the actual pages…”
Edwin hesitated a moment, glancing at the book mournfully, and then handed it over. Fixing it with magic wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility, though it would likely have taken Edwin days if he were to attempt it.
“Perhaps we might try building something, then,” Edwin said, shooting the dragon a glare, but his eyebrows were furrowed in a way that spoke more to consideration than any real anger. “Something with lots of games for her to puzzle through. There’s no harm in trying it, at least.”
“A dragon obstacle course?” Briar grinned in amusement at the idea. “It might even work, if there were food rewards.” He was going to have to up the price of her flames and try to buy her some sapphires, or something; that might even keep her occupied for a while. He put the book on a table and turned the pages gingerly. They were ripped to shreds in places but not chewed up; there wasn’t much he could do about the ink, but paper tended to want to fit back together the way it had been. He reached out with his magic and woke just the tiniest spark within the pages, an echo of the trees they once had been. The hardest part was not letting them sprout, which they immediately wanted to do; he coaxed instead the tiny fibres to knit back together, one page at a time. It took longer than he had anticipated; he probably should have eaten first, or at least told Edwin not to wait, but he felt bad about the book. He liked books, which was something no one ever expected from a former street rat who hadn’t even known the alphabet until the age of ten.
When he was done, the pages were readable, some with a bit of a jagged line to show where they had been torn, but mostly whole again. There was nothing he could do about the gilt inlay, and despite his best efforts the cover had sprouted a couple of stubborn buds. He made a face at them; he didn’t like reversing growth, but they could always be trimmed off. He was sweating when he handed the book back. “Sorry,” he said again.
Even if Briar had told Edwin not to wait, Edwin likely wouldn’t have listened. It was fascinating watching Briar work, seeing how his magic worked. He’d not have expected Briar’s magic to work on plants that were so long dead, and pressed into other work, and he had to bite his tongue to stop himself from asking Briar questions while his concentration was needed.
Besides, someone had to make sure that Chime stayed away from the rest of the books while Briar worked his magic.
Once Briar was finished though, all holds were off. Edwin took the book, running his fingers tenderly over the cover. “Will these buds continue to grow?” he asked, mystified, as his fingers bounced over them. He may as well have not heard Briar’s apology for all the attention he paid to it. He opened the book, studying the repaired pages as he spoke. “Does your magic work on all plant fibre? If I tore my cotton trousers, could you mend them again for me? Or erasers? Could you bond the shavings of a used eraser back together, or would your magic not work as well on the sap of a plant?”
Briar blinked a bit in the face of this barrage of questions; his mind was still half caught up in complex magic and it took him a minute or two to catch up. “Er…” he said, gathering himself - “the buds, probably not, it’s still dead wood, it needs magic to grow, right? Um, trousers yes, so long as it’s pure cotton and not the synthetic stuff people here like so much. And it wouldn’t be a neat job, nei - either. I don’t know about erasers but the idea makes my head hurt a bit.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s complicated, right? It’s not normal plant magic. I probably wouldn’t be able to do stuff like that at all if it weren’t for Sandry.”
Edwin knew that he should give Briar a chance to rest after he’d performed such complicated magic. Edwin didn’t have enough magic to pull something like this off, but if he had, it likely would have left him exhausted for at least a day, and he could see the sweat beading on his skin.
He couldn’t help himself though. “Sandry, that’s your sister, right? The…” his brows furrowed, “the thread mage? Did she teach you then? Was this a form of thread magic?”
That was certainly interesting, and he ran his fingers over one of the pages again, to see if the scars were palpable as well as visible.
“Not exactly.” Briar hesitated. It was hard enough to explain back home, where most people had at least a basic understanding of what ambient magic was.
“I have three sisters, right? Well, foster sisters. We’re all ambient mages and we all got sent to Winding Circle temple for training, except we were the problem ones who couldn’t get along in temple dorms so we had to live in a cottage off the grounds… anyway. When we were kids we got stuck under Winding Circle in a cave during an earthquake. We barely knew how to do any magic back then, but Sandry - the thread witch - she figured out a way to actually spin our magic together, to make us stronger until we got dug out. There were… some side effects.” He shrugged. “We’re mostly separated again now, but our magic still works differently than anyone else’s. I can hold little bits of lightning without much more than a sting. Daja can weave with fire and make living trees out of metal. Tris can make ropes out of moving air and shift storms, and she can see images on the winds - that’s probably just her, though, she’s always been a bit scary.” He grinned wistfully. “She’d love it here,” he added, motioning around the library. “Tris. She’s the one who taught me to read in the first place - mean as she is, she’s a good teacher. And she picks up strays like you wouldn’t believe,” he said, giving Chime another meaningful look. The dragon trilled at him. She missed Tris too, he thought, and dared to give her a little pat just behind her tiny horns.
Like a hydra, Briar would answer one question only for ten more to crop up in its stead. Edwin didn’t even know where to begin. He wished he had a pad of paper and a pencil so he could jot them all down.
He managed, somehow, to swallow them, making a metal note to ask Briar about them sometime when he hadn’t just performed extensive, complicated magic. “She’ll be welcome here, should she ever come,” Edwin promised him. “Thank you for helping repair the book. Though, I suppose we ought to get the little demon out of here before it decides it would like to sample the Huxley. Are you hungry at all?”
“I could eat,” Briar said, practically on automatic. He offered Chime another metal filing from his pocket, just in case, but she seemed to be satisfied at last, her wings only bristling a little in Edwin’s direction. “What’s a Huxley?” he asked as they made their way back out of the library and made sure the doors were firmly closed this time.