Returning to your Personal Library after your visit to Tegan's feels… different this time. Strange even, as you take in the familiar sights and sensations. The windows… the scrolls upon the shelves or laid across reliable cypress tables… and the tree in the courtyard, solitary and serene in its understated grandeur, as usual. You imagine and then immediately feel a cool breeze graze your sharp cheeks and rustle a strand of loose, white hair.

Different. That is the sensation you are feeling. Even though your Personal Library hasn't changed. So… perhaps it is you who is different?

You wander around the space, walking across the symmetrical, perfectly placed stones in the corridors, glancing at the arched glass windows that you knew were shattered when you threw your body through them in a desperate bid to escape. As you wander, you begin to move things around. An ink well moved on top of a sheaf of parchment here, a small marble bust switched out for a cushioned stool there.

They are tiny alterations at first that begin to change the shape, the position, the atmosphere of this space, and they gradually grow bigger, bolder. There is only so much you can do to change the Personal Library with your own tweaks, you realise, but your thoughts are beginning to swirl, spiral, and overflow.

You need an outlet for this spring of imaginings. Now. You grab a stool and carry it to the short set of three steps leading out to the courtyard, situating yourself across from the tree. Your worn and lined hands open your keepsake, the musings and journeys of all head librarians before you, and begin to tell a story.

Not just your story. A new one. The story of all the people you have met. All that you have witnessed, heard spoken or whispered or sung. All that you have welcomed and recoiled from as well as all that has brought you to tears of sorrow or joy.

You recall all of the Library Incarnations you have been through so far. Each one distinct. Each one surprising in its own way. The child's drawing from Amar's Bookshop… you placed it by a writing desk that teachers had often brought their students to in order to practice their written Latin as well as Greek and Arabic if they were particularly gifted or wealthy. The picture you took with Amelia and Tegan at Hiro's Hoot House, surrounded by majestic owls clicking their beaks and ruffling their feathers beside your ears… it is now perched by one of the arching windows, propped up by a statuette of an imperial eagle, a symbol of the power of Rome.

You chuckle a bit darkly at that. Perhaps, if your great, almighty Roman Empire had taken more of the wisdom of Minerva than the righteous fury of Jupiter… the barbarians would not have been able to invade and sack cities so easily, so swiftly.

But you don't dwell on this long. You have the knowledge that your library in your time no longer exists, but the acceptance of the fact… you are not there yet. Not quite. Instead, you focus on this space, the snapshot of your library, preserved in amber or behind a glass display case. It is in stasis now, you think. Frozen. Unchanging.

As soon you think it, you realise this is not entirely true. You have made small, experimental modifications already, and the mystical happenings behind the Personal Library has not forced them back to their original arrangements. Nor did it reject the physical offerings from other Library Incarnations.

Maybe all it took was ideas, willpower, and time. You don't know how long you and the other Chosen will be stuck in the Hub World this time. The incident at the Hoot House seemed pretty dire, difficult to repair and recover from…

You heave a sigh, take a piece of charcoal, and begin switching from notes to sketches. You start with the Well Library. There was not a physical memento from there you could pull from, but that would defeat the purpose of the Well community themselves. You allow your thoughts to imagine Heang, to hear her voice and recreate the drawings on the wall, massive colourful murals of the Well's history. It was a space of creativity and freedom, welcoming additions which would crowd over existing marks, no stranger to change. Simply accepting the flow and carrying it along for the next generation.

The stories were not bound by physicality, by materiality. You blend the charcoal with your fingertips, uncaring if the dust gets on your skin and clothes. You have sketched an amphitheatre that is all stage, no seating. With everyone a participant and an observer all in one. Each person contributing to the past, present, and the future.

A blank backdrop where scenery of a play may have been placed or painted stands waiting for the first brushstrokes accompanying verbal retellings of tales.

You breathe in sharply, taken aback by what the free flow of consciousness had coaxed forth from your amateur hands. It had been some time since you had picked up a pen or charcoal stick for anything other than ritualistic, rote recordkeeping. Such routine had been precious to you, especially kept within the bound keepsake of all librarians' thoughts and commentaries.

The routine could be reinvented. So you draw and draw and draw…

Amar's Bookshop brings to mind a cosy sense of comfort even amid a dizzying collection of books, artefacts, and the memories contained within. You like the idea of replicating a place of casual collection, where people could take something and leave something in its place.

What a thing for a librarian to admit!

The point should have been to borrow freely, but then… but then… the issue of stagnation returns. And the visitors, the patrons of the library would not be able to make their mark on the collections the same way you hoped the collections marked them.

Was it not better to have an equivalent exchange? Your alchemist friends may certainly agree. Even if your predecessors would have been more reticent about the topic.

Your quick charcoal strokes, growing surer by the second, produce smooth lines which demarcate a corner of the library for a 'book exchange'. The items here are not just books actually, they are musical instruments, old postcards, dangling costume jewellery, preserved beetle specimens… anything and everything could be taken as long as you left something to fill the gap you created. The items are not drawn out in extensive detail, more gestural suggestions of the chaotic alcove. This seems fitting somehow.

You tilt your chin, wondering if this is something that Amar, Priya, and their grandchildren would enjoy. If this could act as carrying on their legacy, or if it would be too arrogant to claim as much. You sniff, rubbing at one wet eye. It would have been nice if Amar's family could have shared more of their stories with you and the other Chosen before… well…

You press ahead, the waves of inspiration still have you in their clutches, after all.

Hiro's Hoot House. Gone before you could really pinpoint what the story there was. Hiro himself had shared his passions and gripes about the institution when you asked him. It was clear that he thought the Hoot House was a bastion of knowledge, of community-focused learning. And, although the number of visitors was few with the impending closure… there were decades of history there, of proof that the Hoot House had made some sort of difference. If not in the lives of every single tourist, at least in the lives of the owls they took care of.

Collaborative knowledge. Shared knowledge centred around appreciating symbols of nature that were out of reach for those people in 2019 Kobe, Japan. A piece of nature for urban folk who were too busy to take a journey far from their own homes and families.

It was somehow relatable. You yourself had situated your life entirely around your library, your role as head librarian was in fact more important to you than seeking out a life outside of it.

Sometimes curious youth and retiring library staff had even asked you, “Don't you want to build something beyond these walls?”

Perhaps… once… but even reminiscing now – no, because you were thinking back on this now – you do not regret your choices. Your five or so decades tied to libraries in one way or another were your precious connections. You would not trade them for the world.

You smile to yourself. You had proved that when you turned down Shadow & Shush's offer.

If Hiro and Hisoka appreciated similar connections, similar relationships spiderwebbing out from the Hoot House… well, you could honour that. You sketch it with abandon even as the pages become dotted with silent, wet teardrops.

What you come up with, sketched across a double page in your keepsake, is a cross between a Roman forum from your time and the café you had visited at the Hoot House. Spilling out into the library courtyard are tables and benches for people to sit together and chat. The library guests are free to bring out books and scrolls, to pluck fresh fruit, bread, and wine from local stalls set up in the yard and corridors. The scene in charcoal is lively, reminding you of markets, but with the intellectual discussion of forums on nights where famous philosophers spoke to the masses. Except here, in such a casual, familial environment, any type of curiosity is welcome; no questions are too frivolous or too bold.

Ignorance would not be shamed, as long as one were willing to listen and learn.

Your hand stills, only a tiny nub of charcoal left of the once full stick. You intend to go back and add more details, flesh out these concepts with a finer-nibbed pen, but for now, you need to breathe and take in what you have done. The revolutionary changes you have made to the precious notebook of all librarians before you, breaking the mould in the most (you believe) dramatic of ways.

Up to this point, you have not looked up from the pages of your keepsake. There was no need: you had the layout of your library memorised, understanding it better than the canvas of your own body. There was no room for anything else as you sketched and reflected and came to terms with the libraries of before.

Finally, you raise your head, to take in your Personal Library.

Your mouth drops open and a strangled sound comes from your throat. Everything you had drawn, everything you had considered and not even made visible on the pages of the ledger yet… all around you they are coming into focus, becoming a part of this reality.

The amphitheatre without seating takes up the centre of your library. An entire wing is dedicated to exchanging items for items, ideas for ideas. Marble tables and benches are coalescing in the courtyard.

And you watch, scarcely daring to believe your eyes, as a bench, just large enough to sit either two people or a single person and their pile of reading material, manifests beside your beloved tree.

You walk down the steps, cross the courtyard, and reach out your hand to rest it against the rough bark. Still alive, still strong, still real. Real enough.

Your legs give out underneath you and you keep a hand against the tree, shoulders wracking with silent sobs. You could create such new beauty, and perhaps even keep some of the old… You are not sure if this tree has survived in your time. Perhaps it too has burned or been cruelly cut down.

But it had seeds, progeny, and any number of those could grow. They could grow.

You have grown.

You all have.