2 cycles alive, all of it spent in the library.

Visitors or inhabitants might've noticed the huge Gembound lurking the corridors, perhaps they've even said hello. But Kithara had a one track mind - he wanted a purpose. He needed knowledge to find it. And there was knowledge hidden in these pages... He just had to find it.

Scattered around him was a myriad of tomes: Cardboard books for children with pop up illustrations, or different fabrics embedded in the page, religious texts (picked for their impressive covers), diagnostic guides for psychiatry (immediately discarded). Right now he was paging through a self-help book for teenagers, on the basics of employment and job searching. To someone familiar with those topics, it was noticably outdated.

He tapped a finger to a word, fascinated by its repetition. It was important, crucial even, to his mission. He just couldn't figure out what it meant.

.

Mercutio had been wandering through the palace rooms rather indiscreetly. She'd stopped a few times to marvel at the various things to see. Sometimes that was nothing! She could spend a lot of time staring at the beautifully ornate or pristine walls of the palace's empty rooms. This room seemed different though. There was like... a guy in it.

Not just one guy. Many guy. All hung up on shelves. Were those guys too? Maybe not. Guys tended to move without your explicit input. The rectangles on the shelves only seemed to move when you moved them. This guy though, this was definitely an autonomous mover.

Mercutio was very astute.

They walked up to the creature, analyzing whatever was happening there. Lots of fur. Wowza. Huge, huge eyeballs. What could those be for? Something on the head. Were those ears... something else? Mercutio leered. He was trying to make a lick of sense of this creature—what they were, what they were looking at, maybe even how they were feeling. How to read emotions from a creature that looked like an abstract painting of a bug plushie? Mercutio would shrug at you, if he knew you were there. He didn't have a clue.

Well, Merc wasn't feeling too shy. "Hey. Whatcha got there?"

@Kithara

There was movement in his peripheral, smaller but not insignificant. He ignored it, for a time, continue to mull over the pages with a reflective chirr.

When Kithara was finally called on, only then did he turn. He scanned the smaller creature - Valkhound, Oilstone visible - and made his own list of observations. He wasn't used to ears, actually. How much could this one hear? his breathing? his heart? Invasive.

Kithara fluffed. "A book," He answered sharply. But the defensiveness was short-lived. "It's about jobs. Do you have one?"

@Mercutio

.

Mercutio attempted to observe the way the greachur's body moved. Pack mammal instincts sought out information: does it feel? How does it feel? What is it thinking? Is it a friend, or...?

It—they puffed up. Their eyes had checked Mercutio: head, shoulders, tail, stone. Words came too quickly. Audibly italicized. Abruptly, the pattern ended. And the question: was it pointed? Merc could see a world where it was...

This could all be frivolity. It could all mean nothing, as great analysts love to say. But Mercutio had a hunch—a strong hunch—that it did not. It did not mean nothing. It did not mean- It- It meant something. Body language was practically half of language as a whole.

This guy was irritated.

Mercutio didn't know why.

A few guesses: interrupted activity, something about her stone, something about the book, maybe just a them problem?

Hey—! Hey Thinker! Wake up! Respond—! "uhh, haha, no. do you?"

She sidled up to Kithara, attempting to place her paws on his arms like ladder rungs if necessary. It was clear she was trying to see what it was he was reading. "what's a book?" It wasn't the only query Mercutio was asking. Now that he was starting to get a handle on reading it, Kithara's body language would answer the rest.

@Kithara

The way that Mercutio looked at him, through him - he suppressed another bristling of his coat. Employees do not react this way to a conversation, nor to a coworker. A coworker... In his dreams he was surrounded by the wondrous animals, one with the flock as they followed behind their shepherd, the boss.

With the text in Kithara's paws, this would become a reality. He just had to open his mind a little more. And figure out this one, itty-bitty term...

He sighed. "No, I don't. I want one. This tome is supposed to teach you to obtain one - I've been stuck on it for a cycle." (Half his life, at this time.)

Big ears and eye-contact were a threat, but physical contact was completely fine, encouraged even. Mercutio's legs took a second to fully sink into the pillowy fur beneath them.

"You... Don't know what a book is?" Why else was she here? They turned to look at them for a moment, befuddlement hidden by their stiff features.

"Well, its a collection of information for long term storage. They print a written form of their language here - There's a lot of languages, I think - on rectangular, fragile objects called pages." Kithara picked the corner of the one he was on, flipping it back and forth. "They're as thin as possible, so you can fit as many as you can. Sometimes they make them thicker if you're just starting out, though - oh!"

Kithara shifted (not enough to dislodge Mercutio), picking up a colour, cardboard book and transferring it up to his other foremost-arm in a long chain. Despite the complexity of the movement, it took him a couple of seconds to complete. "This one's really good. It's for beginners, but I come back to it a lot. It has these odd materials woven into some of the pages - It's about a group of Gembound working in a large, red house. There's an upright one with a pitchfork - I think that one's their boss. It's fascinating."

He handed the book to Mercutio, his attention already shifting back to the other one. "You can give it a whirl. I recommend it."

@Mercutio