As soon as Sophie got to the library building, she realized her mistake. What would she do with the flowers while she talked with the historian? Her face heated at her own stupidity. Oh well. It wasn’t like she could do anything about it now.

She pulled open the library doors to see that it was much emptier this early in the day. The woman from before was working at the counter, but Sophie didn’t see the younger man anywhere.

The woman glanced up at her, eyebrows raising in surprise over her thin-framed glasses. “Oh, you’re back! Did you want the next in the series? Romancing the Crafter, I think it’s called.”

Sophie nodded, pleased that the librarian remembered her. “I do! I really liked it. Although my – um, my roommate wasn’t as excited about the series. I don’t think she’s a romance reader. She thought it was boring.”

The woman laughed and stood up, shuffling around the desk. “Oh? What kinds of things is she interested in?”

Sophie thought about that for a moment and couldn’t come up with a single thing. “Well… I'm honestly not sure. Lately she’s been very interested in this plant we found, but I don’t think botany is necessarily one of her interests…”

The librarian nodded thoughtfully. “She’s a shrine spirit, right?”

Sophie jolted with surprise at the question. “Oh! Yes, I mean –”

The librarian waved a hand at her. “Oh, it’s okay. You don’t have to explain. We get all types here.”

Sophie nodded, and the librarian seemed to muse to herself for a bit. “Hmmm, and she’s been there for a while. Quite a long while, if rumors are to be trusted. Perhaps she’d like to hear tales of other lands? But something exciting –” The librarian nodded to herself.

“Here,” she said finally. “Why don’t you follow me, dear? You can leave your flowers on the desk if you’d like.”

“Thank you!” Sophie set the flowers down carefully on the circulation desk and followed the librarian into the stacks.

First, the librarian stopped in the location where Sophie had found Taming the Ice Mage previously, and pulled out two books from the shelf. She held them out to Sophie. “Here are the next two in the series. You read the first one so quickly, you might as well check out both.” She winked.

Sophie had to laugh in agreement. “Okay.”

Then the librarian wandered over to a different section, not too far from the first and began running her finger along the spines of the books. Sophie could see it now – the librarian was doing something with mana. She could see a little trail of it following along at her fingertip.

“Aha!” The librarian finally said and pulled a book out from the stack.

Sophie glanced down at the cover. “The Wicked Ruins?” she read aloud. “What is this one? An adventure story?”

The librarian chuckled. “Something like that,” she said mysteriously. “If your roommate finds romance boring and has been stuck in the shrine for most of her existence, maybe she’ll like something like this instead.” She tapped on the cover.

Sophie was willing to give it a shot. “Thank you.”

“It’s no trouble at all!”

The librarian led Sophie back to the circulation desk, and Sophie set the books down on the counter. She pulled the copy of Taming the Ice Mage out of her bag and handed it over to the woman.

“Is that all for you today?” the librarian asked as she accepted the book and did something with mana to it. She then began to do something similar to the three new books Sophie was going to borrow.

Sophie nearly nodded, entranced by the ability to see that the librarian was using mana before she realized – right! The historian! Her whole reason for coming to the library in the first place.

“Oh!” she said. “Um, actually, I’d like to meet with the historian. If he’s in today…”

The woman slid the stack of books over to Sophie. “Oh, Ryland? Sure, he’s just upstairs with Oliver. Would you like me to show you there?”

Sophie didn’t recognize either of the names, but she slid the three library books into her bag and shook her head. “Thanks! But that’s okay – I can find my way up there. Thanks again for the recommendations. I’ll let you know what my roommate thinks.”

The librarian smiled fondly at her and waved her towards the stairs. “Of course, dear. Head on up, then. You’re welcome to leave the flowers here as long as you’d like.”

Sophie worked her way through the stacks on the first floor and up the stairs to the second. She found the owlish librarian from her previous library visit hovering over one of the work tables, frowning down at the table’s occupant. “This isn’t your personal library,” he complained.

There were books scattered everywhere across the top of the table, some with bits of paper stuck into them at odds and ends, and the other man at the table just grinned up at the librarian. “No one else is even up here today. Besides, you’ll clean them up for me, right?”

The librarian scowled, and the other man just laughed, leaning back in his chair.

“Um,” Sophie piped up, and two similar pairs of light blue eyes turned towards her. “Sorry to interrupt. Is the historian here today?”

“Whoops, I guess there was someone up here,” the man at the table replied, and then righted his chair with a sheepish grin. “That’ll be me. Ryland at your service.”

Sophie stared at him for a moment – he did not fit her picture of a town historian at all. He was quite fit with messy red-brown hair, and he was probably only a handful of years or so older than her. Besides that, he was unfairly attractive. In fact, he looked more like he belonged on the cover of one of the romance novels she had rented. Taming the Ice Mage, indeed.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Oh,” she replied. She had been expecting someone quite a bit older and perhaps a bit more serious… She glanced at the librarian for confirmation, not sure if it might be some sort of prank.

The librarian sighed. “Yes, he really is the town historian. Unfortunately. I’m Oliver by the way. And sorry about the mess.” He began piling a few of the books into a neat corner, and the historian scrambled to grab one back.

“Hey! I’m still using those.”

“You’re obsessing,” Oliver replied. “Why don’t you help the nice shrine priestess, instead?”

Ryland perked up at the mention of Sophie’s class. “A shrine priestess?”

Sophie nodded cautiously. “Ah, yes – I was actually hoping to learn more about the history behind the town’s shrine.”

“Dude, I’ve been meaning to go up there ever since Garrick finally got his Bard class, but I totally forgot.”

Oliver rolled his eyes at the excuse. “He’s been obsessing again,” he explained, repeating his earlier complaint. “Over some ice cave on the Northern Islands, of all things.”

Sophie nodded along as if she understood what Oliver had said, but she really, really didn’t.

Ryland laughed and reached up to ruffle his hand through Oliver’s hair. “It’s interesting! That’s what history’s all about, man.”

Oliver ducked, grimacing. “Ugh, don’t do that. I’m at my job.”

“You and me both,” Ryland grinned.

Sophie had to stifle a laugh. They surely must be brothers, she decided. They looked so similar, and they reminded her a bit of her cousins.

“There’s no need to rush to visit the shrine,” Sophie reassured him. “You already have your class, right?”

Ryland shrugged. “I do, but I think it’s probably my duty or something. You know, as the town historian? A momentous event like a new shrine priestess is something I need to make note of. In fact, I’ll probably need to write something about it for future volumes of the town's history.”

Sophie supposed that might be fair. “Do you have other volumes of history that mention the shrine then?”

Ryland frowned at the question, looking a bit more serious than he had previously. “Honestly, no. We really don’t have much in the way of history on that shrine. It’s been a bit of a mystery over the years. Here – just a second.”

He hopped up and disappeared into the library stacks leaving Sophie and Oliver behind. Sophie gave Oliver a questioning glance, but the other man just shrugged.

“I’m not interrupting, am I?” Sophie asked while Ryland was gone.

Oliver shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, I’m going to head back down to the circulation desk while you keep him entertained.”

Sophie choked on a laugh. “Oh, alright,” she said, and she pulled out one of the chairs at the table to sit down as she waited. Ryland appeared a few moments later, after Oliver had already gone.

“Here it is!” Ryland held up a heavy book that looked like one of the volumes Oliver had shown Sophie previously.

“We do have a few records starting right after the Mage Wars ended.” He set the volume down on the table with a thud and flipped through the pages. “The shrine priestess at the time had been sent out on many quests to deal with corrupted mana pools that were popping up around the area, but at some point – and this is where it gets fuzzy – she went missing. Several adventurer groups were sent out to find her in the following years, but nothing ever came of it.”

“What about Elowen? I mean – the shrine spirit?”

Ryland shook his head. “That’s perhaps the biggest mystery of all. People from town went to the shrine many times looking for any signs of her, but she must have already faded by then. It’s quite unheard of that she would have survived this long in such a state. So she’s really still out there?”

Sophie nodded. “She is. Although, she doesn’t seem to retain many of her memories.” Sophie felt a little odd admitting this to a practical stranger – almost as if she was giving away one of Elowen’s secrets.

Ryland frowned sympathetically. “I’m no expert on that sort of thing, but it’s not surprising.”

“There aren’t any sketches of the shrine? Or perhaps of Elowen and the former shrine priestess?”

Ryland shook his head. “Not in this library, at least. I’m sure there was something like that in the past. Perhaps an entire volume dedicated to the shrine itself. But if so, it was lost.”

He flipped through a few more pages of the history book and settled back on the original page. “That’s about all there is in this volume at least. We do have a Caulis newspaper collection, but the paper only started in the last few decades, so I doubt there’s anything of note about the shrine in it. I’d be happy to look through some other texts for you, though. It’s possible there’s a mention of it elsewhere – volumes of history from other shrines or general overviews of the shrines on this continent.”

Sophie stared down at the text. It was only a paragraph or two – all that remained of Rosalie’s life with Elowen, and even Elowen herself didn’t seem to remember much of it. “Ah, okay,” she said. “That would be great, if you really don’t mind.”

Ryland pushed the volume aside, crowding a few other books that were precariously piled near the corner of the table. “Any time,” he replied. “Just stop by again in a week or so, or maybe I’ll head up to the shrine myself if I find anything interesting.”

Sophie thanked him and headed back down to the circulation desk to pick up her flowers. She didn’t even have it in her to stop by the bakery today. Instead, she took her time walking back to the shrine, thinking about the past.

She tried not to feel too discouraged about the lack of information at the library. It had seemed unlikely that she’d find anything useful anyway, but she had still hoped…

At least she had the florist’s visit to look forward to tomorrow and there was still Mana Sense. It lit up all of the stones along the path as she walked. A few were suspiciously low. Had the little wyvern been siphoning mana from them?

She stopped at the ones that were less bright than the others and lit them up again with her own mana, practicing her distance channeling. It seemed that the level up had helped with that as well.

When she got back to the shrine, Elowen was waiting in the entryway eagerly. “Flowers?” she asked, when she saw the bouquet. “Did you see the florist, then? What about the plant? Did you find out what it is?”

Sophie laughed at the barrage of questions and pulled her bag off her shoulder as she made her way back to the kitchen area. “I did stop by the florist, but she needs to take a look at it in person, apparently.”

Sophie set the bouquet of flowers on the counter as she rummaged around in the cabinets to find the vase she had seen. She even had a little water left from her trip to the well this morning, so she filled the vase with it and stuck the flowers in as Elowen watched impatiently.

“But when?” Elowen asked. She seemed more invested in the plant situation now than Sophie was. Sophie supposed it made sense, given that strange moment in the greenhouse, when Elowen seemed to have remembered something – even if it was something small.

She had remembered about the windows on the ceiling. Perhaps learning more about the plants would jog more of her memories.

“She’ll be by tomorrow,” Sophie promised. “Early, apparently, so you’re going to have to wake me up at sunrise.”

Elowen spun around in happiness. “Of course!’ She clapped her hands together. “I can’t wait!”

Sophie smiled at Elowen’s obvious excitement as she set the vase on the table. The flowers definitely brightened the place up a bit. With her new Mana Sense, she could even see what Briony had mentioned the last time she was here – that there were traces of mana in everything around them. Small traces, but there all the same.

“I’ll make some lunch, and then let’s work on cleaning up the courtyard a bit more. We need to prepare for Mabel’s visit tomorrow.”

“Humans need so much food,” Elowen complained, but she sounded so happy that Sophie could only laugh.