[OPEN] A Tale Told By an Idiot

[therevanchist]

Who: Revan and Whoever
What: Misled by the badass title, Revan attempts to read The Sound and the Fury
Where: Philly library
When: Towards the end of the Philly stay
Warnings/Notes: The Sound and the Fury is basically a nonstop parade of awful, so if you want, we can just stick to Revan not knowing what golf is or whatever to avoid dealing with early/mid-20th century race and gender issues and horrid people being horrid to each other.

[Anyone less stubborn would have given up days ago. Revan, on the other hand, is seated at a table in the reference section, surrounded by books pulled from all over the library, none of which seem to have any relationship to each other. A copy of the Concise Oxford, still large enough to brain livestock. A single-volume history of Germany and another one about the state of Mississippi. The official rules of golf. A biography of Thomas Jefferson and a history of Cambridge, England, both pushed off to one side. Harvard Observed: An Illustrated History of the University in the Twentieth Century, published of course by Harvard University Press. Several slim books about Easter, all obviously for children. And so forth.

Directly in front of her, stuffed full of flimsy paper bookmarks printed with the library's hours pilfered from the circulation desk, lies the cause of all the trouble: an unassuming paperback copy of The Sound and the Fury, with all the terrible stock photo cover design a cheap reprint of a classic entails. Revan herself is scribbling something in a spiral-bound notebook with a ballpoint, her surprise at the sheer amount of paper in the city long subsumed by irritation over this maddeningly incomprehensible book she's found.]

Why does it even matter?

Comments

[likeits1999]

[ Kevin's drifting along, like one does, when he hears someone complaining. He pokes his head around a shelf to peer at Revan and the paraphernalia of her suffering. ]

Why's what matter?

[ Damn, man, that sure is a lot of books. ]

[coiledscales]

Why does what even matter?

[ The voice carries over the stacks and then Alacruun pokes his horned head out from behind one of the shelves. He's mostly taking notes himself, but so far there's been woefully little on actual magic or anything remotely useful. It's all histories and stories of the sort that might be useful to an academic, but not to someone who is trying to research how best to annihilate someone with a gesture.

Pity. ]

Life? Our being here? The universe?

[shipoftheseus]

[They've never been one for the library, even back home. Sure, they're willing to work through books when they're really dying to know something and can't just ask anyone, but it's hardly something they'd do for fun.

But books back home hadn't been like this. Phos pauses by Revan's table at her sudden outburst, frowning at the her stacks of books and the one she's currently reading.]

What's with all these?

[The books here seem weird. They'd thought there were a lot at home in the school's library, but this place is huge and completely packed full of them. And the letters are impossibly neat and uniform. Phos picks up one of the books at random, peering at the dense text. Who the hell is Thomas and why did something write a whole book about him? What a waste of paper.]

[awfulcer]

[If Dixon weren't trying to save the battery on his iPod and weren't bored to absolute death of playing solitaire, he'd probably continue avoiding the library. He's been keeping to himself, sluggish from the morgul wound and embarrassed after that whole network incident, figuring that when they get a move on someone will have the decency to come fish him out from under the counter at the Wawa and let him know.

But there might at least be something to ease the boredom in the library, and last time he went in there he found some magazines and comics, although foolishly forgot to bring them with him. He manages to track that one Mad Magazine issue back down and even a volume of Preacher he hasn't read yet, which brightens the day considerably. He straggles around the aisles, nosedown in the adventures of Jesse, Cassidy and Tulip, when he stumbles on Revan.

He surveys the scene in front of him with alarm at first, and then puts the pieces together. He pauses in the aisle like he's not sure whether to say hello or not, given that he's spent the last few days fashioning himself into the team's resident jackass. Even moreso than usual.

But he wants her reassurance and whatever company they had, so he gives a soft wave.

Anyone who's done five and a half years in high school knows the look of a reprinted classic from the canon. Dixon isn't sure which one it is, but the sight of one is a little like running a hand vacuum at a cat. He bristles and waves a hand at it.]

If it's in one of those it probably don't. [He considered, for just a second, figuring out which book it was and bullshitting that he knew what it was about to seem worldly, but even he's not dumb enough to actually commit to that scheme.]

[wherenoonegoes]

I'm not sure I follow. What doesn't matter?

[From the array of seemingly unrelated books, Hiccup can't quite figure out thr context. As for his own book, he's currently carrying a copy of The Princess Bride.]

[cleansingstrike]

[Agrias visited the library now and again, looking for more books to take back to Ovelia. Much of their subject matters were frankly foreign and unfamiliar to her, which would also do little good for the Queen. Some of the books, though, she felt would be a suitable read.

She gathered them all together into a stack, before hearing a bit of commentary.]

I beg your pardon?

[greyerrant]

{ Loken looks over at Revan and asks. ]

What's wrong? Is the book not to your tastes?