Beep beep beep beep.

Rosaendra woke with a start and rolled over in her bed. She stretched her arm out to slap the button that sat on top of her alarm clock on the desk across from her. The smell of incense still lingered within the room. She rolled back down to stare at her ceiling. What a dream, she told herself as she rubbed her temples to soothe a dehydration-caused headache. What. A. Dream.

Sweat soaked her pillow and the blanket that she never managed to toss on. She pushed herself off the bed with a groan and looked at the glowing green numbers on the alarm clock. 7:01. She still had 30 minutes to get ready and head to the bus stop down the street. The dream still played out in her mind. Maybe it was a result of working to translate that book last night.

She walked across the room, flipped the switch on her water filter, and filled a cup. She drank the cup, and then another and another until the burning in her throat calmed down. Perhaps it was a fever coming in. Perhaps she should call out for the day. No. She didn’t like it when the agents showed up at her house. She fished a vitamin tablet from its bottled and swallowed it with another glassful of water.

As she turned around, something in the middle on top of her bookshelf near her desk, caught her eye. She took a few steps across the room and picked up the first of the two items.

“When did I get these?”

It was a small knife, about the length of her hand from wrist to the tip of her middle finger while it was in the hollow, wooden sheathe. It sang as it slid out of its sheathe. The blade itself was made of the same, dark red wood; though it felt as hard as any metal. She tapped it with her fingernail, and it let out a dull ting. She slid it back into its sheathe and picked up the small pocketbook it sat on.

The binding of the book was a deep, deep crimson leather-like material that felt a lot like moleskin. Embedded in the middle was a symbol that she could recall seeing; though she couldn’t quite remember where, as if there was some kind of mental block in the way. In the middle of the circle was a six-point star that reminded her a little of a throwing star. Around that throwing, star was another circle, and around that was...a kind of shape she didn’t even know how to describe concisely.

Three arms bulged from it and formed a near shape that reminded her of the rose-bush maze that her mother and father had taken her to when she was a child. She had spent that afternoon crying after she got pricked by one of the thorns. Her father took her to a gazebo that overlooked the whole thing, while her brother and mother finished the maze. She shook that memory out of her head as she put the book down on her shelf.

“I probably just picked them up at some point yesterday,” Rosaendra told herself as she rubbed her temples.

She chased the thought that the dream might have been really out of her mind. There were no Gods. The Agents of the Anti-Cult division made sure to hammer that point home. There were no Gods, and magic only existed in her imagination.

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It took her fifteen minutes to shower and throw on a set of clean clothes; a pair of tight black jeans, and a red and black striped, long-sleeved button-up shirt, and a thin black hoodie. She ate a quick breakfast of a piece of jammed covered toast and picked up her umbrella, and her bag. She grabbed the bag she had carried with her since high school and shoved a few things into it — something for lunch, and the book she had been translating the night before. She stuffed it into the bag beneath an extra sweater and hurried for the door.

Curiosity was, perhaps, her greatest vice. She stopped in the entrance hall and groaned to curse herself before pivoting on the hill of her old Chucks and hurrying to the bookshelf to grab the small knife and the odd pocketbook. She shoved them under the same sweater and stormed out of her apartment. She locked the door on the way out and hurried down the stairs. As she passed through the last bit of cover, she opened up her umbrella and rushed across the parking lot to the bus stop on the other side. The rain danced lightly on the top of her black umbrella as she stood there and tucked into her shoulder. There were a few other people waiting there with her mostly students who attended the college she worked out of. She recognized a few of them as regulars to the library. She uncurled her earbuds and slipped them into her ears. There wasn’t any music playing, but at least it acted as a signal that she wasn’t up for a random conversation.

The bus pulled up a couple of minutes later; she knocked the rain off the top of her umbrella against the metallic chassis as she slid it closed and entered. She looked around for a second as the door hissed behind her, and the rush of cold air no longer nipped at her. Finding an empty seat next to a woman currently embroiled in conversation with a friend of hers, she sits down just in time for the bus to jolt forward and continue down the street.

Rosaendra drummed her fingers on the canvas bag in front of her in time with the imaginary song playing on her phone. Even as she sat there, her mind was filled with the thoughts of the dream she had the night before. Quiet whispers still echoed through the airlock of her earbuds as if she were still within those marble halls. What if it were all real? What if...

The bus jolted to a stop in front of the college. Had her mind been occupied for so long? She grabbed hold of the pole in front of her, and pulled herself up and quickly exited the bus. She hurried through the campus and to the library. It was 8:00 on the dot when she clocked in.

“Hey, Ashley.” She said as she pulled the buds from her ear and wrapped them around her knuckles.

“Hey, Rosie,” Ashley answered with a smile. They hugged one another as Rosaendra entered the staff room and set her bag down.

Ashley was a woman ten years Rosaendra’s senior and was her supervisor for the most part, as well as someone close to her. It was she who had gifted her the copy of the Legementon yesterday.

“Sleep well? How far did you get in cracking that book?” Ashley asked.

“I finished the first page,” Rosaendra answered with a yawn.

“Only a page? Why didn’t you just run it through a translator?”

Ashley drummed her fingers against her thigh.

“Hmm. My idea of fun?”

Ashley scoffed.

“If you say so,” Ashley said as they walked to the front desk. “So we’re getting a shipment in later today. Should be near the end of your shift, but can you do a bit of it when it comes in, so Laura doesn’t freak out?”

“Of course,” Rosaendra answered.

People already began to filter into the library, and quickly the thought of the dream and the strange book in her backpack was chased out by the chattering students asking for help, and the beeping of the barcode scanners.