David

Under the stark, unflattering, fluorescent light from the tubes that lit the library, David noticed that Alice's nails were cracked and chipped. There was still some nail polish that she had neither bothered to remove nor repaint, but in spite of all this, her nails still shone as they danced over the strings. The instrument itself was quite crude. Different pieces of it were clearly made of different types of wood. The true madness was that it didn't look like the wood had ever been processed in any way.

Alice looked at the instrument with such love that David wondered if she'd built it herself by nailing together a bunch of planks bought from a home improvement store.

"The song I'm going to play for you today has a strong claim to being the most well known composition in the entire guqin canon." She began tuning the final strings.

"This song was played only once by its composer, as his final act before his execution. History is unclear on why he was executed, but we know that his work on Daoism was, in his lifetime, read as far east as Japan and as far west as Rome. The majority of his work was critical of the state religion at the time, Confucianism."

Alice played two notes. David would have easily believed she was still tuning the instrument if there wasn't a sudden strain of concentration visible on her brow.

"Ji Kang was said to have introduced this song as the story of the assassination of an Emperor in the dynasty preceding his. But I am unable to believe that this isn't a song about love and about lost opportunities."

She plucked at a string, an obvious answer and response to those two first notes.

"Its name is Guangling San."

David's first thought was that the story made the song a lot more interesting than it would have been had Alice just performed it. This impression was overtaken by a certain awe. David had never seen anyone play a guqin before in his life but it was a string instrument, and all the hard parts of playing string instruments were here - the telltale quiver in the hands holding down the strings like that of a violinist's, the precise way her fingers found the notes.

It was beyond inconceivable that she could have only picked up this instrument recently. David sat on this thought for a few moments, then decided that he wasn't qualified to have an opinion at all. He'd never seen this instrument before.

She really was so good though.

David decided that Alice was right. There was no way this wasn't a love song, no matter how much he was being influenced by Alice's facial expressions as she played.

As the song wound down to its closing notes, Alice looked absolutely exhausted.

"Thanks for listening, everyone," Alice mumbled, then realized no one had heard her, so she said it again - louder.

The clapping was almost enthusiastic from the audience and one of the old men at the other end of the library stood up and clapped as well, giving Alice a bright smile.

David tried to help Alice stuff her guqin back into the case with no success. After a quiet but intense struggle with the case which lasted nearly a minute, he realized that the instrument was facing the wrong way. He turned to Alice, expecting her to be rolling her eyes at him but her cheek was resting against her knuckles, propped up by her elbow which dug into the table.

Her eyes were closed. It was a classic trick for sleeping in class when a teacher couldn't see your face but would be able to see your head on the desk.

The room was suddenly lit in blue relief by the proximity of a lightning strike. The sound followed immediately, a roaring crash.

The remaining member of the audience who hadn't left, owing to what David assumed were incredibly important text messages, jerked upwards, nearly dropping his phone. "Jesus Christ!" He stared outside. "How close was that one?"

There was the faint sound of a car alarm from a vehicle parked outside of the window. David shrugged. "Pretty close."

The rain began pouring in earnest, unlike the drizzles and occasional downpours they'd come to expect from the last few weeks. A sense of uneasiness overtook him suddenly and he found himself peering from window to window, which lined the walls on the east side of the library, behind the stage.

A black shape collided with a tree outside another window. The wind had ripped someone's umbrella out of their hands. David stared at the dollar store umbrella Alice had brought along. Alice had left it on her seat before she'd gone up to play. It'd not been used before but David doubted its chances against the wind, which was not exactly howling but it was definitely not silent.

It hit him suddenly. The thunder had been incredibly loud - his ears were still ringing, but Alice still hadn't woken up.

David scowled. The sense of uneasiness had been abated somewhat but there was now a real worry of whether or not Alice was okay. He assumed she'd probably not slept for at least a night and could possibly need some water or food.

He moved to shake her, then realized a shadow had fallen over them.

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"Do not wake her, young man. She seems tired."

It was one of the old Italian men, the one who had stood and clapped from across the room. He was wearing a pair of severe looking steel rimmed spectacles, which were attached to a cord around his neck to prevent him from losing them if he ever dropped them. David decided that wearing glasses on a necklace must be the crown jewel of old age, then immediately felt bad when he imagined the man losing his glasses.

David could not place the man's age. He wondered if the man were even Italian - it was an assumption he'd made based on the neighborhood. His face was discolored, if not yet sallow, and covered with liver spots. The old man had a noticeable limp from the way he listed to the right even while standing still. Despite his age and obvious frailty, the old man's suit (which must have been a stylish color during a different era) and shirt were immaculate and he still wore cufflinks.

The other men who he'd been sitting at a table with had left already, as had most of the other people in the library. The librarian on duty was as still and silent as ever. In fact, the only proof of the librarian's existence was that he was reading and was still turning the pages to his book.

In the man's hand was a paperback book which he had stuck his index finger in to keep track of his page.

"She was asleep before the thunder," David finally said. "It didn't wake her up."

The old man looked concerned and put his book down so he could place both palms on the table to lean forward to examine her. He nodded after a few seconds.

"You might want to move her so she doesn't wake with a fist shaped bruise on her face, young man. She does appear to just be sleeping but do try not to wake her."

David nodded and decided that his best try would be to ease her slowly into folding her arms on the table and resting her head on her arms. Amusingly, this was how most of them slept in class, in the back of the room when they could not be seen by the teacher at all.

She refused to budge. Had she been napping in this way in class under more normal circumstances, he probably would have woken her already.

He looked up at the old man, who seemed concerned now. The man looked out the window. The storm had not abated at all, and there was the sound of distant thunder again.

"I must take my leave before the storm worsens," the old man said. "You might want to wait out the storm in here. It is safe here, most Libraries are."

The sense of peculiarity returned to David. "Wouldn't it be better if you waited out the storm too?"

The old man smiled and the beginning of a raspy wheeze broke through. It was a warm laugh, but a tired one. "Several blocks might be a long walk in a storm like this but it is less of a risk than forgoing my insulin shot.”

He stared at the still darkening sky with heady distaste. “And it'll be one less person to invite in that kind of happiness."

David blinked, unsure as to what the man meant. The old man was staring out of the windows, with a grimace. It was clear that he was not thrilled with the prospect of walking into the storm.

"I must say, young man, I don't particularly enjoy old age.” The old man paused. “I hope your young friend will be okay. I don't remember how long it has been since I've heard that song and I'm sure this is the best I've heard it played."

The man left quietly. After the doors to the library closed, only David, Alice and the librarian remained. The librarian eyed the door.

David jumped up with a start and dashed over to the checkout desk. His footsteps echoed through the empty library and he immediately stopped, ashamed. He should know better.

"Please don't run around. You know better."

David nodded quickly then drew in a deep breath. "You can't close the library," David all but shouted, then immediately wondered what had possessed him to say that.

The librarian, who David finally remembered was named Mr. Watterson after seeing his name and face on the lanyard, stared at him, confused.

"You've been coming to the library for almost as many years as I've worked here. You know we close at nine and will remain open in case of the emergencies listed in the rulebook found on the main website.”

Mr. Watterson lowered his book slightly then nodded very slightly. “If tropical storms aren't listed as a valid emergency, make sure I don't hear that from you," said Mr. Watterson.

"Thanks," David said, meaning it. He couldn’t believe he didn’t recognize Mr. Watterson.

The librarian peered over his shoulder at Alice, with more concern than before. "If she's in serious trouble you should call an ambulance," he warned.

David nodded, completely certain that he looked more confident than he felt about Alice.

As he walked back to the table where Alice still slept, there was another peal of thunder, closer this time. David hoped it wouldn't come any closer. He looked at Alice and considered the consequences of a world where his instinct to wait for Alice to wake up were completely off base and every second he waited was making the situation worse.

He grit his teeth. There was more thunder and it was closer again. He dragged a chair over to the table so he could sit and realized that the old man had forgotten his book.

Not only was the font the publisher had chosen for the cover was atrocious, but the title was in another language. He vaguely recognized the author was a philosopher but he didn't even attempt to pronounce the name. It had far too many consonants. David liked to consider himself a budding polyglot - outside of the two languages he'd learned as a kid - English and Chinese, he'd had passing fluency in a few of the languages spoken by the various immigrant communities in the neighborhood. None of them seemed even close to the language here.

He opened the book and it naturally fell to the page which the old man had held the book open. The book had clearly been read many times. A quick flip confirmed that there were even some chapters in which someone had written notes, most of them in the form of an author, a title and a page number. Some authors were abbreviated and some titles were as well.

The page the old man was reading had an open bracket on a paragraph as the only thing of note. There were no written notes in the margin. David assumed that whoever had written in the margins either gave up on the chapter or decided that it wasn't of note after all. He looked at the paragraph.

"Time is a flat circle. Everything we have done or will do we will do over and over and over again- forever."

David frowned, certain that he'd seen that quote before, then realized that it was an achievement in a video game, though he definitely didn’t remember which one it had been. He flipped to the first few pages of the book and discovered that the original publication date was in the nineteenth century.

"I guess this is where the game devs got it from."

David turned his attention to Alice. She hadn't moved at all, though she was breathing. If he'd not tried to wake her or move her, he wouldn't have believed anything was wrong at all.

"Hear that, Alice? Time is a flat circle. That means you can always sleep later."

The Lightning struck the Library.