***
I took up residence in a library
(of course she did)
and I took up writing
(of course she did)
but mostly I took up
the chore
these mountain dragons never bothered with
in their winding, basalt vaults:
I digitized
volumes
before they decayed
of age.
Though first I had to learn
their sorting system,
rudimentarily speaking,
since they stacked shelves
by age
and then title
and I don’t have the brain
to remember what date
Seven Singing Satkas
or Biologic Discoveries of Volcanic Kingdoms
arrived at the library.
But once I got the gist of it,
I built a magic scanner,
and after I set up the system
on computers
run by runes
then entered a few samples,
I pulled these pages
from silver flames
where I kept them
(with dozens of textbooks
including one that I wrote myself
to organize my tree-or-fish-to-people spells)
and I scanned them up too,
so if anyone ever asks
after the strings of fate
or human witches in the realm of mountain dragons
and comes searching
on the computers in the basalt vaults
they can find out
the truth.
Clarissa,
you’re horribly long gone now,
but at least
a ton of dragons
will read your name.
And every time
they enter the
Cave Library And Records Independent Search System Arrangement
they’ll know
who it’s named for.
Just kidding,
it’s not called that,
I wanted the name to stick,
but couldn’t think of a convincing enough “A”
for the head librarians to let it stay
so
my digitizing system
got called
Digital System of the Mountain Vaults.
But in my head,
I sometimes call it the CLARISSA
while I’m scanning in books
from this library’s third and fourth centuries
and regardless,
some people will know your name
because they know my story.
And sure,
sometimes
I get bored
with this work,
and most of the librarians
don’t interact much with each other,
but I’ve organized
lunch gatherings
where I teach the few who show up
how to cook fish
for me
and we talk about
magic
and books
and age
and I think
it makes me
a little bit happy.
***
check out Graveyard of Lullabies at this link
Jordyn Saelor 