Deleted Scene: Library Tour, Aeronwy’s POV

1700 words, approximately 6 minute read.

“You never mentioned anything in your stories about June being cute,” I mutter to Siobhan as we prepare to part ways outside the cafeteria. June is off to the side, admiring a painting of [MYTH] by [NAME].

“Well, it didn’t seem relevant at the time, and be careful, e has hearing like a bat,” Siobhan whispers back. E leads me a little farther away. “Besides, you heard what e said about being demi. This isn’t the time to be thinking with your dick. At least not so soon.”

“I know that,” I whisper back. “I meant more in the way of—ah, never mind.”

Siobhan raises both expertly groomed eyebrows, but doesn’t say anything. We don’t typically discuss attraction of the romantic sort; Siobhan is aromantic, and I’m not sure where I fall on that spectrum. It certainly isn’t something I experience often.

“Sorry,” Siobhan says. “It’s not every day you run into someone you haven’t seen in ten years, and immediately hope will fit right back in your life like they never left. I want things to go well.”

I nod. Clearly, Siobhan cares deeply about June, even after all these years. It’s apparent in the way e stands, chest forward, feet apart, cane planted firmly on the ground, that e feels protective of their potential rekindled friendship.

“Don’t worry. When I think with my dick, I’ll just think of you,” I say, and e laughs.

“I’m not worried, really. I actually think you’ll get along great,” Siobhan says, eyes darting to where June is waiting. E punches me in the arm playfully. “Now, go have fun. Some of us have to get back to work.”

Siobhan walks off, and I begin to feel anxious, left alone with someone I only just met. It’s difficult to project an air of confidence while worrying about measuring up. Not only is June attractive, e’s an Illuminator, too, or will be in a few years when eir apprenticeship is done. Just getting to that stage is incredibly impressive.

I move to stand beside em and clear my throat. “So, is there anywhere you want to go first?”

E looks up at me with a pair of blue eyes that crinkle shut when e smiles. “Anywhere, really! I mostly spent time in the Children’s Wing when I was younger, so I haven’t seen a lot of it, and anyway it’s been an entire decade. Wow, it makes me feel old to say that.”

June is about as tall as my chin, with pale, freckled skin and brilliant red hair that falls around the ears. Not red like the synthetic crimson dye Mairead uses, but a natural, deep copper. E has a plump, chubby figure, although the loose gray sweater and jeans e’s wearing hide any details. A collar and sleeves poke out from the pullover with a hint of floral color. If I didn’t know e went to school with Siobhan in the same grade (which would make em somewhere around twenty-four, two or three years older than me), I’d have thought e was a teenager. There’s something youthful about eir face, which is square, with a large round nose on which sits a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.

“Why don’t we begin there, then,” I say. “I haven’t been in the Children’s Wing much, myself.”

I turn and lead us in that direction, slowing my usual pace so June has an opportunity to look around. Even the hallways of the Library are gorgeous, with detailed carvings in the woodwork, painted ceilings, or works of art hung from the wall in ornate frames. The walls themselves are color-coded to help you find your way through the labyrinthine campus, which I point out to June.

“That’s good,” e says with relief. “I don’t have the best sense of direction, but I like when there are color systems. Siobhan said you know your way around. How long have you been working here?”

Ah, small talk. Not my forte. “Four years, just about,” I say.

“But you haven’t seen the Children’s Wing much? Did you grow up somewhere else?” e asks.

“I did,” I say, feeling rude for keeping the details to myself. What is the point of hiding if you give away all your secrets at first meeting? Siobhan is no doubt hoping June will join our inner sanctum of friends, but we don’t know that for sure yet. When I don’t continue, June glances at me curiously, and I add, “Also, I don’t get assigned there often on cleaning duty. Apparently small children think I’m frightening.”

June laughs, and the way eir face lights up plays at my heartstrings. My Flame flickers, and I resist the urge to press a hand to my chest. People often think there’s something wrong or I’m in pain when I do that, and I have no way to explain the reality to them.

“Oh no! Well, I don’t think you’re frightening,” e says.

“Are you a small child?” I ask, raising one eyebrow.

“Only on the inside,” June replies. With my friends, this would have been said facetiously, as a joke, but e means it. It’s endearingly wholesome. “Oh, I recognize where we are now! I couldn’t have described this spot if you asked me, but now that I see it, it’s all coming back.”

E runs a few feet ahead and stares up at the entrance to the Children’s Wing, which is a wide archway carved to resemble a stack of giant books. The keystone book at the top is open to its central pages, on which the words ‘Welcome to Reading!’ are painted in a rainbow of colors.

“It feels like a magical portal to another world,” June says, as we wander through the arch.

“I was just thinking the same,” I say. Normally I wouldn’t have admitted such a thing aloud, but June’s wholesome aura is comforting. There’s a child inside me, too, somewhere, who spent whole afternoons looking for such portals in order to escape.

Just behind the archway, sandwiched between it and the start of the children’s book stacks, is a tiny round room whose ceiling rises to a high point above. From the outside, it looks like the turret of a fantasy castle, with a peaked shingled roof and windows of all shapes. There’s a clock built into one side, and a brass bell that chimes the hour, the inner workings of which are all visible from below.

While I’m looking up, though, June is staring at the wall, hands on hips. It’s painted with a 360 degree landscape of the Caspora City skyline, transitioning endlessly through the seasons. A famous poem by [NAME] is lettered across the sky.

“This song…” e says, voice trailing off.

“Song?” I say, because I’ve never heard of it referred to as such, and it makes me curious.

“My parents must have made up the tune, I just realized,” June says. “I guess it was only a poem to everyone else. But they used to sing it to me when I was little. They said it was what inspired them to move here.”

I know from Siobhan’s stories that June’s parents were Fenian immigrants, and that one of them died the same night Siobhan lost most of eir family and suffered the injury to eir hip. The night of the last big Casporan earthquake. The Library had been spared, but other parts of the city had not.

Before I can decide whether or not to acknowledge that, June tilts eir head back and starts singing:

“There is a place where sunflowers grow,
Though the Sun may hide away,
Their brown faces will smile for you,
And tell you what you want to know.

There is a place of mountains green,
And mists as white as snow,
Though the path does hide from view,
There is more than what is seen.

There is a place of tall risen Spire,
Two worlds it sits between,
Here you will find just what is true,
In Caspora, beside the fire.”

The words echo through the turret, off the clockwork, inside the bell, and send shivers down my spine. What I always thought of as a simple, childish piece of poetry instead sounds mystical and inviting. June has a beautiful mezzo-soprano voice, a bit raw around the edges, but this only adds authenticity to the sound. In my chest, my heart skips a beat, and my Flame goes tall and still, listening.

When e finishes, several people nearby clap politely, and June looks at them in surprise. Eir expression suggests e just woke up from a dream, which I suppose is close enough to the truth. I put a gentle hand on eir shoulder, barely touching, and steer em inside, to a less populated corner.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” e says, face redder now than it was when Siobhan was talking about sex earlier. Fiddling with eir glasses, e shuffles eir feet on the carpet, which is patterned with a map of the world. E traces one foot along the border between [COUNTRY] and [COUNTRY].

“I’m not sure what you’re apologizing for,” I say, “that was—it was quite beautiful.”

Those words fail to describe the depth of my true reaction. I want to say, You’re incredible, entrancing, your voice is a spell, did you know that I sing too, but I bite my tongue. I don’t want to scare June away; I’ve learned the hard way that not everyone is as intense as Mairead on first meeting.

“Thank you,” June says, laughing nervously. “I’m not sure what came over me. I usually don’t do things like that in public, I can’t believe I just sang in a library, a quiet space, in front of a bunch of strangers. What in the world was I doing?”

An image drifts through my mind of a pale, thin person with short brown hair holding a mixing bowl full of batter. Golden light streams in from the window behind them, in a kitchen with green cabinets and chunky woven curtains. I can’t hear it, but I get the sense they’re singing that song.

“Remembering?” I ask.

June nods and seems to shake emself out of it. “Yes, just remembering,” e says in a lighter tone of voice. “Let’s keep going. If I stand still for too long, I’ll start pulling books off the shelf, and we’ll never get anywhere!”