The Tsuki Saga
The Library
Shalnek on the other hand, decided to stay in the castle. He wanted to explore this fantastic building. He wandered round, eventually arriving in the library. It was a magnificent room, floor to ceiling were hundreds upon hundreds of books. All arranged neatly, alphabetically and all bound in either red, or for the factual books, black. It looked like many generations of collecting. He wandered up and down the rows of shelves. He got to the third row, around about D, and stopped short, for at the end of the row was a small desk, and at the desk sat Tsuki. He shook his head at his own reluctance to disturb her, for she seemed buried in the book. This one was bound in black. She had changed since the morning. She was wearing a short blue dress and a purple cloak. Her red hair seemed almost golden this morning too. Her blue eyes were filled with tears, as she read on in her book.
As he approached one of the floorboards creaked, and the princess looked up, startled. On realising that it was one of her guests, she rose, and swept him a deep curtsey. He smiled, "Good book?" he enquired. "Indeed it is, a beautifully written history of the shape shifting peoples. Did you know that the were-wolf and were-panther are closely related species?" She continued without waiting for his reply, "Or that although any of the were-races may breed with humans, it is customary to disown any child who is half-were?" she shook her head and gestured for him to sit with her. "There are so many peoples who outcast so many others. It's just not fair! I seem to collect many outcasts as servants here, for some reason the other islanders will not venture out here. My two men, Stanley and Sidney, twin brothers, caught the nillai flu, now they are outcast merely because they look, and behave sometimes, differently from the rest of us. Don't worry though, during the fourth phase of the moon, we keep them locked away, by their request, in the west wing." Here she stopped and appeared to forget who she was. She looked around, rose from her seat and left without a word. Shalnek leapt up and looked around to see where she had gone, or what she had seen, but she seemed to have vanished. He picked up the book she had been reading and looked for a moment at the pages. It was written in some kind of foreign language, which he could not understand. He left it as it was, and continued his tour of the castle.
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