Ex Libris -- The Story


1_800_Spines

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
I'm currently reading Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla, and I noticed a certain Ex Libris a bit over halfway in the book.

Coincidence?!

Why does the quote in her signature tell me not?

[/ QUOTE ]
I've read the entire series... how could I have missed that?


 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm currently reading Stephen King's Wolves of the Calla, and I noticed a certain Ex Libris a bit over halfway in the book.

Coincidence?!

Why does the quote in her signature tell me not?

[/ QUOTE ]
I've read the entire series... how could I have missed that?

[/ QUOTE ]

=P I nearly missed it myself, except that the name was bolded, hehe. Just jumped out at me, and I just had to point that out. ^^


 

Posted

The Beginning--Part I
Jump to Part II
Jump to Part III
Jump to Part IV


Chapter V: Book Wyrm

“Uh” Isabelle was speechless, “No, I don’t remember you, I’m sorry.”

Just then Derek came up to the booth, and Isabelle swore that she was never so relieved to see him in her life.

Derek being the friendly heroic type extended his hand and greeted the mysteriously familiar woman.

“Hi, I’m Derek; you must be a friend of Isabelle’s.”

Isabelle listened intently hoping to catch a clue to this woman’s identity so she could place her in her memory.

“Na we aren’t really friends, we were school mates a long time ago. My name is Vivienne, it’s nice to meet you Derek.” “It looks like you have a date so I’ll let you get back to your evening.”

“It was good to see you again Isabelle.”

Before Isabelle could form the words the woman had vanished, almost it seemed into thin air. Derek sat down at the table and started chattering about contacts, and reports. Isabelle quietly nodding her head and staring at him drifted off into her memory trying to find the catalog that contained…Vivienne.

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Izzy hated lunch period. It was the single most boring hour of her life. She had taken the time to multiply the hours that she would end up spending suspended in that systematic human devised time sink. She averaged that she would spend 1500 hours sunk into “lunch” over the next 5 years of her academic career. Izzy figured that was 1100 hours of reading and potential growth gone.

“It only takes fifteen minutes for me to eat my lunch I don’t see why I can’t just stay here in the library”

Izzy had once pleaded to Dr. Evans.

“I know Isabelle, and if it were up to me I would encourage you to stay here, but the law requires us as educators to have a one hour lunch break.” Dr. Evans replied.

Isabelle had started in to return her rebuttal when Dr. Evans followed up his argument with a statement.

“There’s more to it Isabelle, and you know that. It has taken some people years to attain their rights as citizens of St. Mercy and Port Oakes.”

Isabelle pulled a face of disapproval that spoke volumes, but she knew that Dr. Evans was right. Her father had always talked about his work to lobby for change. Isabelle stopped and looked down at her feet, as an image of her father telling one of his stories pervaded her mind; it was so real she could hear his voice echoing in her memory.

“Things haven’t always been this way Izzy, and they won’t always stay this way, the world is in a constant state of change. I just try to be one of those people out there pushing it a certain direction.”


Dr. Evans who had been walking along side her at a rather quickened pace, stopped and looked the three feet behind him where he stared at the saddest little girl he had ever seen. His shoulders drooped slightly as he was overwhelmed with a rush of empathy.

Isabelle looked up at that moment and asked in the most sincere tone Dr. Evans had ever recalled.

“Does it ever get easier?” “I mean will it ever stop hurting so much?”

Dr. Evans stepped closer to Izzy and put his hand on her shoulder.

“It doesn’t feel like that right now Izzy, and it will be a while before it will. But there will come a time when you can remember the good things without feeling the pain.”

Izzy was embarrassed at her emotional outburst and shrugged at Dr. Evans, simultaneously dismissing his kindness as unnecessary and at the same time feeling completely comforted.

She knew better than anything she had to control her emotions and attachment to other people, as it was a weakness. She knew well enough from her studies of archery that a natural human possessed the ability to hurdle a weapon across time and space to hit a target. The target, supposing it wasn’t static has two innate defenses. First, if the target were mobile, it is less easily tagged. Second, if the defense of the target is strong enough to repel the force and nature of the attack, then it could potentially render the attack futile. She knew that she needed to master these principles.

Izzy figured if it worked in physical theory it ought to apply to psychology as well. And since she figured it that way, it was. Until she could prove herself otherwise!

Izzy and Dr. Evans walked up the hallway and towards the junction split where teachers and students converged and like charged energy headed towards their destinations.

Izzy ducked left and quickened her pace to keep up with the flow of the group. She hated social interaction on this level. Crowds had to be Isabelle’s single worst fear. She only felt safe in controlled environments. She had experienced enough chaos for one so young that she clung to the comfort of knowing the exact outcome of every situation.

Except when she read, that was the only time she felt truly free. Some of the other children teased her relentlessly, especially during lunch, and one of the main things they would always call her was ‘book worm’ and since Izzy knew it was true enough, she changed the word worm to be wyrm she altered the energy to be positive and each time they were calling her a Libris Draconis. Izzy figured being a book dragon ought to give her some incredible powers like the ability to freeze or breathe fire. She was still working out the specifics in her head as to which element she liked the most.

Someone bumped into Izzy and she was alert to the fact that she had drifted off into her mental space again.

“Pay Attention” she reminded herself.

Isabelle always kept her head low and eyes focused downwards to heighten her ability to see her peripheral better. She always had the eerie feeling she was being watched.

It was her peripheral that caught the first sight of danger that afternoon. The chair came sliding across the floor with Izzy as the dead on target. Izzy couldn’t escape its path but she knew she could defend against it, what she found instead was far more than she had thought possible.

The chair made a screeching sound as it rushed across the floor then made a sudden halt right at Izzy’s feet. For a split second everything within the immediate area stopped as well and a hush started to creep across the cafeteria.

Almost as quickly as the chair had stopped it pushed forward in the other direction as a skinny, ‘raven-haired,’ girl pushed forward and started mouthing off to the boy who had pushed the chair at Isabelle.

“You almost hit her you fricken punk.” “You think you are so cool and untouchable in your gang. If you want to fight someone, you can start with me.”

Isabelle slammed back against the wall with a force of awe and a rush of unexpected energy. Her heart was pulsing in her head and she could feel her stomach muscles tighten in preparation to sprint into action.

“What’s happening to me?” she thought, and she heard a voice very clearly say.

“Just stay calm.” “I’ll get us out of here, just don’t run.”

This couldn’t be possible. Isabelle knew that this couldn’t possibly be happening. She pushed her resolve forward enough to ease her energy into a relative flow and she pushed past the students who had gathered and walked towards the exit.

The students who were close by would later tell stories about how,

“I swear that library kid; she stopped the chair dead in its tracks without even touching it.”

Other students would always counter the tale and continually shed more and more doubt and as time passed and people realized that it just wasn’t possible the story evolved into something that resembled this,

“It was that weird girl, you know the one that dresses all dark and she sits alone at lunch. She stepped in right before the chair was going to smash into that little kid, and she kicked it out of the way and then picked a fight with Raymond Sciotto.”


Only Isabelle and the weird girl knew what really happened without any doubt.


~Ex Libris~ The Story part V by Jill Henderson


 

Posted

Hehe, nice. Good to see you're still at it.

On a side note, I noticed your large minus-sign separation there. I generally find that copying and pasting the automatic --- boundary between the post and signature will give you a very effective divider that stays nice and uniform no matter how many times you need it.


"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi

Characters

 

Posted

Keep on trucking. Nice to see a Dev who is still developing their own characters as opposed to just sticking them on a pedestal. Excelent work.

I myself just use ----- for separations.


 

Posted

Yay, the story continues.

Is the lighthouse, Lighthouse?

What is the source of her powers Dr. Evans hinted at?

What lies ahead?

So many questions, and the tale is only starting.

Encore!


 

Posted

*poke*


My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

 

Posted

KRRRR, and there I thought she'd put up more. Curse you, Grey!


"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi

Characters

 

Posted

Haha!

[/Nelson]


Arc ID: 475246, "Bringing a Lord to Power"

"I'm only a simple man trying to cling to my tomorrow. Every day. By any means necessary."
-Caldwell B. Cladwell

 

Posted

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<a href="/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=7700524&page=0&a mp;vc=1&PHPSESSID=#Post770052" target="_blank">The Beginning--Part I</a>

Dr. Evans had finally done it, he thought to himself. He had found the ideal pupil. Isabelle Dubois was the perfect candidate, and he had nearly discredited her after the accident…the loss of her family. Evans thought to himself, I must find a way to make sure I can keep Izzy enrolled at Moorecrest. If they try and place her somewhere else I will have to start all over again. Or that might just be the key to keeping her post elementary school.

Evans knew that his ideas were radical and after leaving ‘the institute’ he took a fellowship offer at the local University hoping he would find an apt student to assist him develop his ideas. After working with the fellowship program nearly two years he realized that these students had already passed the point of execution for his ideas. They were too far into adulthood to grasp anything so mind blowing as his radical ‘Theory of Possibility.’ Certainly there were some brilliant candidates but most of them had grasped too many of the hard lined laws of nature and the universe to even see Dr. Evan’s ideas as anything more than fantastical and foolish.

Evans recalled one of his favorite quotes from Albert Einstein.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

Dr. Elliot Evans knew that he would have to find another way. Elliot knew that his disease was terminal, he was only 67 and most would consider that to be young but time was of the essence now and he had to find someone that could carry on his life’s work. The sheer number of technological advances that could be made if his proofs held up to scrutiny would be astounding. If only I could make it work he thought. Then he could truly be deemed as a great thinker, instead of the quack that most held him up to be.

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Izzy lay there shivering and curled up rocking back and forth with every movement of the deep black ocean. She was wet from head to toe, and could only feel some sense of warmth inside her green vest life jacket.

The life jacket had been her birthday present when she turned 8 a few months before. She was so happy about the gift that she wore it for nearly a week around the house. Her mother finally was able to convince her to stow it away under her bed until they had brought the boat out from winter storage.

Izzy pulled her arms inside the vest and curled up tighter, she was so cold that she couldn’t stop her jaw from chattering and knocking her teeth together. She couldn’t remember ever being this cold before. She wondered where her family was and why they hadn’t come to find her. Izzy wasn’t quite sure what had happened, she knew her head hurt terribly and that she was floating on the large cushion that was backed by a plywood board. It was the one that covered the engine on the back of the boat. But where was the boat? Where was her family? Where was Izzy?

Izzy slowly moved around the cushion as to not disrupt the balance that had up to this point kept her safe. Nothing! She couldn’t see anything but a void of darkness. Then she saw a beam of light pass by, but it was quickly gone again. Izzy was so tired but she knew that she shouldn’t fall asleep, she knew that she had been hit on the head and had read recently in one of her “Hardy Boy’s” mysteries that it was not a good idea to fall asleep if you had a head injury. Izzy couldn’t help thinking if she did fall asleep that she would miss finding her family.

The light beamed over head again. Maybe that is them looking for me, Izzy thought. Certainly it must be she tried to raise her head up to see if she could hear a boat engine but she could hear nothing but the ocean, and again she could see nothing but darkness. Where was that light coming from?

Again the beam crossed over the wide expansion of the sky. Izzy could only tell the difference between the darkness of the ocean and the sky by looking at the horizon. The light crossing over was too static to be a rescue boat, Izzy thought, it must be something else, but she couldn’t quite figure it out. Then again it crossed over.

“29, 28, 27, 26, 25,” Izzy started to count. She got to 15 when the light crossed over again. “15, 14, 13, 12, 11,” and on down to 1 and there the beam flashed across the sky. It was a lighthouse! Izzy kept counting; it took 15 seconds for the light to go full circle around its circumference. Izzy figured that if she continued to count she would be able to tell if she was getting closer or drifting further away from where the lighthouse was stationed.

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,” and SNAP! Izzy was wide awake. She looked confusedly around Dr. Waters’s office and then her eyes narrowed in on Hanna. She remembered now, she was at her scheduled psychiatric appointment.

“How do you feel Izzy?” Dr. Waters asked.

Izzy hated that question. “I feel sleepy.” She responded.
“Did you learn anything new about what happened to me?” Izzy asked with anticipation.

“No, not really.” Dr. Waters replied.
“Izzy are you still having trouble sleeping at night?” Dr. Waters asked, to which Hanna replied.
“She wakes up with nightmares at least 3 or 4 times a week, and half the time when I go in to check on her to see if she is sleeping she’s awake and reading.”

“Well I can write her a prescription to help her sleep.” Dr. Waters stated.

Izzy sat quietly while decisions were made in her behalf, she didn’t quite care that this was happening because most people treated her like this, hardly anyone ever asked her what she thought or what she wanted. She felt more like she was a problem than a person.

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Isabelle sat quietly meditating with her eyes closed she then took in a deep breath and inhaled the steamy air. The eucalyptus seemed to sting open the alveoli of her lungs. Isabelle had always been susceptible to infections after that summer so long ago. Her best defense was regular exercise and a rigid diet. It was amazing to her how good she felt after a hardcore work out, and sitting in the steam room had proved to be the most therapeutic practice she had come across in her adult life. Adult, Izzy could hardly wrap around the idea that she was nearly 25. This had been a rough winter and she missed the camaraderie of her old mentor Elliot, she could hardly believe that three years had past since his death and her inheritance.

Isabelle had long given up the idea that she would ever have a family. Hanna and Dr. Evans were the closest thing she could think of to familial relations. Hanna had since married and started her own family and kept in touch at the usual social conjectures, birthdays and holidays. And Dr Evans had finally passed on, he went quietly and peacefully. It seemed to Izzy that he had long prepared himself for the event. Isabelle however, was hardly prepared, she was 21 years old and technically an adult in fact far more mature than most adults were but she took Dr. Evans death very poorly.

There were problems that Isabelle despite her best attempts to find a solution just couldn’t tackle and it would be good to bounce ideas past Dr. Evans like she had so easily done in her past. She kept a daily journal, which helped, but it was times like this that she relied on meditation, hoping to channel the good Doctor.

Oddly in her hopes to channel him she brought up images from a distant past, there were still pieces missing in the puzzle that created her. Pieces that Izzy knew she would need to find in order for her to unlock the pieces to a bigger puzzle.

Possibilities!?!




~Ex Libris ~The Story part II by Jill Henderson
Edited by 1-800 Spines


[/ QUOTE ]

Cool


 

Posted

You see why I poke?

*poke*


My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.